> Lets say you have a nice bitch, that's not quite good enough for the show ring, but has some very nice qualities, that you know you can work with. You have her heart and eyes checked out and they are fine but when you get the prelims done, you are told one hip is poor and the other is only fair. You check back in her pedigree and there are no other hip problems discovered in the pedigree.
If she is CKCSC registered, she would not technically be allowed to be bred since we are not allowed to *breed from or to any Cavalier known to me to have a [inheritable], disqualifying, [disabling], or [potentially] disabling health defect*. I would spay her and sell her for my regular pet price--warranting the hips (pay for surgery, if needed, up to the price paid for the dog), because there is a great likelihood she will not show any problems until old age and even then any problems would more than likely be indiscernible from other old age problems. If there was no CKCSC rule, I might consider breeding her if I KNOW both parents and most littermates are OFA (BVA, PennHIP, GDC) clear of HD. And if I decided to take such a chance, I would only breed her to a dog that is OFA (etc.) clear, both parents are OFA (etc.) clear, and said stud dog has a very low occurrence of HD in his puppies. This is really not too different from breeding a dog with excessive ticking (whatever), but other good traits. I would be VERY careful who I bred her to--making certain that not only the stud dog, but his line also tends to be mostly free of ticking (whatever). I then add her and close relatives to the HD equation because HD is a potentially painful, possibly debilitating defect--nothing like a simple ticking or other aesthetic fault. Laura Lang ========================================================= "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.
