Why we do not guarantee perfection in hips and spine
Description
Cardigans are a wonderful, absolutely addicting breed that enjoys great health and long and happy life. One of the reasons we chose this breed is that we wanted to be able to hand over a puppy to his or her new owners and have at least a reasonable expectation that the resulting dog would die of great old age after a lovely life.
However, because of the unique body and skeletal system of this breed, you should know certain things about how Cardigans – ALL Cardigans – grow and live.
The genetic mutation that gives the Cardigan its very short legs is called achondroplasia. That’s a word that basically means “weird cartilage.” The growth plates and other cartilaginous structures in this breed are thin and brittle and age quickly, shutting down prematurely. That’s why the bones of the legs do not grow long, and why they are generally at least a little twisted.
Another universal effect of achondroplasia is a hip socket that is wide and shallow and rather square-shaped instead of deep and egg-shaped. The heads of the femurs are similarly broad and short and square.
What this means in real life is that ALL Cardigans have some degree of what we’d call hip dysplasia. Their hips just don’t fit as deeply and closely as in the long-legged breeds. And many – probably a third or more – will have hips that are so loose that they will fail OFA certification.
The very, very good news is that in Cardigans there’s very little correlation between those looser hips and pain and disability. As an orthopedic surgeon once said to me, “They’ve got bizarre hips but they seem to get along perfectly well on those bizarre hips.” So your puppy will almost certainly have no issues even if his or her hips are looser than average for the breed.
When we make breeding decisions, we try to push the breed toward a tighter hip. So we try to pair dogs and bitches where at least one of them has a tighter hip. And we may decide to place in a pet home a dog we kept if he or she turns out (as so many do) to have looser hips. But that’s because we’re trying to make a difference in the breed, not because we think those dogs will not live a normal life.
The issue of spines is a similar one. Dwarfed dogs have cartilage that ages more quickly and becomes brittle and can crack or herniate. Thankfully the rate of disc injuries (often called “going down in the back” or just “going down” in these breeds) is a lot lower in this breed than in, say, Dachshunds, but it can and does happen as they approach middle age. Plenty of people never have a Cardigan go down, through decades of ownership, but it would be wrong of me to imply that it could never happen.
For this reason – that it’s just part and parcel of owning these dogs, and not the result of poor or good breeding decisions – we do not warranty that your puppy will pass OFA or will not have a disc injury. We DO warranty (via a replacement puppy) that your puppy will not be crippled or die young as a result of hip dysplasia. We do not require that you give your first dog back, or anything of the kind. If you and I and our vets agree that the cause of the problem is hips, we’ll send you a new puppy with all our love.
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