Glossary

An adopter receives vocabulary faster than explanations. A phone call names a home check, the paperwork names a registry and an acronym, the contract names a clause, and a county letter can name a designation nobody has ever heard of before the envelope is opened. This page collects the words as they arrive, in the order an adopter tends to meet them: first the registries and the examinations, then the placement vocabulary, then the legal and insurance terms, and finally the words that sound like knowledge and are not. Every entry is anchored, so a link can land on a single term, and the letters below jump straight to the first entry of each letter without any script running.

Jump to a letter: B · C · E · F · H · I · J · L · M · O · P · R · S · T · U · V

Screening and registries

The first vocabulary arrives with paperwork, and its home is the registry. The five examinations behind these entries are laid out exam by exam, with the age each result becomes final and what a result changes, in the screening table.

Borderline

The hip reading that falls between the passing band and the dysplastic grades. It is neither a certification nor a diagnosis, and it is not one of the three readings the parent club’s practices accept.

Cardiac clearance

A heart reading of Normal recorded at two years or older, with an evaluation by a board certified cardiologist strongly recommended in the breed’s practices. It is a baseline, and later examinations are read against it.

CHIC number

A registry number issued when a dog has completed the panel its parent club requires, with the results published rather than held privately. A number attests that the panel was done, and the results attached to it still have to be read one by one.

Elbow result

The elbow reading required at 24 months or older and published whatever it says. It is a report rather than a certification, which is why its silence means something different from the silence of a hip document.

Eye certification

An eye examination recorded as a certification at two years or older, valid for three years. It is the one document in the panel with an expiry printed on it, and repeating the examination restores the full value.

Hip certification

The hip reading made from a radiograph at 24 months or earlier readings staying provisional, graded on a seven step scale from Excellent to Severe, each image read by three reviewing radiologists.

International ratings matrix

The grid that lines the American grades up with the A to E letters of the continental systems and the scales of other countries. It is the only converter worth using, because conversions by ear travel upward. The reading of the grading document behind those letters is hip and elbow grading.

JLPP

Juvenile laryngeal paralysis and polyneuropathy, an inherited condition of the breed. The panel requires a DNA test for it on every breeding dog, and two carriers are never bred together. The result is final at any age and covers nothing but this condition.

Live breed statistics

The figures a registry recalculates continuously, such as the share of evaluated hips that read dysplastic. A number like that belongs beside its own generation date, which is why this magazine sends readers to the source rather than printing it.

Passing band

The three hip readings the parent club’s practices accept for breeding: Excellent, Good and Fair. Below Fair the reading is a finding a program works around rather than a result it accepts.

Permanent identification

The microchip or tattoo the breed’s practices require a dog to carry at the time of an examination. It is what keeps a result attached to the right animal, and its number belongs in every file.

Provisional reading

A radiograph read before the certification age. It can be useful and it is not final, which is the whole difference between a reading at fourteen months and one at twenty four.

Screening panel

The set of examinations a parent club requires of breeding dogs: in this breed, hips, elbows, heart, eyes and the JLPP DNA test, each with its own age and its own rule.

Adoption and fostering

The second vocabulary arrives by phone and by form, and each of its words names a step of the machinery. The steps themselves, in the order they actually happen, are walked through in the adoption process.

Courtesy listing

A dog listed by a placement structure on behalf of the household that currently keeps it, which usually stays in charge of the placement. The record behind a courtesy listing is thinner by definition, and the questions worth asking are the ones the listing cannot answer.

Foster home

A household that keeps a dog while the placement is prepared, and the observation post of the whole chain: what it writes down about sleep, habits and handling is the closest thing to a history a grown dog carries.

Home check

The visit a placement structure makes before handing a dog over. It is a conversation on the household’s ground about where the dog will sleep, eat, walk and get out, and it runs on both directions of the road.

Intake

The moment a dog enters a placement structure, and the point where its written record begins. Whatever happened before intake survives only in the dog and in what the previous keeper says.

Meet and greet

The introduction between the dog and the household, and between the dog and any resident animal, arranged before a contract. It is a meeting rather than a test, and a single good afternoon proves less than a week of records.

Owner surrender

A dog given up by its own household rather than found as a stray. It is the route that carries the most usable history, because the person who hands the dog over can say what the records cannot.

Participation fee

The amount a placement structure charges at the handover. In the breed’s economy it covers a fraction of what the dog has already cost in veterinary care, which is why the fee and the spend are two different conversations.

Records

The file that follows a dog: vaccinations with dates, the alteration date, test results, the clinics that saw it. In American shorthand, the vet records. The screening table is a fair table of contents for one.

Return clause

The contract provision that sends a dog back to the placing structure rather than onward to a third household if the placement fails. It is the clause worth reading twice, and reading it before the handover rather than during a crisis.

Transport

The relay that moves a dog between states through volunteer legs. It is why a placement can take weeks to schedule and why the arrival day deserves a clear plan.

Veterinary reference

The call a placement structure makes to the clinic holding a household’s records, to confirm that previous animals were seen, vaccinated and followed. It is the reference an applicant cannot write for themselves.

Law and insurance

The third vocabulary arrives in envelopes, and it is the one that changes with the address. The statute behind most of these entries is summarized step by step in the dangerous dog procedure, and the private regime beside it, which follows no statute, is the subject of homeowners insurance.

Breed specific legislation

A law or ordinance that names breeds rather than individual animals. The state’s dog law never names a breed, and some North Carolina municipalities have adopted breed specific ordinances of their own, which are read in the city code rather than in a summary.

Dangerous dog

One of the two qualifications the state’s statute defines, the graver one, established through the designation procedure of chapter 67 rather than by a neighbor’s opinion or a breed’s name.

Designation

The act by which a county declares a dog dangerous or potentially dangerous. It starts a clock the statute fixes: three days to appeal, and a hearing within ten days.

Exclusion

What an insurance policy does with a breed it lists: the dog stays in the house and the liability leaves the policy. It is worth asking an insurer what an exclusion would mean in writing, before the dog arrives.

HOA covenant

The private rule of a planned community, which can restrict animals in terms a statute never touches. Covenants bind through the deed rather than through the law, and they are read before the application rather than after the refusal.

Misdemeanor

The class of criminal charge the statute attaches to two failures: ignoring the precautions owed for a designated dog is a Class 3 misdemeanor under 67-4.2, and an attack whose medical care exceeds 100 dollars is a Class 1 misdemeanor under 67-4.3.

Potentially dangerous dog

The lesser of the statute’s two qualifications, the one most designations fall under, and the one that carries the precautions of 67-4.2 without the history an attack would write.

Restricted breed list

An insurer’s internal list of breeds it will not cover or will not cover without conditions. The list is private, it moves, and it owes nothing to the law of the state the house stands in.

Strict liability

The standard the statute fixes in 67-4.4 for the owner of a designated dog: liability for the damage without a showing of negligence. It is the reason the designation procedure is worth contesting within its own three days.

Umbrella policy

The liability layer sitting above a household policy, bought separately. It is where an excluded breed can leave a household exposed, and it is one of the four questions worth asking before signing anything.

Words this glossary refuses to define

A short last section for the vocabulary that sounds like the rest and is not. A dog described as certified without a registry entry behind the word has been described, not examined. A bloodline advertised as clear is a statement about ancestors, and the parents’ results describe the parents. A dog sold as trained is a dog somebody once asked to do something, and the household it arrives in finds out what that meant. Good with children is a description of one dog on one afternoon, and it travels worse than almost any other phrase in the breed’s vocabulary. And the numbered arrival rule, three days and three weeks and three months, has no study behind it anywhere; the measured version, which is slower and more interesting, is what the checklist of the first month follows. These words are not banned. They are simply empty until a record fills them, and the record is always somewhere a reader can ask for it.