Re: [pyrnet] Dwarf/dwarf breedings.

[SovreignPyrs@aol.com]

In a message dated 1/1/01 6:19:13 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
lmweisser@olywa.net writes:

<< The gist of it is that he
 just did not look quite "right" based on this breeders decades of looking
 at Pyr pups at all ages and stages.  His front was just "funny".  Neither
 of us speculated that he was a dwarf, just that there was clearly something
 "wrong".  Now that isn't very helpful is it?  I realize that.   >>

Exactly !  Not all dwarfs are small, or that abnormal looking.   I've learned 
to follow my hunches too when something does not look quite right.  
My last dwarf Beagle puppy at 8 - 10 weeks (typically when most of us send 
home pet puppies) simply looked down in pasturns and toed out a tiny bit in 
front.  Which I had never seen in a Beagle before.  His quality was 
excellent, so we elected to run him on a bit to se if the toeingout would 
disappear (it was not there from 4 to 6 weeks).  It didn't, his front just 
kept getting sligtly worse as time went on.  By 4 months he was crook legged 
like a Basset.   So sometimes these things develope later.  One other dwarf 
we had, had a short rib cage, and only had a tiny bit of a shortened limb.  
But grown her legs looked shorter than her body, with a definitive crook as 
an adult.  Our geneticist tells us some mildly afflicteds would be difficult 
to diagnose without x ray.  When in doubt x ray is what we do now.

Sharon Hodgdon
Bradenton FL