First Letter indicates the group the dog belongs to:

D – Herding,
H – Hound,
T – Toy,
N – Non-Sporting,
S – Sporting,
R – Terrier,
W – Working

Registration numbers starting with the letter Q:

Registration numbers that start with Q are dogs that have a conditional registration and pedigree with the AKC.

• What is a Conditional Registration and Pedigree?
  When unknown parentage is indicated via DNA testing, the status of the registration will be downgraded to “conditional” until a three generation pedigree is established. “Unknown” will be noted on the registration or pedigree for the ancestor in question. This will only occur in cases where the dogs are believed to be purebred, but a registered parent is found to be incorrect.
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Second Letter:

The second letter is the rotation in which that dog was born. This means that every time the number sequence reaches a certain point, the second letter is reset to the next letter. Some letters such as the letter O is skipped as a letter in the letter sequence as it may be mistaken for a zero.

In 1996 the letter Z in the second position of the registration number was reserved for Doberman Pinscher AKC registration numbers to indicate an ancestor who was an albino.

The 8 Numbers:

The first six numbers are the litter number that your dog was born in.

The last two numbers in the sequence are the number your dog is in that litter. This usually is not the order they were born in, but the order the breeder registered them in.