For Your Information

The Breed Club -

We have often been asked why we are not members or breeder members of the UK Breed Club. The answer is that we used to fully support this club until some very alarming practices took place with some of the committee members. We refused to be intimidated by a certain committee member and don't respond well to thinly veiled blackmail attempts by the same person, this only made us all the more determined not to join as breeder members. Our resignation was tendered and accepted after an incident at the July 2006 appraisal when it became apparent that certain people on the committee were unwilling to support us in what we were ultimately proved to be correct in.

All this aside there are a handful of very good and honest people in the club and we are sure they will serve the breed well in the future.

Our Health Schemes -

Although we are not breeder members/members of a club, that doesn't mean that we don't take the health testing of our dogs very seriously. All our breeding females have been successfully tested for hips and elbows and no female with a history of any grade of hyperplasia will ever be used in our breeding programme, they will be spayed at an appropriate time. All dogs are clear of HD and ED and have no Ectroption /Entroption. Furthermore, the females that are now over 4 years old have been successfully re-tested for hips and elbows before we use them again in our breeding programme. We only know of European breeders following this practice, no other British/Irish ones.

So far in Britain/Ireland we are the only breeders to take advantage of the Kennel Club's D.N.A. Profiling Scheme. As Accredited Breeders with the K.C. of Great Britain we personally require that all our breeding stock is D.N.A. profiled, this also includes each and individual puppy bred by us. We must admit that this scheme was started initially as somebody within the Boerboel world questioned whether we had actually used the dogs stated in our A.I. programme. To answer their question emphatically we then implemented this procedure as a matter of routine into our good breeding practices. This now stands the breed in good stead as we can now request that all or individual puppy profiles are tested if any problems crop up with the health and well being of our growing pups. It also shows that the pup is from the parents we say it is from. So, far from starting a potential smear campaign, they have really done the breed a great favour and we thank them for that and can only encourage that all Boerboel breeders join us in this practice.

Written by Sandra Brownlie.

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