Hii list, I have been reading the posts on cowhocks and movement pretty religiously for the past few days. This is an area of real interest for me. I was drawn to the cavalier for a number of reasons. We showed and bred English type goldens for many years. The standard for the cavalier was strikingly similar in many ways to the golden standard (including the grooming which, sadly, has been lost in goldens) The description of movement is remarkably similar. My daughter and I are now owned by six cavaliers. Three of those cavaliers have absolutely gorgeous movement from any view. The other three have very good but not outstanding movement. Not one of them has cowhocks, thank goodness. The first three all have shared pedigrees on their dam's side and most have common ancestors on the sire's side. The most predominant lines are Kindrum, Salador, Homerbrent, and Cinola. ( and other kennels who have founded their breeding on these lines)
The first three all have level top lines, good length of neck, good angulation without "hockiness", and very solid muscle development in the rear and shoulders. They also have a tendency to be slightly longer in the back than tall. This gives them the room to place their hind feet well under their body, giving good reach and drive. They are very efficient movers. Our other dogs also have good angulation and good muscle development but slightly shorter bodies and shorter through the neck area. Their movement is not nearly as efficient and the stride is shorter. They have to work harder to cover the same distance. Has anyone else seen this correlation? Like many of you, I have been disappointed in some of the poor movement, rear end conformation, and toplines of some of the cavaliers being exhibited. Having come from a sporting breed, it is sometimes hard to bite my tongue and overlook serious faults in construction and accept that dogs can win with a pretty head. And yet as breeders, we check hips and patellas which are structural faults. In goldens I often suspected hip displasia when a dog had cowhocks. Unfortunately, I was not disappointed too often. I certainly would not want to lose the lovely cavalier head but I do think that we need to concentrate on good sound construction. It seems that some on the list have hinted that type would be lost if we concentrated on solid construction. What are we gaining by ignoring a glaring problem? I would like that pretty head to be on a sound body, so, that the dog can enjoy a long happy active life free from pain. We try to select the best for our show dogs and we sell the rest as pets. If the dogs we show have movement and structure problems then, what about those pups that went as pets? They may have even worse problems? I think we owe it to the dogs to breed them soundly. Certainly, many other breeds where movement is important have concentrated on structure without losing breed type. Barbara B. Revelry Cavaliers ========================================================"Magic Commands": to stop receiving mail for awhile, click here and send the email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?body=SET%20CKCS-L%20NOMAIL to start it up gain click here: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?body=SET%20CKCS-L%20MAIL E-mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] for assistance. Search the Archives... http://apple.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ckcs-l.html All e-mail sent through CKCS-L is Copyright 2002 by its original author.
