“A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds” (Sir Francis Bacon).

In legal terms the Asociación Ecuatoriana de Registros Caninos AERCAN was born on 14th February 1986, when Ministerial Decree number 060, issued by the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock, was signed.

The way I see things, the main achievement at this time was to gain official recognition from the Fédération Cynologique Internationale (FCI), a body with its head office in the town of Thuin in Belgium in 1997. This is the leading global body and authority governing the world of dogs and was founded in 1911 (with one member for each country). In achieving this recognition we received stalwart support from the Chairman of the FCI’s The Americas and the Caribbean Section, Mr Miguel Ángel Martínez.

As far as Ecuador is concerned, the Asociación Ecuatoriana de Registros Caninos, AERCAN is the only national body recognised by the Fédération Cynologique Internationale (FCI) and no other local body can be granted this important recognition.

It means that all our pedigrees are recognised in any of the FCI’s member countries, also ensuring recognition of the championship rankings awarded by Ecuador, through the AERCAN, to dogs which take part in our shows.

Doubosky Delos Márquez Mantilla, President of AERCAN

This international recognition is incredibly important – without it we quite simply would not exist on the regional and worldwide dog scene, as it means that our work has the official stamp.

Another achievement at that time was the fact that the Asociación Ecuatoriana de Registros Caninos, AERCAN, joined the Sociedad de Intercambio Canofilia Latinoamericana, SICALAM in 1998. The umbrella body for organisations from various Latin American countries has its headquarters in Buenos Aires.

After a few years’ work, in 2006 we also achieved recognition by the American Kennel Club, AKC, from the United States of America.

There then came the harder task of making sure that the Asociación embarked upon its work, in other words bringing it to life and taking its place in the international community, involving both administrative and organisational matters, so that we could hold various events in which dogs could take part and compete.

This was possible thanks to the hard work of various people, all of them constantly aiming to improve the newly set up Asociación and who freely gave their time and enormous energy so that the official activity began to take shape in our country.

In the early days, we needed somewhere for the Asociación’s activities actually to take place, somewhere open to the public, so that we could carry out our work of registering dogs and also raise the funds we needed to cover the main expenses involved in our administrative work.

We then began systematically handling all the data about the dogs using a computer database and program which allowed proper control and processing of information about the pedigrees issued by the Asociación Ecuatoriana de Registros Caninos. The development of the computerised dog information system at this time was in response to a need to handle this information and, it really was a significant asset to the Asociación as we needed a proper way of dealing with genealogical information about both Ecuadorian and foreign dogs.

This was a huge leap forward for the Asociación Ecuatoriana de Registros Caninos, AERCAN, in terms of handling information about dogs and dog lovers and it brought us into the international fold.

Another important decision, which the Asociación Ecuatoriana de Registros Caninos began implementing in 1998, was the identification of Ecuadorian dogs using ISO standard microchip implants.

This was an important step, as our country was the first in Latin America to implement the system which we have been using ever since and, in some ways, this led to various other Latin American FCI member countries following our example and using microchips. Today, several years on the use of this identification system has become standard and almost all Latin American countries use it.

In the same way, programs allowing the computerisation of the Asociación’s accounts were developed and implemented within the Asociación Ecuatoriana de Registros Caninos, AERCAN, which means that all relevant information is entered upon the system.

These steps visibly demonstrate the progress which the Asociación Ecuatoriana de Registros Caninos, AERCAN, has made, having twice organised the Exposición de las Américas y el Caribe show, the first time in 2000 and the other in 2009. On the latter occasion Ecuador’s board members agreed to take on the enormous challenge of organising the event - which is of huge importance in the region - in barely three months. As had been the case in 2000, there was a lot of talk about how well organised it had been and it attracted large numbers of the region’s dog lovers, who came from both sides of the equator to compete with their wonderful dogs.

The AERCAN has risen to many different challenges over the years and has been able to do so thanks to the hard work and dedication of the people who run it, who throw everything into bettering the work we do.

The AERCAN has seven affiliated canine organisations in Ecuador which, between them, put on approximately 40 canine exhibitions across the whole of the country. Of these, we have an average of 15 shows awarding CACIBs each year, and judges are invited to come from all over the world, especially Europe and North and South America who, from a primarily technical point of view, bring a fuller understanding of the selective breeding methods used for the various dog breeds in Ecuador.

I hope that in the coming years our beloved Asociación will continue to make a name for itself, and that we will achieve even greater things, although it will take enormous hard work, dedication and responsibility in everything we do to achieve the excellence for which we are constantly striving and thus benefit everyone.

As we do so, I hope that all of us who have links to the dog world will work together to fulfil our goals. I hope we shall do so soon but the only way is to stay on course and keep our eyes on the prize.

In writing this, I hope to put across the message that we need to work as hard as we can day to day, constantly striving to better the work we do. People may come and go but our work lives on when we put all our effort and skill into it every day in order to maintain the standards we have set with the institution, as everyone can see. This is the challenge facing us: we need to think outside the box.

José Luis Henríquez Alabarda
Managing Director