Emma on the puppy truck

We got word yesterday that Emma has been dropped from consideration as a breeder. She will be spayed and when she has healed she will start training to be a guide dog. She was dropped for TVD (Tricuspid Valve Dysplasia). It is a congenital and heritable heart defect that is fairly common in labs. Her condition is referred to as equivocal which means that the EKG shows she is in the gray area of the condition. From my research they don’t really know how much valve leakage is “normal” in dogs. It seems Emma has some leakage but not enough to be a problem for her health. But since it is an inheritable condition they don’t want to use dogs with even the equivocal form of the disease. I wonder if this is the same reason Yakira was dropped. All we found out for here was that her EKG wasn’t perfect.

Now the waiting begins for Emma to show up on the weekly phase reports. My guess is that it will be at least two weeks but could be as long as 4 more weeks. It would have been fun to see little Emma pups but I didn’t really expect her to be selected for breeding. Just doesn’t seem to be our lot to raiser breeders. I’m super happy to be raising guide dogs.

p.s. Fable is making great progress and is a fun and sometimes challenging puppy but very sweet and cute.

p.s.s. Today marks 5 years since we put Apex on the truck back to GDB to start his training as a guide dog.