Steve

I've got several thoughts - one of them isn't dong anything radical at this point and it certainly isn't anywhere near advising you to abort the litter. In order to answer you I have a couple of dozen questions which is going to take me a while to type up and sort through or Im happy to have a chat with you via phone if you would like to call me. The breeders forum on dogz used to be a great place where people could come to chat and learn and its very sad that that isn't any longer the case.

Well Im pretty impressed by your ability to explain why you have done what you have done. You have decided on what outcome you want and you are aware of the potential issues and what you may have compromised on. A couple of questions - was this dog born with a deformity in the actual knee cap - what Im asking is - was this something she was born with or was it something that developed as she got older? Have you had Xrays taken to determine this? Is it in both patellas or only one? When do you ordinarily test for the problem and is that done by just a feel or a further look via Xray?

Joke about Bosdogs all you want folks but all I can say is that I hope you are advising people that there IS a way of protecting their dogs, even if you think its just a money spinner for DOGSVIC Steve. Because it will work while the MDBA tries again for recognition and if the MDBA fails, then your members will need to serve minimum membership times with DOGSVIC before they can get ANKC prefixes. Where was Don Burke's pet breeders group left in all of this.. out in the cold? Maybe but they didnt apply yet in Victoria but they just got equal standing application approved in NSW. We are advising all breeders to know the laws and follow them - no one can have more than 2 dogs or breed a litter whether they are Vicdogs or not without council approval .the only thing as far as breeding is concerned that gets Vicdogs off the hook with is the need for a DAB.Everyone in the state has to follow the same laws, the same regs and the same mandatory codes for breeding dog - they have to advertise chips or their number etc - Vicdog member's or not. Most of them havent been but now new penalties apply to them as well as everyone else. Most of them are still not compliant. The reason the exemptions are in place is because Vicdogs have undertaken to police their own members. We have also advised those who are not Vicdogs members that there is a way around it which allows them 10 dogs without the need for a DAB

Thats one word for it . Wouldn't it be nice to have so much time to waste.

I agree completely. . . With respect to homozygosity, function is important. It matters where, on what chromosome, homozygosity is found, but navigation of the genome is a subject I've put in the 'too hard basket'. I'm inclined to believe that MHC/DLA matters with a lot of immune functions and may be important in hormonal balance, but I wouldn't bet much on it. Research is ongoing fast and furiously on this subject . . . hopefully we'll know more in years to come and some useful tests will become available. We all have to make our own decisions, given that evidence is not conclusive and there are some hot opinions on both sides.. But questions of inbreeding aside, I think the tendency to premature delivery is roughly equivalent to inability to free whelp. If the dam had it and the daughter has it, I'd think twice before breeding . . . or keeping a daughter/granddaughter to carry on the line. Good luck, whatever you decide. I agree best to select away from it all things being equal.

Cazzie does some and she has a special offer on at the moment in the Pacers fundraising forum.

ahem! Australasian Bosdog please ;) Oh no is it? No wonder everyone keep looking at me funny! My apologies. Its an Australasian Bosdog

O.K. Pacers need some help. This one had me sobbing into the phone with the lady who needs a hand up. Her and her husband are currently homeless been given approval this morning for a small amount [newstart ] from centre link but they have faced a huge personal disaster which they couldn't have seen coming. they have lost everything they own. Could happen to any one of us. Mission Australia is helping them to try to find accommodation. Anyway they have a 15 year old cat which we need to find a foster carer for until they are no longer homeless preferrably in the area between Wentworthville and Penrith and they need some basic essentials to make it all a bit easier. if anyone can help with foster care for the cat which has never seen a dog before in its life so probably shouldn't go to a home where dogs are inside. It is up to date on vaccinations, chipped and in good health ,litter trained etc.you would be really helping these people out in eliminating at least a small part of their stress. Pacers will cover all costs and you will be covered by our insurances etc. If anyone can help even a little bit with donations and foster care it would be very much appreciated. These are proud people in desperate need. help us to throw them a short rope. Donations over $2 are tax deductible. BSB is 062600 account number is 10488688 account name is MDBA Pacers. Julie

Also this isn't about Vicdogs - its about state legislation. If I own an Australasian Bogdog for example [used to be Aussie bulldog] the DOG has to be registered with Vicdogs for me to gain exemptions with some shires in Victoria to be able to own an entire dog. Joining Vicdogs may get you off the hook for ONE thing - needing a DAB unless you have 10 dogs but try getting any other thing which has anything to do with the dog's registration. Did you know in at least one shire a requirement to buy a kennel is that you must be a Vicdogs member? Did you know if you want to register a business name with kennel in it you have to get permission from that state's CC? Its also about what happens when you give people no choice but to agree to something to get something that they never wanted or have any intention to do - not to mention of course freedom of choice . the working dog people will get the exemption - simply because they have a backing of the National party and there are too many of them. That leaves those who are not large commercial breeders but breed any old dog to any old thing which will be swimming in the same pond as Vicdog breeders. You dont have to get rid of your dogs or shoot them etc all you have to do is join Vicdogs or get the permits. But if you are going to need a truckload of money to breed half a dozen to comply - may as well go for broke and breed more.

They should join Vicdogs to receive protection under the laws. There are no restrictions on what Vicdog members breed beyond not crossing registered purebreds. Technically a VICDOGs member could breed as many working Kelpies or crossbred dogs etc as they want without breaching the code of ethics. Pretty quick fix IMO. And not wildly expensive. Yep you are right they cant stop you breeding dogs which are not registered with them and any old cross bred breeder can get in and breed without needing a DAB and even sell to pet shops.. You don't even need a dog to be a breeder member - all you need is a prefix . Good little money spinner for Vicdogs - sort of shoots all of their marketing about breeders and purebred dogs etc down though. The whole microchip thing is good if they make it the same for everyone and if they police it .But if someone hasnt chipped a dog it cant be given away or sold so why do they need an exemption from advertising the chip if they are giving it away? Why would more be dumped when they have to be chipped anyway ?

The article is wrong - free to good home means you don't need a chip number - but I know this wont be popular here because its a pro ANKC dogs site but the way its set up the working dog people are right and many other people who want to breed are under the gun too. We are getting calls and so are others Ive spoken to this week from people asking if we know anyone who will take their dogs because unless they are Vicdogs they cant have more than 3 fertile dogs - in some shires they cant have any fertile dogs at all unless they are Vic dog members. The MDBA has several members who are working on breeds in development and breeds which simply don't want to be associated with the ANKC at least one world wide working dog registry is very definite if any dog has been on the show registry that they wont accept the dog on their working registry. I spoke with a lady yesterday who has 3 dogs living with her on 70 acres and she has two in boarding kennels because she can't have any more without being an illegal puppy farmer .Working dog people are moving their stud dogs interstate rather than have more than 3 fertile dogs on their properties. Pacers got an enquiry from someone who wanted advice on how to stop a breeder from shooting 6 of their pregnant dogs. I said I could get them out but as it involved using rescue people they wouldn't tell me where the property was and as far as I know the dogs were killed. You can say they shouldn't of had them in the first place and at least that will cut down on puppies they breed etc but that didn't help the poor bloody dogs. it wont stop the really big Legal commercial kennels breeding more to fill the gap either. Fact is only the requirements for a Domestic animal business has changed - now if you have 3 instead of 5 you need one .You always needed a Development application and council approval to breed dogs no matter how many you owned but now if you dont have that approval and if you are not a Vicdogs member and own 3 fertile dogs you become an illegal puppy farmer. but even if you are Vicdogs and own more than 3 fertile dogs you still need council approval and a development application to breed dogs from your property. This is something that almost impossible to drum into Vicdogs members who simply believe if they own under 10 they are off the hook - all they are off the hook for is the DAB - they are still illegal puppy farmers if they dont have council approval and they dont fit mandatory codes for breeding dogs. the reason that working dog people and those who are not Vicdogs are panicking is because the penalties now for not having council approvals is huge and they cant get these approvals until after they build the structures etc which fit mandatory codes etc. So hang on you may say as I did - surely no one is going to get in trouble for having 10 dogs on 100 acres which are well kept and have fields to run in and a warm kitchen to whelp in. Surely if I only have 10 and live on such a big property I dont need kennels etc Surely commonsense will cut in. Well very recently someone went to the council and asked what they needed to do to be able to have 10 fertile dogs on their 100 acre property and breed a couple of litters a year. They were told they had to have structures for the dogs to be able to comply with mandatory codes - like locking them up at night etc and that they could not put ONE breeding dog on their property until they had approvals .They currently have their dogs are all over the place including interstate until they can build their "structure" because they are too frightened to have their dogs on their property until they jump through all the hoops to get the approvals. The Victorian government has given Vicdogs a monopoly and people who choose not to be Vicdogs members or who cant be Vicdogs members are disadvantaged and treated as criminals. Not everyone who owns more than 3 fertile dogs or who breeds dogs which are not yet or which will ever be recognised by the ANKC are doing the wrong thing. The ANKC is not the only registry but the Victorian government has made it virtually impossible for any other org to have the same concessions as an applicable organisation. The MDBA was knocked back and we are currently appealing and we will win but truth is even though approval as an applicable org gives small benefits and you dont have to be a DAB everyone still comes under the same laws for breeding dogs and you still have to go with mandatory codes and council approvals - sell with chip numbers etc. All it really means is that instead of having the police, RSPCA and council to answer to you also have Vicdogs to answer to. Unless of course you count the councils which tell their residents they cant own any fertile dog without CC membership. They had better run an education program before they start policing it all because whether or not you include chip numbers in your ads is in reality the least of your problems. But you can advertise free to good home without a chip. Makes no sense if the goal is to stop idiots breeding mutts and unwanted litters - just looks to me that it will be easier to get a free puppy with no checks and no chips. Its a joke.

This is Vic's more shady establishments ... not the place Animal Lib can go and raid (although might teach them a thing or two about raiding and who and what they don't want to run into) If Vic Pol are throwing the killing goats and pig meat book at them its because it's all they got. Yeah well based on the fact they got nothing to say dogs were being killed for meat and they left the animals there and who is involved - see link - I don't believe anything they say about the dogs. Too bad they didn't find evidence of breeding dogs - much bigger penalties then. http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/animal-activist-rescues-dog-from-illegal-abattoir-20120202-1qvpc.html

Looks like they were capable of some pretty crook stuff

It's widespread. Not sure why that article focused on Hunte. Many US puppy mills sell ACK registered pups, and it's not hard to build a case that the AKC is dependent on puppy mill registration revenues.This is just the first article I pulled up on Google . . . you can find hundreds. http://www.citizensa...s.org/pmakc.php Dont think Id take too much notice of that one for gospel .Looks to me that numbers have been fooled with etc - in typical let's gem animal rights lingo.

http://www.thedogpress.com/PuppyMill/Hunte-History.asp What goes on behind the scenes - AKC in the states.

Yeah that was my first thoughts too .Everyone around here kill their own meat but it is against the law to sell it even though most of them do. We have neighbours who had dead sheep hanging from trees for their won use and the cops came in because someone said it was humans hanging there! Dont think its iilegal to eat dog in most states anyway as long as you don't cut their tails off before you kill them. As I said it will be interesting to see how it runs and what the real facts are rather than versus what has been reported.

- I've been watching this pretty closely for about 10 years and even though its suggested that in breeding depression is responsible that only looks at one variable - how closely bred they are and the assumption is because of close breeding there is definitely a higher incidence in some breeds. In the three breeds Ive been watching I think it hasn't been - again I don't believe its about in breeding though it may be about selection. In fact if it were only about homozygosity it should be far more common and it should have shown up far more commonly before now.When it happens in women we dont ask how in bred she is either but rather we look at the length of her cervix as a short cervix correlates to potential issues like this and most dogs get pregnant , hold a litter and whelp the litter without a problem even though all purebred dogs are in bred - they have also located a gene which creates an enzyme which knocks out progesterone too - so we may be seeing that in the mix too. we may be seeing bitches which have a particular shape or curve in their cervix for all we know - both heritable. In three breeds Ive been watching very closely it has become almost the norm and it's happening regardless of how hard the breeders are working at ensuring their bitches are not closely line bred - bringing in semen from several different countries and fretting over COI's etc. If it were happening due to non thriftiness of the whelps,consistently smaller litters no fertility at all etc I may take a minute longer to look closer and agree with you that lack of fertility and reproduction problems maybe caused by inbreeding but there are too many other variables to take into account to tag it as the cause and it would never be seen in cross bred bitches. When I have spoken to professors who's specialty is genetics and canine reproduction they agree that selection will play a greater role. Im not saying that you are wrong across the board but I think the whole in breeding thing has taken on a momentum via PDE which in effect lets breeders off the hook.It picks a probable cause, and tells us outcrossing is the bees knees and will fix it .In early pregnancy progesterone is produced primarily by a structure in the ovary called a corpus luteum.This structure is caused by ovulation when the eggs are released. If the bitch is pregnant then the placentas begin to produce progesterone [what happens if she isn't pregnant is another story but depending on how many times she has been in season this may impact on what happens when she is pregnant] the placenta is using Mum's cholesterol to produce high levels of progesterone.Ordinarily most of this progesterone enters Mums bloodstream with the rest used by the developing fetus. So if there isnt enough in Mum's bloodstream is it because the placenta isnt producing enough or because when it gets to the bloodstream something else is happening ? Another source of progesterone is milk products .After eating milk products bio availability of progesterone goes up too. So what if its about what the grandmother ate or was exposed to- heaps of evidence to prove this has a huge impact on the reproductive issues of the grandaughters, it would seem that if its the gene which causes the enzyme which knocks out progesterone that it would knock it out even if it were supplimented.When Pottinger did his experiments he showed it was about diet with each generation being less able to reproduce which had nothing to do with inbreeding or selection. Blaming in-breeding is the modern villan and blamed for all manner of things and it may be part of the answer .It gives you a way out- just go for animals which are further apart genetically - yet how come if a bitch is doing this she does it regardless of what dog you use? Do you really think if you use a dog from a different breed that your girl wouldn't have the problem? So is it caused because she is closely related to the sire? Or is it caused because the bitch herself is in bred? Is it caused by something her grandmother was fed or was exposed to ? Is it because of something she is exposed to or is deficient in? If you breed on with her daughters and others breed on with bitches which originated from your bitches sisters will we see a higher incidence in their grand-daughters regardless of what mates are used. Is it happening more now than it used to or are we just noticing it more ? Fact is we don't have anywhere near the info we need to be able to make a confident call on it . If its selection we have choices - one is to not keep any of her girls for breeding - or we use all of her girls and gran-daughters for breeding and only select those which don't have the problem for breeding in all future litters. Without progesterone help this is the way it has been controlled up to now - you cant keep girls which don't survive in the womb. If its dietary or environmental,how inbred - impacting on nanna without enough info to track back to get a clear view on nanna other than how in bred she is we all need to start here and record every tiny little thing "in case" which may affect or impact on our girl's offspring to use for knowledge if it turns up in future - whether we have ever seen it in our dogs or breeds before. If its something we are doing - diet, environment which is impacting on this bitch as a one out we need to rip apart everything we are doing and hope we find what that is so her next litter doesnt need to have the supps and everyone lives happily ever after. If its in breeding depression caused by nothing more than how closely related she is to her mate - easy just pick one that's not related The fact is you can think you have the answer depending on where you come at it from. Hang out around people who are anti in breeding you will find a good prod to simply think thats the reason, hang out around people who are big on diet, no chemicals etc and you will find something you can ping it on, hang out around people who think you should simply select away from this kind of stuff and not interfer with nature and you will find your answer there. Maybe its one maybe its a combination of all but either way its all theory and your answer is going to lay in what breed you have and how diverse and how large your gene pool is, how much info you have on your dog's ancestors ,what you feed, how you manage her ,what access you have to other bitches and how much you really want to give her daughters and gran-daughters a chance to show that its just a one off. Keep in mind it doesn't matter what you do some wont agree with you . If you breed her again - it will be someone saying - why would you. If you breed her with the best mate regardless of how closely they are related - it will be someone saying - why would you. if you keep her daughters for breeding - someone will say- why would you. If you keep none for breeding - someone will say - why would you. Up until now we have in the main selected for how the dog looks and we havent kept really good info on what we do on a day to day basis or things which may appear to be minor issues, we haven't shared that info and it hasnt been accessible to us unless we have been breeding for decades and we now have enough info of our own. Rather than deciding one thing or another is the culprit or the answer we all have to start here and now and try to do what ever we can to move forward from where we are - you have this issue right here right now so you have to decide if its something that you are going to concentrate on and primarily watch for things which may impact on that as a priority or kick it to the kerb and decide whether its secondary to something else you may want to work on. How do you know if you should keep her girls and her gran daughters for breeding? You don't - but if you do and keep the info and share it someone in the future may be able to answer the questions you are faced with now easier.

Will be interesting to watch this - Surely if they are killing goats and pigs for meat its a whole leap of difference to killing dogs for meat. Hard to imagine anyone in Victoria would be interested in eating it . Legally they can butcher meat for their own consumption - the only thing they have them on so far is butchering and selling the pork and goat meat

http://www.meltonweekly.com.au/news/local/news/general/rockbank-raid-dogs-goats-believed-slaughtered/2440861.aspx AUTHORITIES raided a Rockbank property this morning where they suspect animals, including dogs and goats, were illegally slaughtered and sold for human consumption.A 26-member joint taskforce including Caroline Springs police, Police Search and Rescue, Melton detectives, RSPCA, the Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE), Prime Safe and Melton Council arrived at the property about 7.30am. They found dozens of animals including goats, chickens, dogs, reptiles, horses, pigs, and an emu. They also found a number of goat carcasses hanging on butcher’s hooks and butchering equipment including saws, blow torches and knives. Police seized around $200,000 of stolen machinery and cars from the premises, illegal firearms, ammunition and cannabis plants from a mobile home on the property. The raid was organised after police received a statement from a witness who said they saw a dog being butchered and a blowtorch used to remove its hair before the carcass was hung on a hook. It was also alleged a man who lives on the large property sold dog meat to around 100 customers for between $100-350. The witness said the dogs were found through public notices that advertised the animals as free to a good home. In a separate statement, another witness claimed they saw a man receive a bag of pork at the property. They said the man admitted to buying the meat on a weekly basis at a ‘‘cheap price’’. No dog meat was found on the premises. PrimeSafe, the Statutory Authority regulating the safety of meat, poultry and seafood across Victoria, scoured the property and inspected carcasses and equipment and seized and destroyed quantities of meat from a freezer. PrimeSafe is yet to confirm the origin of the meat, but Chief Executive Brian Casey said the information obtained by its operations and licensing managers during the inspection is subject to further investigation. The RSPCA checked around 30 dogs on the property, mostly caged and some chained to trees. Several notices will be issued under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act 1986. An RSPCA spokeswomen said while most of the dogs scored ‘‘good body condition’’ ratings, poor animal husbandry practices existed. ‘‘Dirty cages, with a huge build of faeces and urine, with dirty water or lack of [was witnessed].’’ the spokeswoman said. A dog that was too tall for its cramped cage was moved to a larger shed following RSPCA advice. An emaciated goat was put down and taken away for post mortem. The RSPCA spokeswoman said other goats were in poor condition and lameness was a concern due to possible foot rot, abscesses or overgrown hooves. Two restricted breed dogs were also found on the property. A Melton Council spokesman said the owner has been issued with notices of declaration for the restricted breed dogs. A 41-year-old Rockbank man has been charged and bailed on criminal offences in relation to the raid.

Its been in a couple of months and I'm told it will start being policed in February. Im assuming dogz will follow suit about now for Victorian breeders but there isnt any laws which say the newspapers or websites etc are obligated to make sure the Victorian members comply and its pretty easy to simply put another postcode in when you are advertising on the net anyway. Many breeders list their addresses now as a different place to stop loonies finding them. Dont you just love the fact that if you are a large commercial kennel with a "number" you can just use your number but if you are a member of an applicable org you cant use your member number? Even though its the law to chip all animals you don't have to put the chip number in the add if you are giving the dog away. Advertise on free to good home and when they ring its gone but you have another The onus is on the buyer to change over the chip details - Good luck with that. If you make an error and the chip number in the add isn't the same as the chip when they buy it - straight to reporting you. If you advertise without the chip number and you live in Victoria you get pinged $600 but it also breaches mandatory codes so you have a bigger problem than that too. Quote. The legislation has been amended to give councils and RSPCA inspectors the ability to apply for court orders to seize animals from non compliant and unregistered breeding premises. But you can advertise a future litter Id say that gets everyone off the hook anyway. Advertise a future litter and when they ring you have one on the ground but you didn't advertise and there isn't anything stopping you advertising your kennel - puppies sometimes available etc anyway. There are about a dozen ways of getting around it and how on earth will they police it? Why on earth wouldn't everyone just sell their puppies to dealers and pet shops - take the money and not have the crap. So much for new laws stopping large scale commercial breeding - all it did was legitimise them and create a higher demand for their puppies whilst making it more attractive to sell to pet shops. All they had to do was police the old chip laws and they had all they needed anyway.

Pacers do some memorial plaques and stones.

Take her to the vet - if they give you antibiotics check with the vet they have considered the effect it may have - what type it is etc and then when the pups are born put a bit of protexin on their tongues once or twice a day. If you go now by the time the pups are born the antibiotics will be done and dusted - it will kill off anything else that may be a bacteria problem and all will be well.

Soap and water and then a wipe with white vinegar and a quick spray of Glen 20

In all honesty I cant see why anyone would need to give anything other than water if they have been feeding a reasonable diet through out whelping. There are all those beautiful minerals in placentas which the bitch eats all the way through as well. Based on how calcium is absorbed and works giving it in liquid form throughout whelping isn't go to do anything to help whelping. By then the bitch needs serum calcium which she can access from her blood stream. If she hasnt had supps and her hormone to access is therefore doing what it needs to her body will supply all she needs. Sometimes I think we take a little bit of info and basically try too hard. If we assume that breeders are feeding either a complete dog food or a dog recipe which has the right calcium ratio to other minerals it makes little sense to supplement only one mineral. If you haven't given a supplement the dog can access as much calcium as it needs when it needs it to get through the whelping .Even if the dog was fed a diet which was down in calcium there is enough stored and accessible to whelp. Nutrition is a truly fascinating subject - there is always something new to study and everyday there is more to learn. When we see bitches who seem to be suffering from many genetic disorders and consider perhaps other variables it gets even better. Decades ago a guy called Pottinger did some nutritional studies on cats throughout several generations which showed that many things thought to be caused by genetics were in fact caused by nutrition - couple that with the new stuff and chuck in the breeders particular variables and it at least stimulates you into reconsidering what we think we should do or what we think we know about things that run in lines,about diseases and especially reproductive disorders. For example if we ran a poll here - do whelping problems run in bitch lines - my guess is most of us would agree and put that down to something they have inherited - Clearly they have but the question is how and how do we learn about how to ensure that when someone is looking at breeding a bitch we bred or a bitch which is the granddaughter of a bitch we bred gets to do it easier and that less dogs [ and breeders] suffer? Is it really something that would have happened anyway because of this magical chemically type thingy called genes - sort of like how the dog gets brown eyes - its in there so you cant change it - or is it caused by how the bitch lines were managed, nutritionally and environmentally? .Does this management actually change the gene - the DNA? if we go nuts and supplement something or miss something out could that impact in a much greater way than just this whelping? How does what we do with this one bitch in this one litter affect not just the litter on the ground but litters which will follow in future generations? With breeders who dont get too bothered about what they are feeding or what conditions the pups are kept in they can usually put puppies out at 8 weeks which are still reasonably healthy and must have pretty good immune systems to get through living in shit and little comfort and forget about them when the grandchildren fall to bits we blame genetics , in breeding - which is most definitely the case with recessive disorders - thats easy but not quite the whole story either . Colour genes are considered recessives - but - http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10518-you-are-what-your-grandmother-ate.html And when you look at what goes into determining things like longevity the whole thing gets really really interesting . We assume that some breeds live less long and are affected by more problems with their immune systems because of the dreaded in breeding - you know lack of genetic diversity and if that's all you are looking for that's probably what you will see BUT take a look at people who live in Glasgow - the fact that they have shorter life spans than any other isnt because they are in bred or even because they have a horrible environment or nutrition. Its because their grandmothers lived in really horrible times - wars, depression, poverty and loads of viruses and infections. In order for them to survive and their babies to survive they needed a really over active immune system - now 2 generations later that translates into over active immune systems and they die younger than any other population from diseases caused by what we probably would tag as a genetic disorders. Translate that to dogs and how as breeders we can affect not only these dogs but generations to come in a far greater manner than most of us ever guessed - nutrition, stress and the environment that dogs are kept in we can never know enough about this stuff. http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/how-to-live-to-101/ So when we are selecting for a longer life span as some neo people are for example the "experts" have told us its about how closely the dogs are related but what if its also about what their grandmothers ate and how they were used and raised ? What if we do something simple like add a bit of this and bit of that to a dog's diet and over do one thing or another, what if we breed em in rotten conditions and the greatest impact of that is in their grand children? what if vets like Billinghurst and Lonsdale, Dodds are right and what we feed grandmothers impacts on hip scores of dogs we breed today? What if the higher incidence of immune related diseases is caused by commercial diets - when you consider the incidence of immune related disorders is climbing in humans who arent on the whole closely related any more - its at least worth considering. Anyway Im waffling but I reckon if we dont over stimulate their immune systems with over vaccination and other chemicals look after their environment and give them a well balance varied diet and love em their grandaughters might be needing less not more intervention. What a truly wonderful thing it is to breed dogs - so much to learn - so much to chat about , so much to consider to better the dogs as well as the breed. At the least its things to ponder on and in my opinion supplementing anything on its own is something we should really look at before we follow on like lemmings.

Yep I agree.