Date: February 2003
Q: Is there only one studbook for Tekes?

A:
Normally a breed has a mother stud book in its original country, that is
not a case for the Akhal-Teke breed where the mother stud book is managed
in Russia according to Russian rules.
The Arabian breed also have their mother stud books outside their original
country.
Every country that has a breeding society or have a group of breeders of
the respectively breed can create standards for approval as well as keeping
a stud book for the breed.
The rules regulating the keeping of the stud book is national rules and
decided by every country's goverment, for example in Sweden, an Akhal-Teke
recommended by the mother stud book is not necessarily approved for
breeding here due to our Swedish laws on breeding genetically defect
animals.
A breed society in a country outside the country keeping the mother stud
book can make their own set of rules for their stud book. The Swiss
association for example published a stud book of Swiss tekes recently.
Ideally the countries that manage their own stud books should have a
cooperation with the mother stud book, as Todd and I have preached for
since the birth of this list in 1996.
Having tried to accomplish a cooperation for the good of the breed with the
Russian mother stud book since 1997 though, without any success whatsoever
we are now ready to reconsider our rules for registering tekes in Sweden as
we really cannot accept a mother stud book that is openly discriminating,
has no integrity and show an appalling lack of professionality in the
management.
Due to the present situation every breeder, real or unreal, every buyer,
real or unreal must ask themselves who has the integrity, who has the
professionality and competence to register pure bred Akhal-Tekes.
A situation that bothers me as a breeder.