I'm surprised that people still don't know about Prapsos. The results of the tests were published in the UK, USA and Australia. How CHART worked (I don't think they exist anymore) was they sent all the results to a number of geneticists and Burn and Fraser came up with the answer. It's QUANTITIVE GENETICS. We knew from the experiments we did that it could not possible be dominant and soon we realized it wasn't recessive. To go back. The kennel I imported my originals from was Ramblersholt. Mrs Dudman refused to use an import from Nepal until he'd been thoroughly test mated. That's why she didn't have Prapsos. Having lived in Nepal she knew that the people there were not very particular about matings. In fact when I went to Nepal I was amazed to find them happily mating Apsos to Tibbies. Of course, the English breeders all wanted to use this dog and they got Prapsos. A son of his was one of the biggest producers of Prapsos but instead of doing anything about it, the breeders swept it under the carpet. An import from the US also from Nepalese parents produced them, especially if mated to offspring of the English dog. It was when a good friend of mine with her dog (a son of the biggest producer of Prapsos) that we got the first. She asked me to go and look at this puppy. She had seen one in England but had been told that it was nothing to worry about. We took action immediately. Fortunately there weren't too many breeders at that time. We went around asking them if they had anything suspicious. We managed to get them to agree to doing test matings. I then did my best to get information from the UK and USA. With a lot of persuasion and having to promise not to divulge the names of the dogs, I got cooperation. All this took time and money. Once we got the result of all the hard work, we could advice people on how to mate. Now the secret of the whole thing is honesty. If breeders wont admit that they've had Prapsos you are taking a gamble with any dog you use. You certainly wouldn't repeat a mating. Don't breed brother and sister if there's the slightest doubt about a dog. Have a good look at the pedigrees and see if you can work out where the double up occurred. I know this is difficult as breeders don't talk when they should. Also the pedigrees wouldn't go back to the original culprits. We almost wiped it out by people who were not greedy and did the right thing by the breed. Alas there are too many that are not so honest. I also wonder if breeders warn people of the problem when they sell a puppy. I did and explained as much as I could to them. Today there are still breeders that say they didn't have Prapsos but some of their stock produced them. Others had them but didn't tell people. Some breeders simply desexed the parents and sold them and their offspring as pets without papers. They didn't bother to try and solve the problem. If breeders continue these actions, the problem will never been solved. What I would like to warn people about is the semi Prapso which might have only one feature which would give the breeder a clue. It could be a cut off coat, single coat, no hair between the toes, lack of hair on the back or front of the legs or ears, hare feet and of course the fast teething. If a puppy has anything which does not comply with the standard, play it safe and don't use them for breeding.
Note: This article was compiled from a letter that I received from Mrs Joan Beard in which I asked her about the occurrence of Prapsos and the results of CHART. Copyright by Mrs Joan Beard.
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