Confused newbie seeking advice

[Janemop]

Hi,
Just read your post and although I am sorry not to be able to help I just wanted to say thank god someone else is in the same position as me.
I have just posted a question that I hope will get answered as it is a minefield out there and I am so confused.I have driven the Cavalier Club puppy register people mad and they must be so sick of me and my questions.
Our little Cavalier died earlier this year at 6 from MVD and I am also trying to buy a really healthy puppy this time.
What a difficult job this is turning out to be.
The breeder I thought I had found with a suitable puppy has just shown me his breeding line and they link to my past dog's line, how random is that, so I am scared and think I am making a huge mistake so don't know whether to take him or leave him.
Awful decision.

[Janemop]

Hi,
Just read your post and although I am sorry not to be able to help I just wanted to say thank god someone else is in the same position as me.
I have just posted a question that I hope will get answered as it is a minefield out there and I am so confused.I have driven the Cavalier Club puppy register people mad and they must be so sick of me and my questions.
Our little Cavalier died earlier this year at 6 from MVD and I am also trying to buy a really healthy puppy this time.
What a difficult job this is turning out to be.
The breeder I thought I had found with a suitable puppy has just shown me his breeding line and they link to my past dog's line, how random is that, so I am scared and think I am making a huge mistake so don't know whether to take him or leave him.
Awful decision.

[Cavielove]

Take heart and a very deep breath!
There are excellent breeders out there breeding responsibly from health tested parents. A couple of excellent breeders from this forum are on the Kennel Club Puppy List under the UK Assured Breeders Scheme, maybe worth taking a look on there. Be patient and don't expect your new puppy to turn up tomorrow or next week, be prepared to wait.
Can you activate your Private messages function?

Alison.

[Mary Cunningham]

If breeders have gone to the trouble of paying for health testing, they are likely to be more than happy to show them to you....indeed insist!

Sadly those breeding with the 'best intentions for health' are in no way keeping up with the demand coming from those seeking a puppy with a healthy future.
The profit producers are still at full production and are everywhere and it may be tempting to settle for one of these.

And very Sadly those posters who advise buyers ONLY to look only for breeders who have taken the dogs apart bit by bit and only breed from the PERFECT are leaving a number of bewildered people searching for a puppy ( and encouraging the breeding of ONLY a tiny handful of dogs... Together ....one would suppose) that probably doesn't exist.

It may be obvious to say but IF getting a puppy from the small group who are heart/eye/DNA/MRI/patella testing generations is important to you...Hold out for such a puppy. They do exist.

[Janelise]

MVD is impossible to predict! I have two sisters aged just over 14, whose father died from the problem just before his seventh birthday. That may sound gloomy, BUT in their pedigree are quite a few long lived dogs. I'd guess he drew the short straw.

I bred a litter where one bitch was heart clear at seven, developed MVD shortly afterwards and it galloped: she died before she was 8 ½. A full litter brother lived relatively healthily to the age of 15. He did have all his teeth out somewhere along the way, and another sister lived to 13 1/2.

I live in France where the breed club is encouraging using older dogs with no or low grade MVD. It does seem to be working: onset of MVD is occurring, on average, at a later age. Dogs are, again on average, affected younger than are bitches, but there is no difference in the colours.

Please remember that all dogs are susceptible to MVD, it is just that in the Cavalier it tends to happen at an earlier age.

It is difficult, but ask about the ages of ancestors of a puppy: maybe the ancestors that the pups have in common were the ones who lived long lives.

Jane

[betty storar]

I have a dog who was born with a grade 4 heart murmur, the vet told the breeder to put it down, I said seeing it was out of one of my boys(who had a clear heart) I would take him and bring him up like a normal healthy dog. The breeder agreed so along came Oscar, he is now 11 1/2y ears old and has had a very good life . Hopefully he will have a few more years,he still goes up the fields rabbiting with the others.If he drops dead running after bunnies ,what a lovely way to go.

[dozyrosy]

I've had four Cavaliers with MVD, two of them litter mates. Two got murmurs earlier than the others but although they ended up with grade 6 murmurs and were not in the best of health at the end of their lives, they ended up living to 13 and 12 1/2 , while the other two got murmurs later, deteriorated much faster and lived 2-3 years less than the others. Of my two litter mates one died (mvd and kidney failure) just before his 10th birthday, his early MVD brother lived to 12 1/2 and their other brother whose owner we kept in touch with lived to 12. Not the pattern I expected to see, and I've ended up quite befuddled regarding breeding protocols... So my attidude now is: find a reputable breeder who does the "vital" tests, and who you feel you can trust, then keep your dogs slim and fit, and your fingers crossed...

Rosemary

[Seventeen Holly]

You really get more confused with Cavaliers when you start seeing some rescue stories, for example from the CavalierRescue USA site.

50% of there stock are dogs which come from puppy mills and yet you see dogs living 10 years plus. IMO 10 years plus is still a bonus for any dog, so go figure.

[julieb7]

Poor puppy buyers...setting them an impossible goal so they get frustrated and give up....puppy farmers will love that.

I'm surprised that ....hundreds of "pretty good matings" rather than a tiny handful of "perfect" matings wouldn't make MORE sense for those who are keen to keep a diverse gene pool.

Lets all exclude as many dogs from the gene pool as we can..... is that the idea?

Well Mary, I'm pleased you said this..... I have a well bred CKCS, Mri'd(SM), Eye, Heart (today!) DC/CC & EF clear and I am desperately looking for a bitch for him.... He has an in Individual Inbreeding Coefficient of 2.4%. Would love a pup from him because basically I know where he's come from and know all of his parents/grand-parents health checks... I have copies.. I don't want to have to start looking down different avenues to keep coming up at a brick wall for our next pup.

The top and bottom of it is that he's a "little" too big for the show ring and many are wary that he may throw big pups and shy away from him.... His parents and siblings are smaller than him.

I don't want to be forced onto "stud your dog" or any other web site. Have I bothered to get all of this done - so that he will be a statistic in health studies??? Widen the gene pool as you say..

You will force puppy buyers in to the hands of puppy farms if you continue to breed for the show ring only... There is another world out there called the family pet world..

[Future pup mom]

I'm posting to get updates to this thread. Like Avalon, I'm a bit confused by TMI.

I'm in the U.S. so I'm looking at US sites. I've checked OFFA, CHIC, CKCSC Health Registry, and others I've forgot. I think one site indicated which dogs had been MRId for SM but not the results. Also I see a lot of dogs have a 5+ years heart clearance but no 10+ year clearance even if I know they're over 10 years old. I'm not sure if they've been tested and found not clear or just not tested after they've passed their 5+ years mark.

I'm sure it will make sense eventually.