shortstep

Well I do not know how long others have been active with purebred dogs, but in my lifetime I see purebred dogs bred as carefully today and if you think test results all over the pedigree is the indicator of better breeding, then much more carefully today than 20 - 30 - 40 years ago. For example in my breed, no one did hips 20 years ago, now almost all do hips. No one did DNA for several diseases (as there were no tests) 10 years ago, now almost everyone does these DNA tests. All these DNA tests were found using funding from the breeders. I can go on and on. Right now in my breed most breeders to at least 5 tests and some do up to 9. Now some would say that 40 years ago the dogs were just more healthy. Some would also say that they were not more healthy they did not test so did not know how sick they were. Some will also say that today you can health test for every disease know to dog and still breed sick dogs. I will let others decide. In the past I have defended the rights of breeders, especially breeders of other breeds, to control their own own breeds and make their own decisions. But no longer, I have been won over and will now support having dog breeding regulated and controlled by outside forces including the government or their interested representatives. I can see and understand the point, and it is a point that will always be there for those who want to raise it. There will always be some breeders who will not live up to everyone else's expectations. The only real way to solve this problem will be to regulate all of the breeders in each breed to the same standards. Done by an outside committee who will make a mandatory breeding standard for that breed. Then when anyone is unhappy they can go to the committee who controls the breeding standard to request changes are made to the particular breed. It will not be up to the breeders to decide what they should do or not do. I am all for mandating and even adding more health tests, EBV, limits on COI, Vet/Uni microchip health data collection, pedigree health database kept by the uni on every ANKC dog and make it a public record that anyone can look up. All controlled by the breed committees groups made up of experts in animal welfare, animal ethics, vets and genetics experts and so forth. As far as I am personally concerned I am lucky as there is nothing they want done that I already do not do with the exception of the uni making EBV on each litter and supplying lifetime genetic disease insurance on each pup. Other breeders wil not adjust so easily and for them I truly feel sorry and in my heart believe they should have the independence to make their own choices, but those days seem to be gone. I know we will oose lots of breeds. I just hope dog ownership survives. So bring it on. If you can do it first before the governement does then good, but I think getting all parties to agree would be impossiable. BTW this will in the end make the stud book job ANKC does not needed, the uni would become the keeper of the pedigrees.

This is just my opinion. I do not see anything that leads me to believe that the demand for change coming from the animal welfare and animal rights/liberation groups, nor from the Unis, is going to change or stop. I have not seen many KC breeders stateing there is anything to be gained by changing and I see no desired to make the changes (such as open stud books, decreasing and regulating COI, removing structural extremes from standards and so on). So unless one group drastically changes their position, there is not going to be any resolution where both sides come out improved. Purebred breeders are already in decline and will likely keep declining as even more pressure to change is demanded without the support or belief systems needed to make those changes. It may well be the Kennel Club model (not just here but around the world) has outlived it's usefulness and is not going to be able to adjust nor support their breeders in today's world of changing values. However there are some breed clubs that are doing very well right now. Not only in membership levels and in forming international relationships with other breed registers, but also in managing and living with the changing attitudes on dog breeding. So I do not think that there will be the end to all purebreds. It just might be that the breeds function independently, perhaps under international standards and with possible adjustments to their goals for their breeds future.

More good stuff from Canada video. They map out where animals are picked up, found most cats came from Low income areas. So they offer spay neuter based on income to ehlp control population in low incoma areas. Lot on how they work to rehome the dogs. Problems dogs are screened out and go to foster homes for help!!!! Dogs Ok for adoption go to shelters made to be better places, nice calm clean place, nice for people and animals. Purebreds returned to breeders. All dogs with photo are posted on web site within 15 min of reaching shelter. Breeders often get tattos on their pups and is registered to them, shelters will call them. Heaps more, this is a get video and great method with heaps of new ideas.

That is just brilliant and the best thing I have heard in ages! I have been to Calgary a few times back in the 1990s for dog activities, they are a very dog friendly city. I also note that the video was taken in Santa Barbara California, another place I have been and also a very friendly dog area. I wonder if they took up this program, I will try to find out. Everyone on here should watch this video. Just a few highlights from the first few minutes. In North America (US and Canada) we do not have a problem with over population, strays or vicious animals. What we have as problem with irresponsible pet owners. We can not do things the same way all the time and think we will get different results. 4 goals to responsible pet ownership. 1. Lic and permanent ID for pets 2. Encourage spay or neuter pets 3. Promote training, physical care, socialization, medial attention. 4. To not allow pets to become a threat or a nuisance in the community. Pet owners rights are them protected, may have as many pets as they like. They do not want to regulate everything you do, what they want is for you to be a responsible owner and not come to their attention because the dog was a threat or nuisance. Talk about doing things differently! Too much conflict between interested groups, need mediators between Government vs owners vs welfare groups vs breeders vets trainers, all should have the same goals and need to be on the same page and give the same message to the public. Minimum standard of behavior must be a law. Path to compliance, mediation over prosecution Based on agreed rules How do you know it is working, Want roaming animal come down More dogs lic More dogs return faster to owners and not taken to shelter. Number of charges goes down Citizen satisfaction goes up Costs goes down Compliance Special truck units just for this program Air and water in trucks. Ramps and large kennels so can accommodate all dogs. Less physical contact better for dog less like to provoke aggression in dog on ranger. For example ranger has information on chip in his truck, find owner from truck and will return dog to owner at the time. Then the ranger evaluated the history of this owner/dog. Is this the 10th time then maybe they need a ticket, education is always the preferred choice over prosecution. It goes on and on. This really is a great idea and I think it would be wonderful if we could try to get this going.

Are breeders now to be called suppliers? Or am I confused and do not understand what you are talking about and suppliers are something else?

LATEST NEWS ON SYRINGOMYELIA IN CAVALIER KING CHARLES SPANIELS You are so right Bet. The breeders need to scan every dog they breed and only breed A to A dogs and the public needs to be warned! Thanks for posting this here in Australia so everyone knows the latest news.

Microchip pups/dogs and owners. Link the chips ... Actually Ive been yakking on about microchips being a big part of the answer too until someone contacted me a couple of weeks ago to chat as they are mounting a class action against a state government for making chipping compulsory as there is so much evidence it causes cancer. If there is or when there is any public information about this suit I would be very interested in learning more about it.

Microchip pups/dogs and owners. Link the chips ... You want to make dog owners have to get microchip in themsleves...are you for real?

Just need to clarify what do you mean by 'affected dogs', do you mean breed only 'A' tested dogs? sorry i should be more careful posting. i meant we should be breeding with only A tested dogs because that would ensure we were doing the best we could to halt this disease. However, until your question is answered we are flying blind. As I tried to explain before, you will not find any genetic experts in dog breeding making that recommendation as it is clear it would wipe out the breed in short order. So far I have looked at several countries in europe which are held to the hightest standards for breeding plans and none of them have recommended only breeding A dogs and rightly so. Ok if that is what you believe and want for the breed, but I strongly disagree and will not support that mission.

Just need to clarify what do you mean by 'affected dogs', do you mean breed only 'A' tested dogs?

It is not just rentals it is almost everything. Having traveled with and without dogs and lived OS with dogs, I find Australia to be the most dog unfreindly, I might even considering saying dog hostile country I have ever been in. Normal things in other countries are difficult here. Can't find even a crap motel or hotel to allow a dog even if kept in a crate, not the case overseas and the better the place the more they try to pamper your pet. Shires making parks and town main streets off limits, and try finding a beach. Not the case OS, dogs are every where you go, it is part of life to take your dog with you. Dogs routinely go on trains, buses, taxies, carry on if small on to planes, even in pubs, outside cafes, parks, waterfronts, street fairs, everywhere you go you meet and see dogs. I also think but cannot prove that more dogs live outside in Australia than in the western coutries I have been in. It has to have an impact on how people in general feel about dogs. After all if they are not welcome almost everywhere we go, why would anyone think they are valued special loved members of our families or society in general.

This is the mantra of extremists. This is the mantra of PETA. ANIMAL LIBERATION VICTORIA = PETA As somebody else said in this thread ... if you want a future where human beings can own a dog as a pet, or to be able to breed from a dog .... BE VERY CAREFUL WHERE YOU PUT YOUR ALLEGIANCES and particularly, DO NOT DONATE ANY MONEY to these causes. Every time YOU give a donation to animal liberationist movements YOU ARE INCREASING the odds AGAINST PET OWNERSHIP EXTREMIST ORGANISATIONS are about power and egos and politics. EXTREMIST ORGANISATIONS are not seeking a viable future for animals. Souff For those who does not understand why she did not recommend ANKC breeders and only recommended the animal shelters. Animal Rights Advocates Inc Australia While the very notion of breeding other animals to be entirely dependent on human guardians is exploitative and needs to be challenged, we have a responsibility to take care of those that we have already brought into existence.

Hi Jed, what I meant was has there never been an A dog that has had all normal pups? For example has every stud dog you know produced an affected puppy? Just becasue they say that A to A litters still produce 25% affected pups, that may not mean every single last A dog on earth has produced an affected pup, at least I am hopeing it does not mean that. For example, take HD. We can find that breed x has a 10% affected rate even in breeding programs where only normal scored parents are used. So we could say that Normal 'A' parents produce 10% affected pups. That does not mean that every normal dog has produced 10% affected pups. There will be dogs that never produced any affected pups and there will be other dogs that produced 30% affected pups, but the average for the breed is 10% affected from normal parents. Sorry if I am not being clear.

Hope the formatting works. I found this on the Finnish KC site. Now best I can figure this is one group maybe one years worth of dogs tested. Finland has one of the best repuations for quality breeding programs, they do almost all of the most current methods, such as EBV, lots of screening. Breeds each have a panel of experts and together they develop plans for each disease, overall heath, inbreeding (they have small populations usually) and all sorts of things. They are often held up as a model for progressive dog breeding. I would guess that their cavs have a close connection to the UK bloodlines but they do import from all over the world to imporve their lines. I did not think it looked near as bad as portrayed. I also note they do not only say to breed A to A, they have a range of options to keep most of the dogs in the breeding gene pool as I would have expected. The MVD rates also look way better then I thought they were. Here is the link http://translate.google.com.au/translate?j...nveto092010.pdf

What OFA recommends is it is more important to look at the total family gentic picture than the score of the dog being bred (excluding dysplastic dogs). Another words if all the siblings had been scored and all were in the normal range, any of the siblings would have the same impact on future generations. Have both parents from the same all siblings normal litters, then add a few generations of the same all normal litters, they say you can reduce the number of affected dogs and reduce the hip scores over all. Looking at any one dog without knowing the silbings scores is not as effective. This works well in the US where dogs are not put under and xrays only cost $50.00, lots of breeders are doing this (they pay for the xrays) and they think it is helping. Here where the vets put the dogs under and change several hundrend dollars or more to take the xray and even the reading is now close to $100.00 it is just not practical. Which is a real shame, and it will affect hip health in this country over time. A good example that all players including vets (not just breeders) need be active in the process if dog health is to improve.

but wouldn't it be prudent to only breed from dogs where it was absent? sorry if i am asking dumb questions. No not dume at all. It works is like this. I will just make up numbers and be very dramatic to make it easy to see. You have a disease and it has multi genes and likely also to have what is called risk factors (which are genes that in themselves are not the disease but create a increased risk for the disease), and in the case of these we could be talking 3-20 genes directly in play. There will also be an level of dispersion of the genes/disease in the breed. In something like this, it is likely that all dogs carry at least some of the genes, maybe many carry most of the genes and to me it also sounds very possible that there are also have risk factor genes in play. Might be genes that turn on or off, maybe hormones, nutrition, shape of skull and so on that will cause the disease to be expressed with more or less symptoms in each dog. So in effect there are no dogs to breed that are not at risk of producing the disease. So yes breeding only the A dogs means that 3 out 4 will be normal, but more importantly it also shows that all normal dogs are still producing the disease (the 1 in 4 that is affected). This is important. So now you need to look at the total number of dogs that are A vs the number that are B or C and so on in the population. Lets be dramatic and say only 10% are A and we remove the other 90% of the population. We had 1000 dogs to choose from, now we have 100. And we know that these 100 will still produce 25% affected pups and there is no reason not to believe that their normal pups will also produce 25% affected pups. Now say all the above again, but this time for a second disease, MVD. But now you only have the remaining 100 dogs left in the population to apply it to. After screening the 100 dogs you find you have 10% perfect hearts at 5 years of age, so you remove the other 90% of dogs from breeding. You now have 10 dogs left in the population, and those 10 dogs will still produce 25% SM and some % of MVD. You just wiped out the breed and did not solve the problem. Even if the reduction numbers were not as dramatic as I made them, say in the 50% range that needed to be removed, the end result would be the same. I know one breed a 25% carrier rate in a simple recessive gene disease with DNA testing, no dogs are removed, even affected can be bred but they must be bred to normal. thisis done to keep as many dogs as possible in the gene pool. Also population genetics tells us that when ever you reduce the population # you will also increase the chance of disease and you will also will bring out other hidden diseases that were not a problem when you started. The best thing to do in any population, but especially in these situations where several complex diseases are present, is to attempt to keep the population as big as possible without increasing the problems. So yes, screening for both disease, but also looking at other heath problems that are at lower dispersion rates in the breed to try to prevent them from increasing and also looking at general health and vitality. You would need to be looking at inbreeding rates. Everything has to be weighted out, and you will have to allow some give and take to make the best selection of dogs for each breeding. Just a personal opinion, I would also add that even if they find a DNA tests (which is very unlikely at this time) if you had wiped out the population prior to finding the test, the test would then have little impact in saving the breed. You would have several other disease problems in large numbers to face down again. So you simply jumped out of the pan and directly into a blazing fire. Please remember I made up these numbers to be dramatic to show the process. They are not reflective of what the numbers are in this breed, which I am sure are not even close to being as dramatic in Australia. Sorry for being long winded, that must have taken 15 mins for me to type! LOL thank you for taking the time to educate me shortstep ;). making the numbers dramatic helped show me the effects and your post was very informative. i am a problem solver so when i see posts like this i start thinking "what can we do to make this situation better" because i never think anything is hopeless. it does seem that this is a very complex issue but i go by the saying that you eat an elephant one bite at a time so it seems to me we need to look at were to take the first bite. it is important to remember that even 2 A's have a 25% chance of producing an affected pup. how would we go about making it better for this breed and the people who want cavs as pets? I do not think there is any evidence that we in Australia are having large numnbers of dogs with SM. No one is reporting that. So I think we need calm down and let the experienced breeders lead the way. The only thing I wondered about (in either the UK or OZ population), and I kept asking Bet and Jessie if there wre any A dogs that were not producing 25% affected? I think this is good place to start looking for some possible ideas. But there was never any answer. It does not sound like dogs here are producing 25% affected (even from the untested breeding). Anyway it is the Oz breeders that will know which way to head.

Two very good points!

but wouldn't it be prudent to only breed from dogs where it was absent? sorry if i am asking dumb questions. No not dumb at all. It works is like this. I will just make up numbers and be very dramatic to make it easy to see. You have a disease and it has multi genes and likely also to have what is called risk factors (which are genes that in themselves are not the disease but create a increased risk for the disease), and in the case of these we could be talking 3-20 genes directly in play. There will also be an level of dispersion of the genes/disease in the breed. In something like this, it is likely that all dogs carry at least some of the genes, maybe many carry most of the genes and to me it also sounds very possible that there are also have risk factor genes in play. Might be genes that turn on or off, maybe hormones, nutrition, shape of skull and so on that will cause the disease to be expressed with more or less symptoms in each dog. So in effect there are no dogs to breed that are not at risk of producing the disease. So yes breeding only the A dogs means that 3 out 4 will be normal, but more importantly it also shows that all normal dogs are still producing the disease (the 1 in 4 that is affected). This is important. So now you need to look at the total number of dogs that are A vs the number that are B or C and so on in the population. Lets be dramatic and say only 10% are A and we remove the other 90% of the population. We had 1000 dogs to choose from, now we have 100. And we know that these 100 will still produce 25% affected pups and there is no reason not to believe that their normal pups will also produce 25% affected pups. Now say all the above again, but this time for a second disease, MVD. But now you only have the remaining 100 dogs left in the population to apply it to. After screening the 100 dogs you find you have 10% perfect hearts at 5 years of age, so you remove the other 90% of dogs from breeding. You now have 10 dogs left in the population, and those 10 dogs will still produce 25% SM and some % of MVD. You just wiped out the breed and did not solve the problem. Even if the reduction numbers were not as dramatic as I made them, say in the 50% range that needed to be removed, the end result would be the same. I know one breed a 25% carrier rate in a simple recessive gene disease with DNA testing, no dogs are removed, even affected can be bred but they must be bred to normal. thisis done to keep as many dogs as possible in the gene pool. Also population genetics tells us that when ever you reduce the population # you will also increase the chance of disease and you will also will bring out other hidden diseases that were not a problem when you started. The best thing to do in any population, but especially in these situations where several complex diseases are present, is to attempt to keep the population as big as possible without increasing the problems. So yes, screening for both disease, but also looking at other heath problems that are at lower dispersion rates in the breed to try to prevent them from increasing and also looking at general health and vitality. You would need to be looking at inbreeding rates. Everything has to be weighted out, and you will have to allow some give and take to make the best selection of dogs for each breeding. Just a personal opinion, I would also add that even if they find a DNA tests (which is very unlikely at this time) if you had wiped out the population prior to finding the test, the test would then have little impact in saving the breed. You would have several other disease problems in large numbers to face down again. So you simply jumped out of the pan and directly into a blazing fire. Please remember I made up these numbers to be dramatic to show the process. They are not reflective of what the numbers are in this breed, which I am sure are not even close to being as dramatic in Australia. Sorry for being long winded, that must have taken 15 mins for me to type! LOL

Well said and I agree dump it.

Some where back a few pages there was discussion about a number of dogs that had been screened in Australia so there must a be a few around. You could do what I do. I reserch and then import a dog, raise it up and do the tests as soon as I can (5 tests to pass on my breed), if everything works out and $15,000 later I have a good dog to use for one generation in my kennel. It's not easy being noble LOL

Thanks for posting this and it is where I wanted to go to learn about this breed at the beginning of this thread but it kept turning into a breeder bashing session. When a breed has multiple complex problems such as SM and MVD and in both cases there are no genetic tests, there has to be some give and take in the selection of parents. Most breeding programs developed by those experts in genetics, for this type of situation, do not demand ridge and severe culling of breeding stock. You will end up with nothing left to breed and will likely make the MVD a more common and severe problem than it is now, and could bring forward other problems to the level of severe and common that are not frequent now. This is one area where life experience (which in my mind is the dino version of EBV, only better as it goes back 50 years instead of starting data collection now) would be so important right now in Australia. Get those dino breeders to share what they know and what they have learned over the last 40-50 years of cav pedigrees. The young ones better start listening before that information is lost forever.

Can either of you not shit stirrers show me where someone said that they refuse to test their dogs or that they are breeding dogs with scores lower than 'A". The only place I have seen that said is by the not shit stirrers.

Speaking of making assumptions and then finding your were wrong. For some time, when people said this is Australia and things are different here, I used think that was just an excuse (as mentioned by Jessie), not sure if I ever said how I felt. But at any rate it come to mind again now and is time to clear this up. Over the last couple of years I have found a couple of cases where there is clear evidence that isolated gene pools (in Australia) are different to other gene pools. In one case enough genetically different from northern hemi gene pool as to be notable. In another case a disease present in one geographical group of dogs and can not be found in the other group (with DNA testing). So yes it can be very different situation in isolated gene pools of dogs around the world. It is too bad there is not more listening going on instead of attacking. It certainly could be that the OZ cavs have a lower rate of carriers or even a different expression pattern of this disease, in either case this could be very helpful in fighting the disease. Could it be that the way to improve cavs in right here in OZ? Oh that right I forgot, I am just some nasty uncaring dino dog breeder, so take it for what it is worth.

Thanks Jed, nice to get a simple calm clear asnwer. Yours is the voice of reason and experience!

Last chance to answer my question. You do not answer it this time, then I will 'assume' you are an animal rights activist and are here to cause harm to purebred dog breeds and their breeders. Do you breed Cavs? BTW you seem to have a comprehension problem (which might be due to agitatited state you are in). I was not asking about selecting parents, which you have already instructed me on and I already understood. I was asking about offspring. Your statement that they are screened and the affected pups are culled. See that is the reality of breeding dogs, if you are really a dog breeder you would also be dealing with the need to prevent placing an affected pup into a new home. This is just one part of the reality of dog breeding and has nothing to do with the reality of an animal rights activist going off on a breeder bashing frenzy. I also note that you can dish it out but you never admit when you are wrong. As a long term breeder, I would warn others. You are not a person I would want guiding me on important dog breeding decisions. I want the information I am given to be corrected if need be. People who can not admit they messed up and made a bunch of assumptions that were wrong, is a potentially very dangerous person to listen to when making important decisions.