Hello blogland...

Hey all! I just wanted to say that I will pick up the front discussion hopefully in the next few days. I keep trying to get to my parents house to get some pictures off of that computer, but haven't had a chance too! Thanks to C-myste for doing a wonderful job about making lines all over dogs!!! For those who haven't gone to CCI website, http://www.cardicommentary.de/ in a while, I encourage you to do so. They keep adding things that I love and a bunch of things on balance, length to height ratio, etc. that will help in this discussion we have going on blogland! It is amazing to me once you measure your dog and really feel where everything is...how many dogs are actually TOO long for their height ratio of 1.8:1. Don Lassila years back created a tool to measure this. I have experimented with it and maybe some of you might want too. Of course measuring is always the best, but this tool sometimes helps go over several dogs at one time and just see how big of difference a too long dog is, a too short, and the correct length to height ratio.

While I am on that theme...I was talking to a Papillon breeder the other day who measures her puppies at different stages through their growth. After many years of doing this she now has the tool to be able to guess if a dog at a young age is going to be proportionate by adulthood. The interesting thing is, most of the dogs that are perfect "slightly longer then tall" (according to the Pap standard), are dogs that some breeders have told her are TOO long. So, in both breeds your eye can be fooled and the only way to help with that is to measure and get the FACTS about which dog is really too long and which is correct.

Always remember that in a Cardigan, the majority of length comes from the ribs NOT the loin. This is one of my pet peeves and is hard for me to live with a long in loin. I would much rather have a too short that is proportionate ratio of the rib versus loin.