When an animal moves to a new home - sold, placed, or co-owned - transfer its profile instead of deleting it or letting the new owner create a duplicate. A transfer keeps everything intact:

• The animal's web address, photos, pedigree, and health history stay exactly as they are.
• The new storefront takes over managing the profile.
• If you bred the animal, your breeder credit is permanent - it still shows you as the breeder and appears in your storefront's Animals we've bred section.

1. On the animal's profile, open the ... menu beside Edit and choose Transfer animal (owners and managers only; your email must be verified).
2. Search for the receiving storefront - or, if the new owner isn't on Best In Show yet, enter their email address.
3. The recipient gets an email with a private link to accept or decline.

A pending transfer expires after 7 days if it isn't answered, and you can cancel it anytime before then from the animal's page.

You don't have to keep track of it by email. Anything still in flight shows up under Transfers on your dashboard and on My Animals, where the animal's card is badged Transfer pending. You'll also get a notification in the bell menu when a transfer is accepted, declined, or lapses.

Open the link in the transfer email and sign in (or create a free account) with the same email address the transfer was sent to. You'll see the animal and who's sending it, and can accept or decline.

Accepting moves the animal into your storefront - it appears in My Animals and on your public page right away.

If you already have an account, you don't need the email to find the request: a transfer waiting on you appears under Transfers on your home page and in your notifications, with the number of days left before it expires.

Animals live in a storefront, so you'll need one before you can accept - even if you're only receiving a single pet. If you don't have a storefront yet the transfer still shows up on your home page, with a link to set one up that brings you straight back to the offer.

Many profiles on Best In Show are pedigree records - ancestors added while building family trees, not owned by any storefront. If one of them is actually your animal, you can claim it from its page (your email must be verified).

Claiming makes your storefront the animal's owner: the full profile unlocks and it joins your storefront like any other animal. All its existing pedigree connections come with it.

Ancestors you added yourself need no claim. Open the animal, choose Edit, and under Ownership switch it from a pedigree ancestor to one of your animals. It then counts toward your plan's animal limit like any animal you add.

The same setting works the other way. An animal you own but no longer keep on your storefront - a foundation animal placed before you joined, say - can become a pedigree ancestor again, so it stays in every family tree without counting toward your limit. Its photos, health results and titles stay with it. End any active listing and cancel any pending transfer first.

Every claim and transfer is recorded in the animal's ownership history, so there's always an audit trail of how a profile changed hands. To keep the system fair, transfers and claims are rate-limited, and repeatedly declined transfer requests are flagged for review.