APAW – Poodle Pups for Working Roles

Blossom is an incredible, robust dog now in her double digits (and barely showing it!). She is a daughter of Serenity and had two litters before focusing full-time on her service dog career; she also participated in multiple therapy programs particularly enjoying having children read to her at a library, and she was a demo service dog who gave presentations around Massachusetts prior to being placed with her own partner.

**Health disclosure** Blossom was the first dog we took a chance to breed despite a failed health report (dysplastic hips); her siblings received normal hip reports and were spayed/neutered for service dog careers while she was lined-up to breed prior to placement, and then Blossom’s hip report showed arthritis at 2 years old; Blossom had severely broken a rear leg as a pup and had a plate inserted permanently, potentially affecting the final growth length of that leg compared to the other and that was the side with more significant arthritis… based on how fantastic she was in every way, how athletic, and the fact that her siblings and many relatives had normal hips, we decided to take a risk and breed her in the hopes that it was caused by the injury rather than genetics. The stud was to be Charlie, whose hips were OFA Good and Penn-Hip 90%; Charlie had never been bred and did not understand what to do, so at the last moment we opted to do a dual-sired litter and quickly looked at what other males were available that day – we had a young male who had not had his hip testing yet but whose sister’s hips had just come back great, and as of that point every Poodle we’d assessed had passing hips other than Blossom herself so we did not think there was much risk but could not verify with such little notice. We crossed our fingers and used Schubert while continuing to attempt with Charlie who did get multiple successful ties over the next couple of days. The 9 surviving pups were amazing and all matured into incredible athletes and most becoming service and/or therapy dogs, but parentage testing came back that all were Schubert’s – and then Schubert’s hips came back slightly looser than breed average though nothing of any concern for developing dysplasia/symptoms. Blossom was bred the following year to a stud with OFA Good hips from a family with generations of solid hips. The next year her first litter received both passing and affected results at maturity and Blossom was spayed when those reports came in; one was Mild (Eclipse, listed below) and he is still perfectly athletic as he approaches 9 years old; the other was x-rayed during their spay just for information and was found to have essentially no hip sockets (this level of extreme is technically possible in any mating, and while it is terribly unfortunate it is not the norm of what to expect from parents testing as hers did) – she remained fully-athletic until around 5 years old at which point symptoms started to appear and have been under management as-needed. Blossom was also re-evaluated at that time via Penn-hip – her better hip was rated around 90% for the breed other than the arthritis, and the other side had enough arthritis that a measurement was not taken. When her second litter reached maturity the tested pups had passing-Excellent hip scores but none were bred. The first litter produced pups with incredible genetic diversity and a female was selected to carry the line forward with one litter at age 6 years bred to a male with a pedigree of many solid hips; Blossom’s male with mild hips ended-up having an oops litter into a family with many solid hips from which we may continue the line to save the diversity pending hip results and physical assessment of the offspring as mature adults – this diversity does not exist in the Standard Poodle gene pool except in this small handful of dogs down from Schubert, so ending the line completely would likely be a choice to eliminate this set of haplotypes and uncommon loci from Poodles forever, which is not in the best interest of the breed; if selecting for the best hips available and breeding into families of solid hips shows good results then this is our current plan, but it involves waiting 5-7 years per generation so it is a very slow process. We have come very close to fully ending this line multiple times over the years, but have been talked off the ledge by experienced breeders and our veterinarians – long story short, dogs who are still living healthy and athletic lives into their double digits are a good thing; getting fully passing health scores is even better, but that doesn’t in itself guarantee a long future health-span and longevity… in a breed plagued by life-altering and life-ending diseases popping-up commonly at 3-7 years old and cancer rates continuing to increase every year after that, we understand the wisdom from our mentors and vets despite the criticism that we face from some others.