Do Collie breeders in Sweden actually register their litters in the safe havens of our neighbouring countries, away from the clutches of the National Breed Club?
Well, not exactly. The rough forest country separating us from Finland and Norway is certainly exotic, but not as exotic as all that. You won´t find any desperate breeders scurrying across the borders in the night with new-born pups in their protective arms. Nor do our breeders routinely engage in complicated manouvering such as mating a bitch in one country and selling the resulting litter in another just to dodge the repressive rule of the breed club. In fact, I think it never happened. And if it did happen, I think that person would have received a note from our KC, telling them to stop their antics and get on with what they´re expected to do.
Here is what they are expected to do - and what most of them actually do. A minority comply while grumbling rather loudly, I grant you, but most seem to be content with being where they are.
That is, in the clutches of the Collie Club and the KC of Sweden.
There are very few, if any, unregistered purebred Collies here. Also, registration of every puppy in a litter is not just common practice but mandatory. So is ID. It´s done by chipping these days, whereas earlier the KC registration number was tattooed on the inside of the puppy´s ear. Unlike pedigree papers, chips and tattoos can´t get lost and they definitely can´t be swopped awaiting an eye check, an X-ray or a mentality test - nor, for that matter, a sale or a show. The dog presented to the vet, or the judge, or the radiological nurse, IS that dog. As all pups in a litter are ID:ed and registered, none disappear into what in Britain is referred to as "pet homes" - how derogatory that sounds! - while the ones with show promise are on record.
The majority of Collie breeders in this country have their litters examined for CEA and coloboma before the puppies are sold at eight weeks of age.Collies intended for breeding are generally reexamined as young adults. As in other countries, CEA is too common here, and although we believe that the milder degrees of it cause no suffering and little impairment of vision to the dog, breeders still check. Results are public and the breed club monitors the statistics. A bother and a cost, you may think. But how else should we know it, if colobomas became more frequent or the more severe degrees of CEA started to increase?
Breeders in this country X-ray all breeding stock for HD and many entreat the people who buy their puppies to do the same - even if that Collie will never be bred from. Why? It´s because hip dysplasia is polygenetic. You can never know how many of the genes producing hip deformity your own puppy carries, but you can definitely know this: if there are many X-rayed, yet none or few found with HD in a puppy´s family tree, there is little risk for that particular puppy. If few are X-rayed, all bets are off. If there are many identified cases of HD in the puppy´s lineage, the risk for that puppy is greater.
It isn´t any more complicated than that. But it follows that breeders will need X-rays from as many dogs as possible to get a reliable view of where they stand regarding HD in their breeding programme.
Obviously, a breeder can´t make a buyer comply with the request. Some breeders reduce the price of the puppy, if the buyer promises to X-ray, to make it easier on the new owner. Most of us pay out of our own pockets for the X-rays. Nevertheless, a substantial proportion of all Collies born each year have gone through their X-rays before the age of two. People want to make sure their dog is all right hipwise, and many appreciate the breeder´s need to know.
X-ray results are public. Computerized records are kept by the Swedish KC. Any prospective mating can be evaluated regarding the risk for HD by a breeder worrying about a future litter. Even prospective buyers can see for themselves which lineages carry less risk. For instance, even though I`m not a breeder and not particularly adept with the KC data base, it took me fifteen minutes to find the seven Corydon Collies that seem to have arrived here from 1990 and onwards. Two of them had excellent hips, one was OK, two had had no X-rays and two were found to be severely dysplastic. I did not have to ask anybody´s permission to find that out, nor to write about it here. The facts are on public record. Unusual in the general dog world, perhaps, and possibly offensive to some people, but hardly reason enough for us to be ostracized, is it?
In this country also you can´t register the offspring of a Collie with no X-ray taken. Whether it was homebred or imported is of no importance. You want to breed from your Collie? Fair enough, but have it X-rayed first.
If the results say "grade A" or "Grade B" - excellent and good, respectively - all is well. You may go ahead unmolested by the breed club and the KC. If the X-ray should say C, D or E, with E being a most severely deformed hip joint, you are expected not to breed from that dog. If you do, you can still register the offspring, but the entire litter will have a permanent KC breeding prohibition stamped on its pedigree documents. Why is this?
Again, it´s simple. Regardless of all attempts from certain quarters to deny it, HD is hereditary. Severe HD is such suffering for the dog, such a grief for the owner, besides being such a sad thing for the breeder, that every breed club and every dog person should do what they can to keep the frequency down. And the only practicable way is not to breed from afflicted dogs. Even if the dog is excellent in many other ways, nobody should choose to pass the risk and the pain on to other dogs, other owners and other breeders.
This is the way the great majority of Collie breeders and Collie people here feel. This is how the rules work. Understandably, on occasion they may disappoint somebody who has bred or bought themselves a promising dog, when the X-ray results turn out less brilliant than the dog. But does that make us terrible people?
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