A pedigree is a family tree for your animal, built from sire (father) and dam (mother) links going back through the generations.

On Best In Show every ancestor is a real profile, so a pedigree isn't just names on a chart - you can click any ancestor to see their page, photos, and their own pedigree. Ancestors with a recorded conformation championship are highlighted in the tree.

Pedigrees also power the COI calculator and test-mating tool - the more complete the tree, the more accurate those calculations are.

Go to the animal's profile and open the Pedigree tab. You can switch the view between 3, 4, or 5 generations.

On desktop, the tree displays horizontally with the animal on the left and ancestors branching out to the right.

On mobile, the tree stacks vertically so you can scroll through it easily.

Below the tree you'll find the animal's descendants - every animal on Best In Show that lists it as a sire or dam. This list builds itself automatically as pedigrees are linked.

If your storefront manages the animal, open its Pedigree tab and click Edit Pedigree. On the edit page:

1. Click an empty sire or dam slot to open a search window.
2. The search filters by gender and animal type, so you only see valid candidates. Type at least 2 characters.
3. Select the parent - it's linked immediately, with no separate save step.

If the parent doesn't exist on Best In Show yet, choose Create a new animal at the bottom of the search window. A mini-form opens pre-filled with the right gender and animal type; the new profile is linked as the parent as soon as you save it. Ancestor profiles created this way never count against your plan's animal limit - build the whole tree on any plan.

To remove a parent link, click the X next to the parent and confirm. This only disconnects the link; the profile itself remains.

Pedigrees are a shared graph - your animal's sire may be another breeder's stud. You can always select any visible animal as a parent in your own animal's pedigree, but it's never silent: when you link an animal managed by another storefront, that storefront is notified by email.

Ancestor profiles that no storefront owns (pedigree records) can be extended by the community: any breeder can fill an empty sire or dam slot on them, so shared lineage gets deeper over time. Existing links can only be changed by the storefronts connected to them.

• Your owned animal's ancestry is yours alone - only your storefront's members can add parents to it.
• Unowned ancestor profiles are append-only for everyone: any breeder may fill an empty parent slot, but nobody can overwrite a link someone else recorded.
• Removing a link can be done from either side - the storefront managing the child or the one managing the parent. If someone incorrectly lists your animal as a parent, you can disconnect it yourself.

In short: you always have control over your own animals, and the shared parts of the graph can grow but not be vandalized.

To keep pedigrees trustworthy, a few common-sense rules apply:

• Gender matters. Males can only be sires; females can only be dams. The search filters by gender for you.
• Same animal type. A parent must be the same type of animal as the child.
• No circular family trees. An animal can't be its own ancestor.
• Birth years must make sense. A parent can't be born after its offspring.
• One parent per slot. To change a parent, remove the current link first, then add the new one.

Print Pedigree on the Pedigree tab downloads a one-page handout for show tables, vet visits and buyers. It carries the animal's registered name and titles, its photo, its health and show record, three generations of ancestors, and a QR code that brings a reader back to the profile to ask you a question. Champion ancestors are marked, matching the on-screen tree.

It is laid out for an ordinary printer: letter paper, landscape, no full-bleed colour, and it stays readable in black and white. Anything you have not recorded is simply left out, so it is worth printing again after you add photos, titles or health results.

If you don't see the download option, printing may not be enabled on the site yet.

On an animal's profile, the Share button offers two ready-made images to download and post: a square post for Facebook and WhatsApp, and a story for Instagram and Facebook stories. Both are built from the animal's own record - photo, titled name, breed, badges, your storefront and the profile address - so the picture carries the whole story even when someone forwards it without your caption.

You don't have to download anything for a plain link to look good: when someone shares the animal's address on Facebook, X, LinkedIn, WhatsApp or Slack, we generate a third image sized for exactly that - so the preview shows the animal's name and your storefront rather than a cropped photo.

All of them update themselves as the record changes: add a title or a health result and the next share shows it.