Cavalier King Charles Spaniel puppy

[BoboChic]

Met potential new puppy this afternoon. Seems adorable. One of my best friends is thinking of taking on her sister, so we would be bringing the two of them up together :) with daily playdates etc.

Why not? Please tell me about them.

Cavaliers are gorgeous, sweet natured dogs, but they have terrible teeth (suffer from decay - poor enamel) so make sure your insurance covers dental stuff. Mine didn't - £500 bill for teeth extractions!

but the poor bitch thinks its great fun They should be charging for the pups and using the money to herspayed.

Bobo before you go ahead and get a puppy from this litter, please have a read of the following links.

This is a page detailing the health tests that should have been done on both parents. There should be proper documentation for all these tests. The breeder should also provide you with information about whether the parents of both dam and sire have gone on to show any signs of MVD. There are plenty of health issues in the breed that can't be tested for, the breeders should have researched into the lines they're using to see if there's any indication of any of these conditions being present. They should be following the SM breeding protocol and (despite the fact that the breed club in the UK continues to stick their heads in the sand about MVD) they should be following the guidelines of the MVD protocols which are proving successful in other countries.

This website goes into detail about all the various health conditions that can affect CKCSs.

This is aimed at breeders but it's a good guide to the absolute minimum standard any breeder should be aiming for. Giving away puppies that have been bred "for fun" is not really a hallmark of a responsible, ethical breeder.

If you do go ahead, make sure you get very good insurance. And make sure you check the small print carefully, some companies will automatically exclude heritable health problems which can be tested for.

Trionic. That's all great advice but also why I'm too scared to touch this breed with a barge pole. It's so sad.

I think it's a bit unfair to accuse the "amateur" breeders for breeding for cash when surely many "professional" breeders do the same. They wouldn't do it if they lost money on every litter, would they? The commoditisation of dogs is one of the reasons I dislike the whole pedigree/breeder thing.

Professional isn't really the opposite of amateur when it comes to breeders...

Good breeders do it to get a puppy themselves, that's what the time, effort and money is put into...if they have a big litter then yes they might make a bit of profit, but after health testing, a stud fee (because they wouldn't just use the closest dog) and other expenses - it's nowhere near the same amount that someone who has skipped all that would make and that's if there's no vets fees as well.

Done right it's a very time intensive and sometimes expensive hobby, not something you could make a living from, which is why professional isn't right.

I understand the costs involved. That's why amateur and professional were in quotation marks - as a shorthand way of differentiating. But I'm not convinced that most "professional" breeders breed only to get a pup for themselves. If that was the case they'd be breeding once every decade or so (unless they want a pack of dogs, of course).

interesting posts about breeders there. I have experience of all sorts of breeder, working in a vets.

I wouldn't class all "amateur" breeders as backyard breeders. They are often very caring dog owners who for some reason want their dog to "experience motherhood" or want an offspring. Or just think it would be a nice idea. These are the people who will be on the phone to us at, worrying about every anomaly. They make sure they do everything the vet advises and follow guidelines. They will arrive at the vets with bags under their eyes for the pups first injections, flea and worm treatment and say with feeling "never again" They loved the experience but wouldnt do it again and book their bitch in to be spayed at the earliest opportunity. I feel that these people are fine but wouldn't buy a puppy from them.

Of course then you have the idiots who think they can mate their shih tzu with the jack russel down the road and sell the puppies for £500 and calling them "jack shits" don't bother having the pups vaccinated, the parents probably aren't even vaccinated. These people boil my piss and i wouldnt buy a pup from them.

Then you have "professional" breeders who breed for the love the breed, have good set ups, know what they are doing and do all the relevent health checks on the parents. They breed to a high standard and care about the welfare of the dogs. (in all honesty i can't include breeders of brachycephalic breeds in this number). I can't afford to buy a pup from these breeders.

Then there are the professional breeders - note the lack of speech marks! the ones who breed for profit. I had a woman call our practice the other week asking what services we offer breeders, would we inspect her premesis etc and proceeded to tell me she is licensed to have up to 30 breeding bitches and will be importing 9 bitches to get herself started. I was very and made comment about it being a lot of dogs. "im a professional dear, i know what im doing". I told her as politely as i could that we didn't want her custom. (and i told my boss who agreed).

There is the argument for buying a rescue dog, but i don't see anything in wrong in breeding as a "hobby" but its more than a hobby its a lifestyle i think. I have had lovely lovely rescue dogs and in the past bought from breeder type 1 and sadly breeder type 4. Fortunately for me all my dogs have been great and relatively healthy. Now for me, i would probably only have a rescue dog becuse im too lazy to do house training and then of course all the health check arguments go out of the window. Apart from the fact that crossbreeds (often but not always) are pretty healthy and don't have the reduced genepool that pedigree dogs have.

Tis a minefield.

"Bred for fun" does not mean "no health checks". It means that the family wanted the experience of having puppies. Let me put it this way: this is a wealthy family with a high level of education (mother has a science PhD from Harvard and is a senior international professional in the engineering industry).

All the comments on this thread are very interesting and appreciated but please don't leap to conclusions about the motives of the breeder here.

I have a PhD in biochemistry - but i stil wouldn't know where to start when it comes to breeding dogs and i do work in a vets

But it sounds like you are confident that the parents are healthy and that is excellent. So lets put all the debate (as interesting as it is) to one side and assume that you are going to go ahead with the pup. What you need to make sure is that pup is wormed regularly (every four weeks at the moment) and has its first vaccinations at 8 weeks. As you are getting the pup for free i would assume this will be your cost to cover - expect to pay anywhere between £60-£90 dependant on where you are, what package you choose. Make sure you take advantage of any free insurance offers - so pet plan for instance offer immediate veterinary cover for pups after the first vaccination or health check and your local vet, if registered with them can set this up for you. You can also set this up yourself. I'd strongly recommend you do this because if a heart murmer is picked up at any point in the first few months of life (but not in the initial exam of course) you will be covered - other wise you can bet your house it will be written off as a pre-existing condition and wont cover you against it. Again, check the small print regarding genetic conditions of any company you insure with, they wont all cover heart issues in cavs.

Keep an eye on the dogs weight too, nothing worse than an overweight cavalier, they do struggle.

Just because we have gone on about heart conditions and caveats, that doesn't mean its a given, but something to be wary of. Have seen many cavs live to a good age its just that bad breeding over the years has resulted in a breed that is more likely to have this issue.

Most importantly - enjoy your pup, Cavaliers make wonderful pets.

I would need to find a vet and work out the insurance issues first, that's for sure! It sounds as complicated as finding a paediatrician for a baby .

It doesn't matter if the parents are healthy, it matters if they've had the proper health tests done.

Someone in our village bred her pet spaniels for fun, she wanted the experience of puppies. They were both very healthy, not related. Three of the puppies were blind by six months old as both parents had a recessive gene for some eye problem. Neither were affected but any puppies had a 25% of being affected.

" If that was the case they'd be breeding once every decade or so (unless they want a pack of dogs, of course)."

Most of them do have a pack of dogs though, lol.

My expectations of a decent breeder is that they're doing something with those dogs, so showing, working or a competitive activity...so they're working on their next prospect, that's the point of the litter.

So once a year absolutely maximum, but often they're breeding every 2 years...more than that and yep, they're doing it for other reasons.

With good ethical breeders, it's about both what they're doing and why.

Planning a litter to sell them all when rescues are full and the pet market is already flooded isn't ethical even if all health tests are in place and they've looked after the litter wonderfully.

Tabula, I completely agree with you (although I do have issues with showing dogs and am not sure how ethical that is). But I suspect that the number of breeders who truly breed ONLY once every few years and ONLY because they want a dog for themselves and have no thought for financial gain are few and far between.

If they are giving pups away, this says to me they haven't invested any money into them. So no health tests on the parents, no searching for the best sire for the bitch. This is a breed with very serious health problems, how could you breed without considering these things?