ive had a pet shop bun a dwarf lop and she had terrible healthissues..oral syphilis...molar probs awful.....eye infections blocked tear ducts....ear infections..of which only the oral syphilis was curable
she was rung and so naively it thought properly bred owuld be better than usual back garden buns.
oh how stupid of me
next was a baby bun from a heinze 57 huge eared mummy with a lovley nature and a black boxy faced uppy eared but small buck. woozle was a dead ringer for a sable marten/silver ofx so folks told me..and he was mad huge huge ears for his body tho! he was athletic etc but had crystals in his bladder and kidneys..only his mum is still alive..his dad and siblings are all dead!
next came oscar...a mini lop from a breeder retiring her entire stock after over 25yrs. oh no noo dental probs at all..liar!
he had the usual breed probs where he was almsot a year old and the probs began shortly after getting him.......
then whilst he was alive came bif...from a local fosterer for at the time a local rescue...online she was uppy eared and indeed when we saw her...once relaxed a little a few weeks later it transpired she was actually a lop:shock:
her ears are very short fat n thick and her head is quite small and almost round:shock: her brother apparently was lionhead/lop i later discovered. shes got a receding lower jaw that makes her prone to spurs but also gi probs from her being a messed up bunny treated wise..post traumatic stress in a bun
but luckily eye and ear probs none.
when oscar died she laid down to die..a lady lent me her frenchie..she is a hobbyist shower and only has like 2 litters a year and bertie was ex stud retianed as a pet. He ended up being adopted by me and i guilty as charged fell in love with him..even tho i used to dislike rew. his gentle nature etc won me over and when the vet suggested getitng a third bun the rescue bif was from had long since stopped iwth buns then dogs and is now a cat only rescue.
so i went back to the lady who i got bertie from and against my better sense got a baby form ehr purely because wed got a bond with bertie..and she was showing us the buns explaining everything exercise etc we stayed whilst it was food and lcean out time and handled some buns all are handled a lot to get them friendly etc. She said she "interviews" prospective owners and even vsits some! too may brc registered breeders and backyard breeders just want to put out as many buns as poss and to hell with the genetic problems ..the backyard ones interbreed knowing it causes prblems.
she uses buns from outside the group owned by her closest friend and they show their buns only from the one or two litters a year if its that oerosns turn to attempt a different colour..
she refused to breed or show little buns as it was worse for them now with the show points being so bad..they couldnt breed for lifespan or health choices just hoped they made it to be showed so she said no.
she had a record of all buns lineage and any buns who had developed health probs be it the ones used to breed for a few eyars beofre being retired and kept as pets or the ones that had gone to be pets with folks and developed health probs. genetics is a fools paradise and she wanted to keep up with any probs ad all lops are predisposed to dental probs if the jaw is not right and the face is tooo squashed.
neithe bertie or willows faces showed the signs of being as flat as my dear old dwarf lop.
berties had so many probs since coming to me but not breed related luckily. Bif saldy has..many many dentals....willow had the Ec scare but it was an ear infetcion as a baby a mild one. she was as helathy as a horse but she died in oct and would have been two in dec..the vets said it wasnt worth doing a pm as it sounded and seemed like it was an embolism...i felt so awful..she wasnt overweight just masive and kept growing..whereas her dad and siblings were berties size and her mum altho massive wasnt as big as her daughter. somehwere down the linieage i guess maybe flemish giant or similar caused her growth or maybe she had growth disorder..who knows.
bandit was a lionhea dor maybe a cross..he was silky furred and not fluffy but had a mulelt hairdo and it was silky not fluffy..he never ever got ill apart from the stress related weeing prob he developed after bif split from the group..once with her he was fine. no dental probs no squishy poo probs ate anything and everything.....and was found dying suddenly..he had never been ill so he hid it well..pm showed acute bloat
were so guilty of mutating and mutilating our pets......ear cutting..tail docking..declawing etc then breeding horors like the daschund and the munchkin cat let laone the poor rabbits......
i feel awful for the poor english lops..so sad...but i also feel sorry for the masisve breeds but it is an occurrence to find large heavy set buns and weeny buns even on soemwhere like scomar island i think its called..the buns arent just wild colours now..some have odd colours etc due to mutaitons in the genes.
large buns and rexes are prone to heart probs like maine coon cats are
persian cats are born with polycystic kidney disease and horrific resp probs..
you look back at original persians and traditional siamese cats lovley but who decided to refine and over exaggerate was best?
The big buns were bred right back in 18th century to be meat producers explains the huge size and limited lifespan. altho i know and jo knows folks who have contis and frenchies who are 8 or 10a and not arthritic messes etc....whereas others are born almsot with arhritis setting in etc and its al down to gentetics. so we can in effect breed out health probs but instead choose to breed them in.
maybe soon a revolution will start like has begun in cat breeding..people do not watnt he modern siamese they want the old traditional one stocky one not et lookalike!! others are pondering this with persians oh and bulldogs too etc.
thing is you can never stop this altogether but if the breeders themselves decline to do as what is expected and produe the backlash breeds instead it would still leave thousands of buns looking for homes still and still thousands of health probs as youd need to cull all domesticated buns everywhere to re domesticate buns from wildies.
it shouldnt be looks for the price of health but its like it with animals so much as i guess the human race cannot genetically modify itself..oh wait...it can now!!
i didnt adopt bertie cos he was a frenchie i adopted him as the crr wasnt able to get back to me in time etc and i dont think i was a member here or id have asked or maybe was too naive! i adopted him as he saved bifs life and they were too attahced and so were we and jo didnt want to rip the bond apart and wanted him to be happy anyway so we had him for his perosna and with willow it was because jo was so honest and open and her buns were so helathy lineage etc and she was always there it was the persona we fell inlove with not the looks. bif was cos she deserved love and a good home and be a companion to oscar..willow was to become the htird bun but bif bullied her too much for over a year. bandit was supposed to be terirble as a lionhead or even a cross right..nope.
berties eye probs have ben as a result of one of those things an injury leading to an ulcer anybun could have it happen.
but jo did explain that buns all have the same size heart really and its why big buns suffer so much
so yes its cruel but its not gong to stop so maybe we can only hope some breed standards can be reversed a lot like osme cat and dog ones are now as the health probs are so severe