This special litter of puppies, out of KamdebooDream and DragonStones Cattle dogs, are ready for their Forever Homes.
The pups have been raised with an “Early learning” program. All have good recalls and have learnt some play behaviours: spin, roll-over etc. They have been introduced to live stock on the farm and are well socialised. It is a nice litter of seven (7) puppies, 5 males and 2 females.
Two of the males, Piper and Mustang, have normal bilateral hearing (both ears good)
Sling, a male has good hearing in one ear, which is classed as unilateral hearing. Dogs have much better hearing than humans and it has been my experience that this is unlikely to be a serious difficulty for them. (In my first litter I had a male with hearing in only one ear and he had a charming way of cocking his head when we called him.)
The two females, Cessna and Little Annie also have unilateral hearing, in their left ears.
Cheetha and Raptor are bilateral deaf and they will need families that are willing to keep them in an environment that excludes vehicles. Interestingly deaf dogs are good at search and rescue and sniffer dogs, and they are surprisingly very confident.
The parents have DNA test results as do the puppies.
As our breed has a relatively small gene pool, scientists recommend we breed to manage the hereditary diseases. We still need DNA markers for one type of deafness. But with the breakthrough of the tests for one type of deafness we are 50% of the way to solving deafness in our breed.
Ongoing research into the deafness, which is is a part of our breed, has made progress in that one type of deafness now has DNA markers. Hopefully we will soon have both.
