Geez that must have been heart breaking?? Do you know what caused the problem? I know if pups contract parvo that they can develop amongst other things an enlarged heart later in life, and they don't have to appear too ill as pups, so it's not something you might normally 'consider' had been through your dogs/kennels.

One of the things that worries me with the elbow grading and hip scoring systems that we currently have in place, is that there is no distinction between a joint where a dog has poorly developed joints and/or arthritis and obviously has a problem showing symptoms, to a dog that has no signs of these problems, or any outward symptoms, and yet can receive quite a poor score or grade. Without trying to gain sympathy, because my own girl is spayed, Indie's elbow grade of 2:1 I feel isn't a good reflection of her overall elbow joints, I've got a couple of reasons for thinking this, poor set of plates, and an incident where she was hit at slow speed by a car as a fairly young pup, BUT, not an excuse, I do stand by and would stand by the results, and in fact, this was a contributing factor in having her spayed. The problem is, there is no current way of distinguishing between contributing factors, so a lot of possibly good dogs with higher than wanted scores/grades, would be left by the wayside.

My current plans are to clone Indie, as she's such a fab character EVERYONE who meets her wants a Lab just like her, so anyone would have to join a very long queue