I understand you had intentions -- that is what is so sad and deeply frustrating about this situation. If an educated buyer is in the end swayed more by immediate gratification and the argument to themselves that they deserve a puppy enough that cost can override whether a breeder bothers to do adequate testing to give every puppy the best chance of a long and pain free life, then what hope does this breed have?
Right now, going on the examples set by most breeders and by the majority of puppy buyers, very little.
The Kennel Club in the UK has finally begun to recognise how truly stark the situation is by supporting some CKCS health initiatives that require public sharing of health results, rather than let many breeders do as they do now and continue as a secretive cabal.
I would have thought the direct and damning evidence of going to a breeder who handed over obviously forged health certs would have been the kind of stunning evidence to persuade anyone, no matter how indifferent or doubting, of the risks, the fraught situation for the breed where supposedly 'caring' owner/breeders lie and deceive, and of the duplicity of some breeders who breed for the money and obviously only wish to dump their puppies into the market as fast as possible. What that breeder did is prosecutable in most countries as fraud: a *serious crime*.
Instead in this case, knowing and observing all this first hand, and decrying it publicly in another thread, has galvanised a purchase! I simply cannot understand this situation. On behalf of the dogs, the breed, the board, those of us with sick dogs, the many here and elsewhere who donate money to Rupert's Fund and other CKCS health causes (the foetal tissue fund, Margaret's body donation fund, the DNA research, the MVD projects etc) even when they are often short of money for themselves: I cannot, cannot understand it.
I can however understand your guilt, but I find it truly insulting as the owner of this board that someone would then state the reason they wanted to confess was to have everyone support them if and when they end up with a sick dog, having totally ignored everything so many here work so hard for on behalf of the breed, and everything the site stands for. That is the additional slap in the face. I am sure it felt a relief to get the guilt off your chest publicly but the reasons stated for doing so are just as selfish as the original purchase. It isn't as if this was a rescue situation -- it was simply a cheaper purchase for immediate gratification in the face of all this breed suffers from, and direct support to that whole vile system that has damned this breed to so many health issues. For those of us with dogs suffering from SM and MVD, who have watched them die from these conditions, it is just beyond belief that an informed buyer would support such a breeder.
Go watch the videos I have on
www.smcavalier.com of affected cavaliers. That is what such a decision made knowingly ultimately says is OK.
No one here condemns the person who bought from a poor breeder because they were uninformed, knew nothing about the health issues, didn't realise there were problems or that breeders could so devastatingly exploit this breed, had never heard of SM, whose breeder avoided mention of the problems -- many of us began in that position because we trusted that all breeders care about their dogs and the breed, breed to high standards, are meticulous about health and keep their dogs in the home in loving surroundings. Sadly, not often enough true, any one of these things much less all.
Buyers control the future of this breed through where they choose to buy their puppies. Support the unethical, indifferent-to-health breeder that lives off excuses for not doing much about health, and the system perpetuates. It is why heart disease is endemic in the breed already and cuts several years off cavalier life expectancy. Now SM is moving into the same place. Puppy buyers cannot any longer dupe themselves into the believing the lie that the problem, this devastating, serious, horrific problem of two major appalling life-shortening painful health issues in this breed, is the responsibility of breeders alone. The problem lies with every single decision of where to buy a puppy as much as it does with the breeders.
If we don't care about where we buy NOW, the breed will NOT be here for our children to buy. Most of the researchers I have talked to feel that is about the viable timeline left for this breed if people continue to do nothing -- or actively support the continued spread of this problem by buying knowingly from breeders who do not scan and have no idea at all what the SM status of their dogs is (UK breeders have found about half their dogs scan with syrinxes at breeding age so the problem is simply massive).