03 Aug RKC Nose to Tail Assessment
As Breed Health Coordinator I have been contacted by the RKC with an update on the Nose to Tail Assessment process. Interested readers may have heard about this in the dog press or remember it being mentioned by myself previously. For context and explanation, this taken from the introduction document
“Extreme conformation in dogs describes a physical appearance that is so exaggerated that affected dogs commonly suffer from poor health and welfare, with negative impacts on their quality and/or quantity of life.
The Royal Kennel Club’s new Nose-to-Tail Veterinary Visual Assessment is being developed as an evidence-based, veterinary-led tool to assess visible conformation that may be associated with health and/or welfare concerns. The aim is to create a standard assessment (applicable to any breed) to support breeders in making informed and responsible breeding decisions.
The assessment is intended to be a one-time check carried out before breeding in adult dogs. There may be different minimum ages for fast and slow maturing breeds, and some slow-maturing breeds may have provisional and final minimum ages for provisional and final assessment, to allow breeding before full physical maturity. The assessment will include a set number of graded criteria.
Where possible, each criterion will be graded on a scale from 0 to 3 (0 being normal and 3 being the most extreme). Grades will be added together to create a total score for each dog. For example, if there were 14 criteria and they were all graded 0-3, the minimum score that a dog could achieve would be 0 and the maximum would be 42. This could allow comparison between dogs, monitoring of breed averages over time, and can support future efforts to reduce extreme conformation associated with health and/or welfare concerns”.
The assessment is not yet at the stage where it is completely ready to go public but a limited number of owners are invited to watch a 25 minute video, introducing the assessment and then complete an online assessment to afford the RKC wider opinions and shape the speed and direction of progress. This will be followed up by a limited number of trial assessments at The Welsh Kennel Club show later this month, (other shows for other groups), undertaken as part of the development to full introduction.
Anyone in the Bernese community who might be interested to take part in these validation processes is welcome to contact me and I will be happy to send the links, more info and how to get involved.
Thank you
Steve Green BMD BHC
health@bernese.co.uk