Acceptable Use and Listing Rules

Last updated: 5 August 2026

These Acceptable Use and Listing Rules (the “Rules”) apply to everybody who uses breedright.co.uk (the “Site”): members who advertise a dog or a litter, people who browse or send an enquiry, and anybody who contacts a member through us. They form part of our Terms of use, so breaking a rule here is a breach of your agreement with us. Please read them before you publish a listing.

These Rules exist for three reasons, in this order: the welfare of the dogs advertised here, the protection of the people buying them, and the protection of Whelpy Ltd.

1. Who we are

The Site is operated by Whelpy Ltd (“we”, “us” and “our”). References to “you” and “your” are to the person using the Site, holding an account or publishing a listing.

Registered company name: Whelpy Ltd
Registered number: 17436550
Registered in: England and Wales
Registered office: Unit 3 Factory 3 Valhalla, Dobles Lane, Holsworthy, England, EX22 6HN
Email: hello@breedright.co.uk
ICO data protection register: ZC238509

Breed Right is independent. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to The Royal Royal Kennel Club, the British Veterinary Association, or any breed club. Where these Rules refer to the Royal Kennel Club, they describe checks we make against publicly available records. They do not imply any partnership.

2. These Rules

These Rules form part of our Terms of use and should be read alongside our Privacy policy, our Membership, cancellation and refunds policy and our Cookie policy. Where a rule here is more specific than the Terms of use, the more specific rule applies.

You must be at least 18 years old to hold an account.

We may revise these Rules as the Site develops and as the law changes. The “Last updated” date at the top of this page shows when they were most recently revised. Where a change materially affects what you may advertise, we will tell members by email before it takes effect.

Nothing in these Rules reduces your legal rights as a consumer. For detailed information about your rights, contact your local Citizens Advice or Trading Standards office.

3. Breed Right lists dogs; it never sells them

Breed Right is an advertising venue. We are never the seller, breeder, owner or keeper of any dog advertised here. We are not a party to any sale, stud arrangement, deposit or contract made between members, we do not handle payments between members, and we do not act as anybody’s agent. The contract for a puppy or a stud service is made directly between you and the other person.

In England, Wales and Scotland the law requires a puppy to be bought directly from the breeder who bred it, or from a rehoming centre. Commercial third-party sales of puppies are banned in England by the Animal Welfare (Licensing of Activities Involving Animals) (England) Regulations 2018, as amended in 2019 — the change usually called “Lucy’s Law” — and Wales has an equivalent ban. Scotland reaches the same result through the Licensing of Animal Dealing (Young Cats and Young Dogs) (Scotland) Regulations 2021 rather than a straight prohibition. Northern Ireland licenses breeders under its own regime but has no equivalent third-party sales ban at the time of writing. We apply the stricter rule everywhere: a litter may be listed only by the person who bred it.

The Site is built around that rule. A litter may be advertised only by the person who bred it. Listings by dealers, brokers, agents, or anybody advertising a litter on behalf of another breeder, are prohibited and are removed.

4. Who may list

There are two kinds of account, and the difference matters because only one of them can publish an advertisement:

(a) Free account. Browse every stud dog and litter, send enquiries, and keep your own kennel profile page. A free account cannot publish a listing.

(b) Breeder membership. Advertise your stud dogs and your litters, with up to 5 photographs on each listing. Membership costs £45.00 a year. That is the total price: we are not VAT registered, so no VAT is added and no VAT invoice is issued. Full details are on the membership page and in our Membership, cancellation and refunds policy.

Whichever account you hold, you may advertise only:

a dog you own, or a dog whose owner has expressly authorised you to advertise it; and
a litter you bred yourself, from a dam you keep.

One person or kennel may hold one account. You must not create a second account to get around a listing limit, a rate limit or a suspension, and you must not share, sell or rent access to your account so that somebody else can advertise without a membership of their own.

5. Breeding licences: England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland

Dog breeding licensing is devolved, and the four nations set different thresholds. It is your responsibility to know which regime applies to you and to hold any licence the law requires. The summaries below are a signpost, not legal advice: your local authority is the authority on your own position.

England. A licence is required to breed three or more litters in any twelve-month period, or to breed and advertise dogs for sale in the course of a business, under the Animal Welfare (Licensing of Activities Involving Animals) (England) Regulations 2018.
Wales. A licence is required under the Animal Welfare (Breeding of Dogs) (Wales) Regulations 2014, which apply where three or more breeding bitches produce three or more litters in a twelve-month period, and to anybody advertising a business of breeding and selling dogs.
Scotland. A licence is required under the Animal Welfare (Licensing of Activities Involving Animals) (Scotland) Regulations 2021, which apply at three or more litters in a twelve-month period and to breeding as a business.
Northern Ireland. A licence is required under the Welfare of Animals (Dog Breeding Establishments and Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2013, which apply to keepers of three or more breeding bitches.

What we do with your licence details. Your kennel profile has a field for your breeding licence number and for the local authority that issued it. Where you complete them, we show them on your litter adverts, because a licensed seller’s advertisement must carry both. We publish those details exactly as you declare them. We do not confirm them with the issuing local authority. Where a member has given no licence details we show “not stated”, and we never present that as a black mark: many breeders are genuinely below the licensing threshold and need no licence at all.

By publishing a listing you warrant that your licence declaration is true and that you hold any licence the law requires of you. Breeding or selling dogs without a licence where one is required is a criminal offence. We may ask you for evidence, and we will provide information to a local authority, the police or another public authority where we are required to do so or where the law otherwise permits it. Our Privacy policy explains how we handle that.

6. Stud dogs must be on the Royal Kennel Club Breed Register

Every stud dog on Breed Right is on the Royal Kennel Club Breed Register. The Royal Kennel Club also runs an Activity Register, which is open to any dog including crossbreeds — those dogs cannot be listed at stud here.

The Site enforces this. A stud listing cannot be published until the dog’s Royal Kennel Club registration has been recorded as a Breed Register registration and checked by a named member of our team. An Activity Register dog, or a dog with no registration recorded, cannot be advertised at stud here. The rule lives in the code that publishes a listing, and our own admin screens report it rather than work around it.

A stud arrangement is a private contract between the stud dog’s owner and the owner of the bitch. The stud fee, any repeat-service terms, and the paperwork needed to register a resulting litter are for the two of you to agree. We are not a party to it and we cannot enforce it.

7. What a litter advert must contain

By law, an advertisement for the sale of a dog by a licensed seller in England must include the seller’s licence number, the local authority that issued it, a recognisable photograph of the dog advertised, and the dog’s age. Those conditions are in Schedule 6 of the Animal Welfare (Licensing of Activities Involving Animals) (England) Regulations 2018, and Wales and Scotland impose equivalent requirements. Every litter advert on Breed Right must therefore include:

the breed, and whether the puppies are born or still due, with the date;
the puppies’ age, which the listing works out and displays from the whelping date you give;
where the puppies are being reared, given honestly;
your breeding licence number and the issuing local authority, if you hold a licence;
at least one photograph of the actual puppies, once they are born;
whether the puppies are Royal Kennel Club registered, which is shown as your declaration; and
the date the puppies will be ready to leave, which must be at least eight weeks after they were born.

A library photograph is a placeholder, not your advert. Where a litter has no photographs of its own, the page shows a licensed breed photograph clearly labelled “Breed photograph for illustration — not this litter”, with its credit. That is acceptable for a litter that is still due. A litter of born puppies must carry your own photographs.

We would rather tell you where we fall short than let you assume otherwise. Our listing forms do not yet collect every field the licensing regulations and the Pet Advertising Advisory Group expect. There is at present no field for the puppies’ country of residence or country of origin, and no field for microchip numbers, and the form does not itself check that the “ready to leave” date you enter is at least eight weeks after the whelping date. Until those are built, please put that information in the advert description, and check the eight-week date yourself before you publish. The rule applies whether or not a form enforces it.

8. Photographs

Photographs must be of the actual dogs advertised, and recent enough to represent them honestly.
They must be your own, or images you hold a licence to use. Do not upload photographs taken from another advert, another breeder or another website.
Do not use an image that misleads about a dog’s age, condition, colour, markings, or how many puppies there are.
Do not upload a photograph of a person who has not agreed to appear on a public advert, and never a photograph of a child.

If a photograph of yours, or of your dog, has been used on somebody else’s listing, tell us and we will remove it. We do not ask you to prove ownership first.

9. What you promise when you publish

Publishing a listing is a set of promises to us and to every person who reads it. By publishing, you confirm that each of the following is true:

The dog is mine to advertise. I own this dog, or its owner has expressly authorised me to advertise it.
I bred this litter. The dam is kept by me, and the puppies were born, and will be reared until they leave, at my premises.
My licensing declaration is true. I hold the breeding licence shown on my profile, or I am genuinely below the licensing threshold that applies where I live.
Every factual claim is accurate and mine to make. That covers registrations, pedigree, health test results, any coefficient of inbreeding figure, and anything I have written about the dogs.
The photographs are of these dogs.
No puppy will leave before eight weeks of age, and every puppy will be microchipped and registered on a compliant database before it goes to its new home, as the Microchipping of Cats and Dogs (England) Regulations 2023 and the equivalent rules in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland require.
Buyers can see the puppies with their mother, at the place where they were bred.
I will complete the sale in person, and I will not send a puppy by courier to somebody who has not visited.

We may ask you for evidence at any time, including registration paperwork, health test certificates and your breeding licence. If you cannot produce it, we may take the listing down while we look into it. Certificates you upload are stored outside the public part of the Site and are visible only to our team; our Privacy policy explains for how long.

10. Health results, registrations and the “Verified” badge

Everything a breeder tells us is shown as a breeder’s declaration until one of our team has corroborated it. Where we have, the listing carries a “Verified” badge, and that badge means precisely this: “Verified” means Breed Right checked it — not the Royal Kennel Club. For a dog: a named Breed Right admin searched the Royal Kennel Club’s public Health Test Results Finder on a stated date, and the dog it returned matched the registered name, breed, date of birth and sex the breeder declared, and the Royal Kennel Club showed it on the Breed Register. For a health result: it matched the Royal Kennel Club’s public record or the breeder’s certificate. It does not mean we hold Royal Kennel Club data, that the Royal Kennel Club endorses Breed Right, or that the Royal Kennel Club’s records are complete.

The Royal Kennel Club publishes no data feed and offers no lookup service to sites like ours, so there is nothing to automate. Instead a named member of our team consults the Royal Kennel Club’s free public Health Test Results Finder, as any member of the public may, and writes down in their own words what they saw and on what date. We keep our own note. We never keep a copy of the Royal Kennel Club’s records, and we have no access to any Royal Kennel Club database.

A badge is removed automatically if the details it was based on are edited, and it may be removed if a concern about the dog is upheld. Where we cannot corroborate a claim, no badge is shown and we do not publish failed checks. The Royal Kennel Club’s public records may not include all the screening a dog has had, so a dog with no Royal Kennel Club record showing is not necessarily untested. A dog with nothing recorded is shown as “Not recorded on Breed Right”, which is an absence of information and never a mark against the dog.

Our checks are a good-faith human check of declared information against public records and the breeder’s own certificates. They are not a guarantee of any dog’s health, temperament, fertility or pedigree, they are not a recommendation of the breeder, and they are not veterinary, legal or purchasing advice. You can read exactly what we do, and what we do not do, on our verification page.

11. Listings we do not allow

The following may not be advertised on Breed Right. Each is grounds for immediate removal, and several are criminal offences:

a litter you did not breed, or any dog you neither own nor have the owner’s express authority to advertise;
a puppy offered for sale, reservation, collection or delivery before it is eight weeks old;
a dog of a type prohibited by section 1 of the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991. That includes XL Bully type dogs, which cannot lawfully be sold, given away, exchanged or advertised for any of those purposes in England, Wales or Scotland; Northern Ireland introduced its own restrictions in 2024. We do not accept such listings from anywhere, and that is our rule as well as the law;
a dog with cropped ears. Ear cropping is a mutilation prohibited in England and Wales by section 5 of the Animal Welfare Act 2006, and by equivalent provisions in Scotland and Northern Ireland. We do not allow a cropped dog to be advertised here whatever its history or wherever it is;
a docked dog, unless the docking was lawfully carried out under the working-dog exemption that applies in its nation and you can produce the certificate;
a pregnant bitch offered for sale;
a dog offered as a prize, in a raffle or competition, in exchange for goods, services or another animal, or for loan or rent. A stud service advertised in our stud directory is neither of those things and is of course permitted;
a puppy offered for delivery by courier, or to a buyer who has not seen it at the place it was bred;
a dog imported, or offered for import, in breach of the rules on bringing dogs into the United Kingdom;
any listing that misdescribes the dog, its breed, its parentage, its health results, its age or its registration;
content that depicts or encourages cruelty to an animal. Causing an animal unnecessary suffering is an offence under section 4 of the Animal Welfare Act 2006 in England and Wales, and under equivalent provisions in Scotland and Northern Ireland, and we report what we see; or
anything else that is unlawful, or that infringes somebody else’s rights.

In England and Wales it is also an offence under section 11 of the Animal Welfare Act 2006, and under equivalent provisions elsewhere in the United Kingdom, to sell or give an animal to a person under 16. Do not do it, and do not agree to it through our messages.

12. Messages and enquiries

Buyers contact breeders through the enquiry form on a listing, and the conversation continues in the message inbox on both sides. When you use it:

do not send marketing, bulk messages or anything unsolicited that is not about the listing;
do not send abuse, threats or repeated unwanted contact;
do not press somebody to move the conversation off the Site before you have met;
do not ask for, or agree to, payment by bank transfer, gift card or cryptocurrency before the buyer has seen the dog in person; and
do not use enquiries to collect breeders’ contact details for any other purpose.

Both people in a conversation can read all of it, and so can we. Where we are investigating a report, a member of our team can open the conversation, and the screen is marked as an admin view when they do. The breeder receiving an enquiry can archive it, mark it as spam, which stops further replies, or delete it, which removes the whole conversation for both sides. We limit how many enquiries can be sent from one address or account in a short period, to keep the inbox usable.

13. Using the Site

You must not:

scrape, harvest, bulk-download or republish any part of the Site or its data, including breeder contact details and listing content, whether by hand or with automated tools;
frame or mirror any part of the Site;
probe, disrupt, reverse engineer or attempt to gain unauthorised access to the Site or to another member’s account;
upload viruses or other malicious code;
impersonate another person, another kennel or us; or
use the Site in a way that breaks any law that applies to you.

Breed Right does not publish member reviews, ratings or testimonials. If that ever changes, we will verify a review before publishing it. Writing, commissioning, hosting or incentivising a fake review is a banned commercial practice under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, and unfair or misleading claims about your dogs or your kennel are prohibited by the unfair commercial practices rules in Part 4 of that Act. Say only what you can evidence.

14. How we moderate

Every decision described here is made by a person. We do not use automated decision-making to remove a listing, remove a badge or close an account for breaking these Rules. The one thing that does happen automatically is unrelated to conduct: if a membership lapses, that member’s listings are hidden until it is renewed. They are never deleted, and our Membership, cancellation and refunds policy explains it.

We do not read every listing before it appears, and we could not honestly claim to. What we do instead is this:

We gate the highest-risk claim. A stud listing cannot go live until a named member of our team has checked the dog’s registration against the Royal Kennel Club’s public records.
We review reports by hand. A person reads every report we receive.
We act quickly once we know. Content that is unlawful, or that breaks these Rules, is removed promptly once we are aware of it.
We write down why. Taking a listing down requires a written reason, and that reason is recorded in our internal audit log alongside who did it and when.
We apply the same published Rules to everybody.

Where a rule is broken we may edit an obvious error, pause a listing while we look into it, take a listing down, remove a badge, suspend an account, or close an account. We will email the address on your account to tell you what we did and why, unless the law prevents us or telling you would obstruct an investigation.

The Online Safety Act 2023. Breed Right lets members publish listings and message each other, so it is a user-to-user service for the purposes of that Act. We have written down an assessment of the illegal-content risks that genuinely apply to a site like this — puppy-sale fraud, animal cruelty, harassment through the message threads, and advertisements for dogs of a prohibited type — and an assessment of whether children are likely to access it. We are taking advice on which of the Act’s duties apply to a service of this size and what a proportionate response looks like, and we are not claiming to have finished that work. In the meantime we do the things set out in this section: a person reads every report, unlawful content comes down promptly once we know of it, we write down what we decided and why, and section 17 gives you a route to challenge a decision.

15. Reporting a listing, a message or a member

There is a Report a concern link in the footer of every page, and that page explains what we can and cannot do about each kind of problem before you write to us. You do not need an account, you do not need to be sure, and you may report anonymously. The form itself is our contact form with the topic already set to “Report a listing or a concern”. On that topic there is a box you can tick to send the report without giving a name or an email address at all. The only thing we lose is the ability to reply or ask you one follow-up question — we still read it and we still act on it.

Please give us the web address of the listing or the kennel, what you saw or were told and roughly when, screenshots of anything said off the Site, and a way to reach you if we need to ask one question. We will not pass your name to the person you are reporting.

What happens next depends on what it is. For a listing we believe may be false, we ask the breeder for the paperwork and take the listing down while we wait if the claim is serious. For a suspected scam we suspend the account and preserve the messages. Please also report a scam to Action Fraud on 0300 123 2040, or to Police Scotland on 101 if you are in Scotland: we cannot recover money, and they can act where we cannot.

16. If a dog is at risk, please tell somebody who can act

This is the one thing we ask you not to leave with us alone. We cannot enter premises, seize a dog or prosecute anybody. If you believe a dog is suffering, neglected or being kept badly, contact:

England and Wales: the RSPCA cruelty line on 0300 1234 999.
Scotland: the Scottish SPCA on 03000 999 999.
Northern Ireland: the USPCA on 028 3025 1000, or your council.
Licensing and illegal selling: the licensing team at the breeder’s local council, and Trading Standards through the Citizens Advice consumer helpline on 0808 223 1133.

Please tell us as well. We will suspend the listings while it is looked into.

17. Enforcement and appeals

We aim to be proportionate. A first, minor and honest mistake usually means we ask you to fix it. A serious or repeated breach means the listing comes down and the account may be suspended or closed.

We will close an account immediately, without a warning, where somebody advertises a litter they did not breed as a third-party seller, attempts a scam, advertises a prohibited type of dog, or where content involves cruelty to an animal.

Money. Where we end a membership because of a serious or deliberate breach of these Rules, we do not refund the remainder of that membership year. Where we withdraw the service for our own reasons, we refund the unused part of what you paid. Our Membership, cancellation and refunds policy sets that out in full, and nothing in this paragraph affects your legal rights.

Appeals. If we remove your listing, remove a badge or close your account and you think we have it wrong, write to hello@breedright.co.uk from the email address on your account within 28 days. Tell us what you think we got wrong and send anything that supports it. Where more than one of us is available, a different person will look at it. We will give you an answer, with our reasons, within 14 days.

Complaints about us. If you are unhappy with our service, email hello@breedright.co.uk or use our contact page, and we will do our best to put it right. If we cannot resolve a dispute between us, alternative dispute resolution may be available and we will provide details of a certified provider on request, although we are not obliged to use it. You can also contact Citizens Advice or your local Trading Standards office.

18. For buyers

A listing on Breed Right is an advertisement, not a recommendation. Please take the same care you would anywhere else:

see the puppy with its mother, at the place where it was bred, before you commit to anything;
ask to see the original paperwork, not a photograph of it: registration documents, health test certificates, and the breeding licence where one is held;
never pay a deposit for a dog you have not seen, and be wary of any pressure to pay by bank transfer, gift card or cryptocurrency;
check a claimed breeding licence with the local council that is said to have issued it; and
walk away if anything feels wrong, and tell us why.

Our help centre and our guide to buying a puppy safely go through this in more detail. The Government’s “Petfished” campaign and the Pet Advertising Advisory Group at paag.org.uk are both worth reading before you buy.

Our position on PAAG, stated plainly. These Rules are drawn from the Pet Advertising Advisory Group’s advertising standards, and we intend to meet them in full. We are not a member of PAAG, we have not been assessed by PAAG, and we do not claim to be approved or accredited by it. Some of its standards need listing fields we have not built yet, as section 7 explains, and we will not claim to meet them until we have.

19. Contact us

Whelpy Ltd, trading as Breed Right.

Email: hello@breedright.co.uk
Registered number: 17436550
Registered in: England and Wales
Registered office: Unit 3 Factory 3 Valhalla, Dobles Lane, Holsworthy, England, EX22 6HN
Correspondence address: Unit 3 Factory 3 Valhalla, Dobles Lane, Holsworthy, England, EX22 6HN

To report a listing or a concern, please use the report route rather than writing from scratch. It reaches this same inbox, with the topic already set, so it is picked up as a report and not as a general enquiry.

Acceptable use and listing rules