For a donation of £5 per pedigree search, which goes to Welfare, the breed's health co-ordinator has been working hard for me checking out the pedigree's of prospective stud dogs for Siska. Now that we are happy with what we've found, she's going to dig further into Siska's distant ancestors. Of course we know that no pedigree is clear of issues. With my pedigree going back 30 + years I'm pretty familiar with it, but knowledge is always the key. Where breeding is concerned there is no point burying our heads in the sand, we really must do our homework, check it out, and check it out again! It's then a case of balancing everything out, and as she said, always being careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. This breeding line has served me well, and I must preserve it as best as I can.
The last few litter have been very successful, to be honest since mixing Conbhairean and Blanik we've got to where I want to be. I've made mistakes, haven't we all? The "B" and "C" litters were really not the best, but mating Seffe from the "A" litter with Apollo Von Dakota for the "D" kept us on track. The "B" and "C" litter are not in my breeding line as they simply were not good enough, but the "E" and "K" litters are not there either, but that was because I kept males .. Louis and Orin. The dam of the "E" litter was Krizzie who was also the dam of the "F" litter, so the girls are still there, in the same way that if Siska conceives, we won't lose her or Kaiah ... and that is really important to me. The "K" litter will not be lost through Orin's offspring, but sadly neither Louis or his siblings were bred from. The "E" litter was a great litter, and I now regret that I didn't offer Louis at stud.
Now I'm going back through previous litter looking for anything that should go onto the breed database, anything that could help the future of the breed should not be swept under the carpet. We don't breed puppies with abnormalities on purpose, we do the best we can, but sometimes nature throws a spanner in the works. As regards to problems, we haven't bred it till we have, what you do about it once it's there is what proves who you are!
