What is the FCI Jack Russell Terrier?

The first part of the question: what is the FCI? FCI stands for Federation Cynologique International, based in Thuin, Belgium. The FCI is a world wide canine organization with members from each country throughout the world. The FCI is not a registry. Each country's member organization is responsible for their country's registry activities and judge's education. The FCI insure that the pedigrees and judges are mutually recognized by all the FCI members.

The FCI has 80 member countries. The recognise 335 dog breeds. Each breed is owned by one member country, the owner country writes the standards of the breed in co-operation with the Standards and Scientific Commissions of the FCI. The FCI is responsible for translation and updates. Each member country conducts international shows and working trials. The results are sent to the FCI office where they are tabulated. When a dog has been awarded a certain number of awards, it can receive the title of International Beauty or Working Champion. The FCI also publishes a magazine, three times yearly, in four languages (French, English, German and Spanish). Information about the publication is available from STRATEGO, Muhlenweg 4, 7221 Marz, Austria.

To further research the FCI, click on this link: http://www.fci.be/


To answer the second part of the question:

Since our breed originated in England, what does AKC list the Australia as the Country of Development for our breed? England is still the country of origin, but Australia developed the breed into a purebred. Australia was the first country to write a breed standard exclusively for the 10 to inch JRT. Their original club, the Jack Russell Terrier Club of Australia founded in 1972, was the first club to organize and register our shorter dogs. They were the first Country in the world to to breed them according to purebred practices. The JRTC of Australia has done an excellent job in their record keeping. They have documentation with pictures, dates of birth, dates of death and causes of death on many of their very early dogs. They were the first club to gain kennel club recognition for the JRT. This was in 1990. Without the work Australia did in getting our breed recognized by the Australian National Kennel Council (ANKC), our breed would not have been accepted into AKC FSS. While all of our dogs don't share direct Australian blood, they all share English blood. The Australian dogs can be directly linked back to specific hunts in England. Some of our American dogs can be traced back to those same hunts, The Australian records date back to approximately 1961. Australia has the oldest and largest legitimate registry for this breed. This can all be easily verified through ANKC.

Did you know that it was Irish Kennel that presented the breed to the FCI, while closely working with Australia? ANKC is not a full FCI member. Australia worked with the Ireland (a full FCI member) to get the JRT recognized by the FCI, making them able to be recognized by the other FCI countries. It was Ireland that the presented the Australian written standard to the FCI for acceptance. The FCI accepted the Jack Russell Terrier on October 25, 2000. It is the same standard and the same breed in the Irish Kennel as it is in Australia and the rest of the world. There is great benefit to for the US to match the rest of the world in this breed.
The American Kennel Club is not a member of the FCI, but it is an acceptable registry for the FCI. Because of this, we are able to import Jack Russell Terriers from FCI countries and record them with AKC FSS. Soon we will be able to export also.

In conclusion, this is how the ANKC/FCI JRT, a breed that has existed as a Kennel Club breed for over 15 years, was accepted into AKC FSS on the American Russell Terrier Club's first application.