By Charlotte Mackaness
With Puppy Awareness Week (PAW) starting on Monday (September 12th) expect to see plenty in the media about the importance of doing one’s research and seeking out a responsible breeder before buying a puppy.
All good and necessary advice. However, the problem with Cavaliers is that finding a litter of puppies that has been bred according to the guidelines for MVD (heart disease) and Syringomyelia (SM) is near-on impossible.
The bald truth is there are very, very few breeders who do follow these guidelines. So, even the best-informed and patient of people either compromises on the standards we are told a responsible puppy buyer should expect or gives up and chooses another breed. I speak from experience as my last Cavalier puppy took me close to two years to find.
Finding a Cavalier puppy can be a long and exhausting task. It took me nearly two years to find Isla, pictured at nine weeks
In a recent comment piece in the magazine Dog World, columnist Sheila Atter made some extremely encouraging remarks about the need for an official heart-testing scheme for Cavaliers and to tighten up the requirements for the Kennel Club’s Assured Breeder Scheme, which in terms of health only requires an eye test for Cavaliers. You can read the entire piece here.
However, my heart sank when I read “If the general public were continually urged to steer clear of unregistered puppies, virtually none of which come from health tested parents, some progress might be made.” I hear such sentiments a lot – the idea that it is only those breeding non-KC registered pups who don’t health test properly – often from breeders!
It’s too easy to blame the puppy-buying public for the problems with Cavaliers, so via the comments section on the article and an email to Dog World I set Mrs Atter a challenge: find 10 Cavalier litters registered in the last 12 months bred following the MVD protocol (dogs should be at least 30 months old and heart clear and have parents at least five also heart clear), eye and DNA tested with both parents MRI scanned following the SM guidelines.
As there is no official heart scheme and most of the few breeders who do scan have boycotted the official CM/SM scheme, it’s an uphill task just finding the information but I thought this might also give Sheila Atter a taste of the challenge facing those thinking about a Cavalier puppy. I suggested that beginning with breed club committee members might be a sensible starting-point as you’d expect such people to follow all the rules.
Sadly, even if she’s game, I don’t think Mrs Atter will manage the challenge. Frankly, even if we removed MRI scanning from the requirements I think it would be an uphill challenge to find many litters bred along just the MVD guidelines. But please believe me when I say that, for the sake of these little dogs who I love so dearly, I desperately do want to be proven wrong.
Dog lover, TV producer and blogger Jemima Harrison picked up on my challenge and wrote about it. You can read her blog here. She doesn’t believe it’s possible either. She writes: “I’ll happily save Ms Atter some time in telling her that it is impossible – Cavalier breeders at the very highest level are simply not complying – in no small part because they don’t have to.”
A rare thing: the “Petition Pups” were one of the tiny number of Cavalier litters bred following MVD and SM breeding guidelines
This brings me neatly on to the Kennel Club’s Assured Breeder Scheme, which is held up so often as proof of the organisation’s commitment to canine health and welfare. “Make sure you don’t buy from a puppy farmer or from an ill-informed and unknowledgeable breeder who has not taken all the steps to give your puppy the best chance in life,” its website page dedicated to Puppy Awareness Week declares. “The Kennel Club recommends that ‘ABS is Best’ and always advises people to go to a Kennel Club Assured Breeder.”
There may well be some breeds for which the ABS is an excellent thing but not for Cavaliers. As I said earlier, the only requirement regarding health is an eye test and only then that the test is carried out. The actual result is irrelevant. The absolutely conclusive, unobtrusive and cheap DNA test for Episodic Falling and Dry Eye/Curly Coat is not a requirement, nor is use of the CM/SM scheme. And as we all know, even though MVD is the biggest killer of Cavaliers, there is no official heart scheme.
So, Cavalier puppy buyers are pretty much on their own when it comes to puppy hunting because they can’t rely on the very organisations people should expect to be giving the best advice to be doing so. I often think that one needs the patience and interrogation skills of an M15 officer and knowledge of complex conditions that many vets would be proud of in order to buy a Cavalier puppy. Yes, buying a dog is a serious matter but it shouldn’t be quite this arduous.
Finally, if you are one of those people who has managed to find a puppy bred along all the health guidelines mentioned earlier, get in touch. It would be heartening to find out such breeders exist and where they are. Equally, shout out if you’re one such breeders. But don’t forget to send copies of all those certificates!
