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I purchased a puppy from Erbekees in 2013. He just turned two and was diognosed with elbow dysplasia.

I contacted the breeder immediately as this is a known genetic condition. Initially she was sympathetic. However, her reaction to the paperwork from the hospital that performed surgery on our dog was far from sympathetic. Included with the paperwork was a recommendation to discontinue breeding our dogs mother (Toy) and his sibling (Kesha).

Upon receipt of this message, she immediately removed us from her Facebook group and made false accusations at me. I provided her with this information solely to prevent suffering of any further puppies.

I would suggest that others find a more responsible breeder. Any responsible breeder would immediately stop breeding dogs that could possible have puppies predisposed to this genetic condition.

Location: Collingswood, New Jersey

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Guest

Sorry to hear about your puppy. By the time they are 2 years they are like a member of the family.

However about breeding.

If both of the parents have good hips and elbows with no problems then there is no reason to discontinue breeding because one puppy has displasia. This happens.

But, you definately should never breed your dog!

Guest

Please note a in depth explanation of this complaint posted on my website.

www.erbekees-keeshonden.com

Please go to Erbekees History page and select the Brian Smith tab.

I am also including a quote directly from Brian and the screen shot is posted on my website to show it was posted buy Brian. I can not upload pictures here but will copy text below.

Brian Smith

Hi alI. I posted Koopers diagnosis to the group to provide awareness and hopefully receive support from fellow keeshond lovers. To those that have shown support for Kooper and my family; please accept our sincere gratitude. Your support makes a difference.

This diagnosis has been extremely difficult for us to deal with. To those that have disregarded the pain Kooper and my family are feeling right now, making their priority to unnecessarily defend Jodi please continue reading. Jodi has been nothing but supportive and I have not once blamed her or her breeding for Koopers diagnosis. Jodi has had all the necessary testing done for all of her breeding dogs to prevent this from happening.

Unfortunately our breed is predisposed to elbow dysphasia and Koop just happened to be one of the rare cases from Jodi's breeding to be diagnosed with it.

Please look at the entire picture before making assumptions. My family and I are going through a difficult time and some of your comments were hurtful; intentional or not.

Guest

In response to the complaint against me I would like to express my side of the story. First I cannot say enough how sympathetic I am to this situation, being a breeder this is one of the worst experiences one can have.

I like to think that no breeder of any breed is not sympathetic to an outcome like this but being a breeder it is impossible to predict the outcome of every breeding and unfortunately breeders do encounter health issues from time to time no matter if they do 100% testing or no testing at all. It is just a fact that you can have 100 puppies all in perfect health then have 1 or 2 that have mild or even sever health issues. There is no possible way to avoid this.

That said this particular man did contact me about the issue and the only thing he fails to add is that the dog is and has been severely overweigh his entire life.

This was addressed by his vet in the report as the 1st issue that needed to be changed. This issue alone can and often does create stress and can even lead to being dysplastic. There is no real way to know if it is genetic or environmental, he can say it is genetic but to date this is 1 random health issue from the parents and in my opinion does not merit removal of parents from my breeding program.

I will add that all of my dogs that are bred exceed OFFA testing requirements prior to breeding.

There has been no patterning for me to remove any dogs from my breeding program and if there were I certainly would do that. To date I have had 6 dogs from various lines NOT pass health testing and I have altered and placed them all in pet homes. So if it were my intent to breed dogs that could potentially cause issues I would not have done that. It is my goal to do all I can to prevent things like this happening and I do all the testing I can to try and avoid this.

Brain also fails to add that he went on a rant in our client group trying to flame me to all the other clients. When he was made aware by all the other clients posting and supporting me and my breeding practices Brian became enraged and referred to his posting as an โ€œEpic failโ€ because so many clients showed support to me and not so much to him. My clients actually contacted me both by phone and email and expressed their concern for the way he was behaving in our forum. They felt he acted very inappropriate and were actually bothered by the fact he would pin blame on me as there are so many other puppies in the group that are healthy and happy and show absolutely no health issues.

So there are always 2 sides to every story. I continue to monitor the health in all my lines and I will continue to do everything I possibly can to avoid health issues. I wish Brian and his partner Jack only the best and hope Kooper has shown improvement since his surgery.

Despite what you want people to think I do care very much about the future of all my puppies and never want any of them to ever be in pain or have health issues.

Guest

Dysplasia has many causes and isn't strictly genetic. Overfeeding by the puppy purchaser in the first year, especially for hip dysplasia, physical stress, at over 2 years of age injury becomes a big factor, overexercising at under 1 year, prenatal placement in the uterus, prenatal nutrition and many other factors.

1 puppy does not prove a genetic connection, especially in parent dogs that show no indicators of the problem. If a breeder gets more than 1 report of such a problem from a mating they should discontinue mating that particular pair. But 1 report in not sufficient as proof of a genetic problem in the pairing, especially on an older dog (2 years old). As the breeder was unsympathetic after reading the hospital surgery reports, it may be that the surgery was unnecessary and need not have been performed based upon the degree of the elbow dysplasia noted.

To malign a breeder in such a way is criminal and the demands this party made and expected were unreasonable.

Guest
reply icon Replying to comment of Guest-975451

Elbow dysplasia is proven genetic. Please ask the breeder to share the results of our dogs sibling Kesha.

They're not listed on the offa website.

We have given our dog the best care possible from the moment he was in our care. He had an occasional limp from the time he was a small pup but he didn't have any tenderness in the area so our vet wasn't concerned. If you research this as I have you will see that it can take years to become an issue; sometimes 7 or more years.

His major symptoms came in very quickly because a fragment of bone broke off and was causing severe lameness. He was officially diognosed with elbow dysplasia in BOTH knees and treated at one of the top animal hospitals in the country. His condition was so severe that they did surgery the day following his cat scan.

The breeders accusations at me were absolutely false

and unnecessary.

I shared this information with her having the best interest of the dogs and responsible breeding in mind. We will have to manage our dogs

discomfort for the remainder of his life.

We've spent thoasands of dollars to make sure he had the best care possible so lease do not make accusations at me that I did something to cause my dogs condition. If you have any other questions, I'm more than willing to educate and share our experience with others.

Guest
reply icon Replying to comment of Guest-975974

*dysplasia in elbows; not knees.

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