Expected
We do not expect pups at the moment...
Because of Abby's epilepsy we're not breeding with her and her daughter Eevee anymore
For a while now there are cases of epilepsy popping up in the sheltie-world. I was one of the people who thought the problem wasn’t so big. In the tests done so far (in Holland) the endresults were that epilepsie was not a breed specific problem. So that's why I though I was save, that's why I thought that the chances of one of our gilrs having/getting it would be almost none. But unfortunately due to some terrible events I’ve had to change my opinion...
On April 5th 2011 we got the terrible news that my grandmother (who has always been like a 2nd mother to me) will not have long to live anymore. The stress in our house was massive and the dogs were feeling it too. On a quite moment while the dogs were asleep Abby went into an epilepsy attack which lasted well over 10 minutes.
At that moment I of course decided right away not to breed with Abby anymore and to stop all of the preparations of breeding with her daughter Eevee as well...
I knew what epilepsy was, we had an Persian cat (Sandy) who has been diagnosed with the illness when she was young. So I knew what it meant and how serious it was but I also knew that the test results on this disease are so far very inconclusive so with that in the back of my mind I decided to breed with Abby. This was an decision that I’ve spend a lot of time thinking about at that time and thought I could make, but not anymore. I can only hope that all of Abby’s pups will not get this terrible illness, I can only hope that soon there will be test out that will tell you if a dog has this illness or not and if it can be passed on to his/her pups.
What the future will bring? Who knows... We have some great dogs at the moment and we’re gonna enjoy them as much as we can for hopefully many years to come. Because above all these dogs are my buddies, and no matter what I will love them and be there for them! I'm not saying farewell to all my breedingplans, what I mean by that is that I hope that someday we'll have a nice girl in our home again which I can breed with and make new future-goals with. But for now we have other things to focus on so we'll have to put all our time and energy in that...
Of course I'll still be available for tips/advices so if you have any questions about the breed or buying a puppy feel free to e-mail me.