Margaret Carter.

I have owned cavaliers since 1976, when we bought a tricolour puppy for my daughter’s eighth birthday. She won two classes at a fun show and started me on a long career of showing and breeding dogs.

In 1992 I bred my once-in-a-lifetime Cavalier, Monty ( Champion Mareve Indiana ) who became a leading stud dog with Champion children all over the world.

When Monty was nine years old I found out he was implicated in the spread of a newly identified health problem called syringomyelia ( SM ). He had no symptoms at that time, but two years later he started screaming with neck pain and soon after I was forced to make the decision to put him to sleep. A post mortem confirmed he had syringomyelia.

At this time I was the UK Cavalier Club Health Representative so I was well placed to try and raise awareness of the rapidly spreading problem of SM within the breed. In 2008 I appeared in the documentary ‘Pedigree Dogs Exposed’, which publicised the issue, and this led to my removal from my position within the Cavalier Club Committee.
I still continued to work to improve the health and welfare of Cavaliers. Like Carol I gave evidence to the APGAW and the Bateson Reports on dog breeding and have campaigned for official BVA/KC screening schemes for CMSM and Mitral Valve Disease.