> I am so confused about the heart murmer thing!!!!!!1 Becky, the heart murmur thing is something one will probably experience if you own a Cavalier. Most Cavaliers have a murmur by age 10. What you want to do, when looking for one, is to stack the odds as much as possible in favor of late onset MVD. There are no guarantees, don't believe anyone who says there are. But by carefully selecting the breeder and getting those eight pieces of paper someone mentioned the other day, you can reduce the odds of early onset MVD. Those papers include heart clearances by cardiologists of the parents and grandparents. You want a dog who came from heart clear at age 2 1/2 parents, and whose grandparents are heart clear at age 5. That's the protocol for reducing the early onset of MVD that has been recommended by some cardiologists that have studied the problem.
Beyond that, murmurs are graded 1 thru 6, 1 being the mildest. Many dogs live for years with a grade 3 or 4 murmur, some die of something else before the murmur (MVD) causes congestive heart failure. Occasionally a puppy is diagnosed before a year old and doesn't live to age 2. That's not common. And there is every possible scenario in between. In the end, it depends on how much you will enjoy the time you have with a Cavalier versus how willing you are to deal with a possible end-of-life struggle with MVD. I personally love the dogs enough to take the gamble and enjoy the time, and hope I can handle getting my heart broken at some point. I have several dogs of different ages, I know that least miserable way to grieve over the loss of a beloved dog is while holding another one. This isn't sugar coated, but it's the truth as I know it. -- Barb Cooke [EMAIL PROTECTED] SeaIsle Cavaliers Galveston Island, Texas Visit our website at http://www.CavalierMix.com to see some adorable adoptables ========================================================= "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.
