It's really exciting that a small initiative supported by lots of pet owners giving amounts from £5 upwards have enabled this fund to reach such a size so quickly. We are nearly at a dozen dogs being able to be scanned -- a truly significant number. I know one of the UK clubs is having an event to select one dog for scanning, funded by their club, and hope those owners who do not have their dogs chosen for the scan will consider approaching the researchers as we now have funds for several more dogs and could definitely accommodate some of those if they are good prospects.
However I think that club should be talking to researchers, if they are not yet -- choosing a dog from a hat doesn't mean that dog is particularly useful to this research project -- maybe it would be better to select a panel of several and have researchers choose the best options? At the very least, if that club worked directly with the researchers who need this information, an owners submitted pedigrees, then not only could the best dog be chosen for research for the club-funded dog, but Rupert's Fund could cover one or two further dogs perhaps by arrangement between the researchers and the club? I will mention this to the researchers -- personally I have no involvement in making any arrangements.
It would just be unfortunate if a dog drawn from a hat has a fairly meaningless pedigree in terms of the value of the scan to research. It is of course always useful to have older dogs scanned and it is helpful to breeders to get a better idea of whether there's later onset syrinxes, but if one motivation for this generous move by the club is to support the genome work with an older-dog scan, then I am absolutely sure it is better to work directly with researchers and choose the most valuable prospects for scans.