I guess the KC ABS (in my opinion) is worthless especially if only requirement to advertise is eyes.
Many of us have been making this point for years–it has been a key argument made by Jemima Harrison and also by many within and outside the clubs who have a concern about puppy farms, because in the past it has been so easy to get this accreditation. And with cavaliers, for only eyes to be on the list is just utterly meaningless. I don't think there is a single respected cavalier breeder at the moment who would think that only testing cavalier eyes makes for a responsible breeder, much less one who is given the imprimatur by the national kennel club, of being somehow particularly health focused (the supposed point of theABS). :sl*p:
Even with an A to A breeding, 25% could still develop SM.
But the alternatives are far, far worse. And as one Griffon breeder has already shown, you can take your dogs from a D grade to producing all A puppies within only a couple of generations. There is plenty of evidence that breeding A to D, or D to D, produces few to no A's.
As for what the breed clubs recommend–the UK club is actually by far the best in making recommendations–what people actually do, of course, is a different situation, and the current national club committee has refused to set even the most minimal example to its members by refusing to commit to its own club's
basic recommendations :lpy:.
The CKCSC using cost as a reason to let breeders off the hook of doing MRIs is totally, ethically corrupt. If people cannot afford the MRIs for this widespread and devastating, painful disease, then they shouldn't be breeding! And I sure don;t see breeders rushing to lower puppy prices simply because lots of people whop would like a cavalier pup cannot afford their dogs... we all have things we wish we could do but cannot afford, and if healthful breeding is beyond someone's means, then they need to get out of cavalier breeding). It is just ridiculous to use cost issues to justify breeding blindly–which is what every breeder who does not MRI is doing. I think you only need to look at how so many of the most skeptical breeders towards MRIs, really changed their view when they started to MRI some of their own dogs and found how many dogs that they were sure were clear actually had syrinxes.
The clubs have also made almost no effort to try to set up low-cost programs or to raise funding to do so in the US. Every low-cost scanning program that I am aware of bar one, was actually driven by either pet owners or a handful of interested researchers/centre owners (and personally, I was involved in the background with 2 of them, that directly benefit breeders, not pet owners. How is it that I can seem to manage to do this from 5000 miles away just through e-mail correspondence, and the breed clubs actually in these locales cannot get these things set up? And the reason that I was the point of contact for these scanning programs was because I, like Rod, actually have plenty of information available on a website about SM and the clubs had pretty much nothing, so the centres thought it better to ask me, rather than the clubs :sl*p
.
I have absolutely no doubt that if regional or national breed clubs made any meaningful effort at all to organize members to scan and then approached a scanning center, they could negotiate a discount rate. If the breed clubs were liaising closely with researchers and talking to them about their serious concerns about SM, I have no doubt that prices would drop and more research projects would be undertaken in the US as well.
Using the excuse that many people are far away from scanning centers–as stated in this CKCSC breeder questions–is also a nonsense. Not only do most large cities have some kind of MRI center, meaning most people will be less than a day's drive from one, but increasingly, even some large vet practices either have an MRI or make use of a mobile MRI unit. And it is odd that any breed club would make the excuse of the distance breeders would need to travel for an MRI, when the very same breed club members travel enormous distances to attend dog shows.:sl*p:
Plenty of responsible breeders are doing great things to support health in this breed. It's a shame that more of their club members do not listen to them or speak to them–and it's also a shame that in far too many cases, such role models and up being ostracized and in some cases, removed–either directly or indirectly–from committee roles.