Why to buy such an unhealthy breed?

[Karlin]

The fact that Oliver has been able to live such a happy and full life in no way excuses us from doing our best to eradicate SM from the breed. But in the meantime researchers are discovering more about the disease, new medications are being tried, more breeders are doing their best to breed healthy stock - SM can be excruciatingly painful for some dogs, but doesn't inevitably lead to 'a poor life'.

Strongly agree with that!

i seem to remember him scratching the air by his ears

If Oliver was doing this, then the odds are overwhelming -- I think without doubt, he had CMSM. Neurologists say air scratching is exclusively associated with CM/SM.

[Nakana]

Cavaliers actually have the potential to live very long lives, into their teens and be healthy. Choosing a breeder that focuses on health is where you as the owner will make the most difference in the cavalier as a whole.

In huge agreement here. It's not a guarantee that all that breeder's puppies will have a clean bill of health, but it assures that reasonable precautions have been taken to care for the puppies and future owners. The breeder should have at least one story about a mother or father that developed symptoms earlier than expected and had to be neutered/spayed.

I think a good comparisson is to Penn State football and child molestation. The leadership of their team developed a culture that valued winning in football over protection/justice for children. Likewise there are CKCS breeders that value the sale of litters over the well being of those litters. You're looking for a breeder that does more than dots their i's and j's - you're looking for one that calls their puppies children.

[Margaret C]

If it is a breed with so much pain and suffering for the DOG (which should be our main concearn), why don't we just let it be extinct and why don't we choose other breeds to buy? Why insist in something that clearly goes wrong?

If there was any natural selection, CKCS would never make it. We are forcing the breed to exist. These dogs suffer a lot, they are in pain... why keep buying those, even from an EXCELLENT breeder, full of exams and health certificates?

This is a question that most Cavalier Health Campaigners have asked themselves many times over the last ten years.
Some believe that it is morally wrong to carry on breeding puppies that have such a chance of suffering from painful inherited conditions. They feel we should be campaigning to stop the breeding of Cavaliers.

I cannot disagree with them. It is, as you say, the dogs that suffer. I just cannot find it within myself to give up on a breed that has given me so much joy for over thirty five years, although I know that my decision to try and educate buyers, so that breeders are forced to improve their breeding practices, means more at-risk cavaliers are bred.

When, as UK Cavalier Club Health Representative, I wrote a flyer about SM that went out to all members in 2003, I truly believed that the danger to the breed was so self evident that even the most calculating of breeders would realise that if nothing was done they put the breed & therefore their own self-interest ar risk.

I was wrong. Some great breeders immediately took what steps they could to identify problem dogs in their kennels, but most of the others were too greedy or too stupid or both.........and they continue with their wilfull blind stupidity today.

Too many top breeders denied the problem, despite the evidence that was there for all to see, and they continued to use unscanned dogs and add further generations of increasingly affected cavaliers to the gene pool.

A few of these breeders may now pay lip service to the guidelines by MRI scanning cavaliers, but much too young. Others try and minimise the risk of SM by producing puppies with only one scanned parent, although this will still producing litters where the majority of puppies will have early-onset SM.

Are these breeders still too moronic to realise their failure to identify and remove affected dogs in their breeding programmes are the reason that SM has become entrenched in this breed?

National & Regional Club committee members, health representatives, puppy register coordinators. The Breed Record Supplement, which records details of all litters, show how many of them are denying and ignoring what has been well researched & proved conclusively all over the world.
They are destroying this breed because they do not think of the dogs rather than themselves.

And do you know what will happen once these blind fools that don't eye test, don't heart test, don't MRI scan properly, and continue to use puppies and young dogs at stud read what I have written here..............................They will once again try and get me removed from the Cavalier Club.

As far as they are concerned the sin is not to disregard the rules that they signed up to and to continue to destroy any hope of saving this breed. The sin is mine for reading about the litters they have produced and daring to comment on their lack of commitment to health protocols.

Choosing a breeder that focuses on health is where you as the owner will make the most difference in the cavalier as a whole.

And isn't that the truth.

I advise Buyers to walk away from someone who is not able & willing to show all the health certificates............You cannot give a stronger message than that.