I am interested in opinions on a situation.
A responsible breeder and freind has a litter of pups and both parents have heart tests and hip scores as required in this breed with good results. A previous litter from both parents ( but with different dogs) have all been fine but 3 of this litter have heart murmurs.
When the pups left the breeder had a contract which says he will have pups back and refund money if anything found wrong at first imm/vet check (which the murmurs were.)
The new puppy owners have been advised that these murmurs quite often disapear by the second vaccination but if they dont and the breeder refunds the pups then has three 12 week old pups with murmurs what should he do then? Although he has the facilities to keep them it is not ideal to have 3 pups from the same litter growing up together. These pups are all well with no symptoms although the murmurs of 2 of them are loud.
He has asked my opinion and I am struggling to know what to suggest apart from to offer the puppy fee back but offer that they still keep the pup if they like. I would be interested if any one has been in this situation or has any constructive suggestions.

He's in a very tricky position and not for want of trying to do the responsible thing isn't he?  However his contract and indeed his moral obligation is to take them back if that is what the owners want.  Whether he can cope or find other homes willing to take them under the clear understanding of what it is they are accepting is just now a matter of chance. If he cannot achieve that then, I fear, the unfortunate thing is they may have to be put to sleep.  This is the very real downside of breeding that we must all square up to if push comes to shove sadly.  It could be any of us, I feel so sorry for him :(  It may be they will grow out of the mummers but if this is a breed with heart problems maybe not so the question is can anyone hang on to find out?

Your friend seems to be trying to do the best by his puppies and the new owners.  All I can say is that if the owners are happy to keep them, maybe he could pay to have them neutered to prevent the problem continuing.

I have to say that my sisters dog whom she bought from a well known breeder in her breed had a heart murmur.  She kept the puppy (breeder offered to take her back but they had grown attached to her) and now she is almost 11 years old and has never been ill in her life.

Are these Newfie pups?? What sort of heart murmurs are they...If they are aortic stenosis then the problems can get WORSE until they are 24 monthsw old??? It would help to know the breed concerned...As far as I know there are few murmurs that disappear? Which is why it would help to know the Breed and their little idiosyncrasies?? As far as the contract is concerned this is why Breeding can be heartbreaking even though we act as responsible Breeders there can sometimes be problems over which we have no control, even though we tried our best to eradicate the likelyhood of things happening!! I'm sorry for him and of course it will be very hard...depends on the type and degree of the heart murmur and whether he may be able to pet home them, give them away etc...if it's Newfies and you want to PM me please do and I will supply an e-mail address for you/him to talk, all the best, Dawn

My guess is cavaliers,hope the OP lets us know soon :)

As for the puppies,i would be very surprised if any of the owners return their babies,they would have bonded by now.And if they are prepared to take the fee for the puppy back AND keep the dog..... well this would not be something i would be prepared to do as a breeder.Ofcourse they would accept their money back,wether the murmurs worry them or not,who wouldnt??

I would either offer a refund and take pups back,or as someone else mentioned,offer to pay for them to be neutered,as i imagine none of them are going to be bred from

Ktee - I think you may be right regarding owners not wanting to return anyway - my first Gordon boy was discovered to have a heart murmur at his first check up and out of courtesy I rang his breeder - she of course was happen to take him back but no way he was our baby and we loved him.  He had a scan and it was found not to be a genetic (not sure if I have the right word there!) and now at age 2 it's gone.  So maybe the other owners too will feel like this and just wanted to let the breeder know?

But I guess whether it's serious or not can only be determined by a scan and dependant on the breed?

Just thought I'd share my experience with discovering a heart murmur at the first check up.

Trouble is that pups now go for Vaccinations younger than they used to, and innocent developmental murmers can be picked up that so go by 12 weeks or so.

That's the trouble, be good if everybody could keep their cool and just hang on a bit.  On the other hand if it is a breed prone to heart problems as suggested by the fact heart testing has been done, a couple have been mentioned and I must admit Boxers sprang to mind for me, waiting may be futile and will just cause more pain to the new owners I would not blame them in being unprepared to do so. 

The only thing the breeder can do is take the pups back, and re check them later before trying to home them again, maybe even with their original owners if the murmurs prove to be innocent.

If the murmurs persist then the breeder can offer them on the understanding that they have them (and have the severity evaluated), or if they are serious then consider putting the pups to sleep.

my breed is not prone to heart problems, in fact i have never heard of one having one, however in my last litter one pup went to its new home & the next day she took her to the vet who pronounced a heart murmur. Have to say i am very cynical about  fresh faced vets diagnosing heart murmurs (he looked about 12 by all accounts) however i offered the weeping wailing owner her money back immediately & asked her to return little pup. I also told her that i did not think it was going to be a problem & might be worth giving puppy some time. Anyway, she kept her & by 6 months there was no sign of it as i suspected....typical young newly qualified vet trying to panic owner Anyway, the point is, he has a responsibility to take back the puppy & refund the owner their money & if after offering that option they still want to keep the pup then fine, but he really should offer it under the "merchandisable qualty" part of the consumer act.

I had exactly the same thing happen to me about 6 years ago when they first started the earlier puppy vaccination protocol.  I rang around to find out if this had ever been a breed problems, and the answer was no, and there was no sign of the murmur at 10 weeks at second jab.

The owners were not contemplating letting the pup go, but I told them that I would give them a full refund if there was a permanent problem that might affect quality of life, or need medication.

I does appear from the testing programme that this is a problem in this particular breed though.  In the light of that I don't think I would blame any owner being unwilling to continue and of course it is very proper of the vet to point out to them that the potential problem is there.

Many years ago I had a puppy owners ring after the first visit to their Vet, who had told them that if the pup didn't have £1500s worth of open heart surgery, then it wouldn't see it's first birthday.  They were told that he wasn't a strong puppy, but I will add that they did vaccinate him!

I was obviously shocked and upset and offered to take the puppy back and give a full refund. The owners didn't want to do that and so I asked if they would bring him back to see my Vet, who's opinion was that 'a heart murmer' is the term used by Vets when the heart wasn't beating rythmically and not making the normal sounds that they are expecting.  He said that without specialist knowledge, a general Vet would have no ideal if it was a defective heartbeat or the very common "some puppy's hearts take longer to settle down to a normal rhythm than others".  He recommended that the pup was treated as normal and would like to see him at 6 months old.  The owners did exactly that and at 6 months old the pup's "within the realms of normal" were his words.

The pup lived a normal, active and healthy life, including going to live in Spain with his owners and coming back to do 6 months quarantine, before dying naturally at over 14 years old.

I really feel for these poor owners with over zealous Vets!:rolleyes:  But this is obviously very different from breeds with known inherited heart defects.

Totally agree.

Glad that you could understand the typos!!  The phone rang, I clicked post and now can't edit!! :D

Thank you all for your responses, this is a breed that is prone to heart problems although as I mentioned before no other problem in either line or previous pups. Seems so strange that 3 of them have this problem and 2 of them are loud murmers one is a grade 2.
No doubt he will offer to take pups back and refund but I know he wont want to pts as they have no symptoms and are such fantastic pups in every otherway and I am sure new owners wont want him to do that either.
It is a problem that could happen to anyone and is nobodys fault but causes great grief all round. Finding homes could be a big problem as insurance wont cover them although I asume their 6 weeks free cover if extended would if they stayed with their new owners.
Amos

I had a cavalier for 12 years, my vet picked up her heart murmur at her first vaccination at 8 weeks old, she lived a completely normal and happy life.

As for the insurance, they would class this as an ongoing problem from birth, so they won't be covered even by their 6 week insurance unfortunately for anything related to this problem.

I had a cavalier for 12 years, my vet picked up her heart murmur at her first vaccination at 8 weeks old, she lived a completely normal and happy life.

This is quite common -puppy murmurs that go. The MVD seen in cavaliers isn't evident as puppies but becomes apparent from around 4-5 years old onwards.

The murmur never went, she had it right till the end :(  but still lived a full life, maybe it wasn't a bad one I don't know

Well I don't know if you or anyone else has noticed that my posts over the last week have been free of awful typos/misspelling?

I have downloaded an unobtrusive little program that just adds a button to Internet explorer.  It is called ieSpell, and I just click the symbol (it is a large tick) and it spell checks for me :D

I once had someone send me an email that they were sick of my bad posts, so I started painstakingly checking before posting, and often editing, but still ended up with a fair few typos, especially my A's and H's the wrong way around.

someone from this site pmd me last week offering to help me with punctuation when I post.

It is a shame we aren't all perfect in every way :D

That is awful Brainless about somebody e-mailing you :( I would have told them where to go ;)

Don't you just want to slap some people :rolleyes: Perhaps they should learn some manners, and consider others feelings........Oh and s*d my poor punctuation  ;)

I think it downright rude and bad manners for anyone to comment on spelling or grammer. I'm not 'perfic' as Pa Larkin would say, either, bit I think if you have a stab at it, then most know what you mean, and dont judge you for it. take no notice brainless, sad on them for emailing you!

Just a thought.........perhaps when the mindless plonker who PM'd Brainless about her spelling, might have waited until their Polish is as good as Brainless English, before critisising (sp :p )

LOL @ Libs :D :D :D

Can't understand why some folks are so darn petty - think I'd rather have excellent advice with a few typos than perfectly written twaddle :rolleyes:

My email was a lot more to the point saying they would no longer waste their time reading my posts, as anything useful I might have to say was lost in the mistakes.:rolleyes:

More fool them Barbara :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

plonker(s) :D 

It stung a bit at the time, and I suppose I did check and edit my posts more, but I often found I had run out of time

Some people have no decorum Barbara :(

Good grief! That's unbelievably rude. I hope whoever it was reads this and feels thoroughly ashamed of themselves.

>I once had someone send me an email that they were sick of my bad posts,

How rude :(

How nice it must be to be soooo perfect that you feel you have the right to point out other's mistakes :rolleyes:

Not worth even thinking about - this isn't a literary society! It's a source of darn good information. ;)

It's what you all say that's important, not how you spell or lay it out!

To be fair when I get really on the boil and typed and posted in the heat of the moment some had a lot of typos, but I never thought it mattered that much it is massages on a board not essays or articles for publication.

Some people will go to any lengths to upset others i make mistakes all the time who cares, you can still understand what i've put

Can't beat a good old massage B :P :P :P

See even with spell check I fluff it :rolleyes:

There are plenty of people whose posts are far harder to read than yours!

Oi JG!! You promised not to mention my post 'ribena' posts ;)

Edited to add: Its a shame Barbara won't name her 'emailer', just so we can do a check on, spelling, punctuation and grammar.......but we know she was brought up better than that :)

Barbara - your posts ALWAYS make good sense - because of how well you know your subject.   There are some posts that I really wish I could go over with a red pen, marking out spelling and punctuation mistakes - but I've never, ever felt like that with any of your posts.  I feel very humble when I remember that you - and some others - are not posting in your mother tongue - your grasp of english is by far superiour to many people who do purport to have english as a mother tongue!

Margot

Bless you Margo :)

I am ashamed to admit, that even though I am bilingual, I am UK born (though didn't learn English until I was at school). 

I think you may have me confused with a few others here who are ex pats from other countries like Goldmali and Husky gal, and of course those actually living abroad like Ory..

My only excuse is my por eyesight and general impatience :D

Brainless - what is far more irritating than spelling mistakes (and yours are always excused anyway) is people who a) don't use capital letters and b) use no punctuation whatsoever. I couldn't care less whether people spell properly, as long as they have made an effort to write a proper message :) :) :)

Daisy

text speak is THE most irritating :rolleyes:

Quite right. I don't bother reading txt. If it's not important enough to write properly, it's not important enough to read. :)

That is a disgusting thing to do

Barbara - your posts are always very informative and I enjoy reading what you have to say. Please take no notice of people who don't even have basic manners

Stop you'll all make me blush.

Now apart from me giving 'Massages', what do you think of the little ieSpell tool?

I sometimes can't believe the things I read at times. :rolleyes: 

That's awful Barbara. 

I think I am generally quite a good speller and writer BUT when I do e-mails and post I never re-read them so they are generally everywhere with major typos also.:-)

eye fink tat itis awefull if sumwun carnt spell as god as wot eye kan.

I think that is so sad, when someone feels they have to go that extra mile to make it known how they feel about spelling errors..... a sad and lonely person springs to mind :rolleyes: :(

I dont think there is any one of us who have not made the occassional typo over the years....and we don't have the disadvantage of  ... dislexia, registered blind or even severe arthritis....   (oops...dyslexia ;) )

to Bedruthen
*it's quite frightening that I could read that without thinking about it :D

I have never had any problem at all reading your posts Brainless, in fact I think I am going to miss their character and quirkiness if you are going to be streamlining them like this :D