Old dog, young dog

Just caught these couple photos of our old Toby with the young Billy. Billy is not perfect with a slight bit of pink on the side of his right nostril and not a totally white bib like Toby, but these slight imperfections from a show ring perspective don't hinder his overall aesthetic much, to the eye, and more importantly his head side profile shows a nice length to cranium and muzzle developing with a pretty shallow stop. Fingers crossed for when we get to MRI scan this little chap's head, when he turns one year old. 

Interesting research article over at ​CavalierHealth.org about MRI scanning of Cavaliers on a law-enforced obligatory screening program prior to breeding Dutch cavaliers. Netherland's CKCS MRI screening law for syringomyelia proves that selecting unaffected parents leads to less SM in offspring. 

In a March 2020 master's thesis, Utrecht Univ. student Maxime Laterveer concluded,

​"Results indicated that selecting unaffected parents leads to a lower CCD (Central Canal Dilation of the spinal cord) in offspring. This reduction in CCD is even more if parents with healthier grandparents are given priority. Conversely, the offspring of affected parents was more likely to have an increase in CCD. ... It is concluded that, the obligatory screening for and subsequent selection for older unaffected CKCS, the offspring indeed improved each generation and as indicated by a reduced prevalence of Syringomyelia."

'Ms. Laterveer also measured Chiari-like malformation (CM) and Primary Secretory Otitis Media (PSOM) in the dogs. She found that the prevalence of PSOM in the left ear was 19.4% and in the right ear 20.0%, and that neither PSOM nor CM improved upon screening for unaffected parents.'