Thanks to Jeri for the blog idea and motivation. I’d a lot rather talk about fronts than hips. For one thing, I think that I finally have some understanding of the correct front. I admit that I am still scratching my head about the vagaries of how hips are graded and the unknowns of the genetics.
One year ago at this time I had eight dogs here: Julie, Kacy, Alice, Phoebe, Huxley, Digger, Molly, and Nikki. I have to tell you that having five is a heck-of-a-lot better. In nothing flat this morning I was able to do everyone’s toenails. They aren’t groomed other than feet so cut me a break on that. But at least they aren’t muddy, finally having taken care of that problem.
The best way to learn about fronts, or for that matter any part of a dog, is to look at lots and lots of them. When you are comparing your own dogs to others it’s hard to not be either kennel blind or overly critical. Your emotions come into play and you may feel defensive. Once you have or have had a number of your own, you can compare them impartially to each other without feeling threatened.
Yes, we started out in Cardigans with (ahem) not the best of fronts. That has led us to be more discerning and more critical now.
In the last few years we have been blessed with a couple of girls with excellent fronts.
Alice (Ch Mariel Reese’s Alice Springs): mature 8.5 year-old bitch who has whelped 4 litters. Her chest has ideal shape and her arms wrap smoothly around it in a nice-fitting package. I don’t have pictures of her as a puppy to compare to as Alice was just short of 5 when she came to us.
Phoebe (Ch Windshyre Stormy Weather): mature 7.5 year-old bitch who has whelped 2 litters. Like Alice, she has a good chest shape and smooth fit to shoulders. These are natural rather than carefully stacked pictures and you can see that she has slightly more turn out on her left leg. That is the leg that was broken near the growth plate when she was two. It’s not enough difference that it bothers me at all and it doesn’t bother Phoebe either except when somebody bites it again.
For a nice comparison to an immature chest, above is Phoebe when we first met her. She was about 10.5 months old.
Molly (C-Myste Baledwr Free Speech): immature 15-month-old bitch. Now major pointed and a good mover, has a nice chest shape but is lacking in depth. Her shoulders and upper arms do fit nicely so I am holding the right thoughts that her chest will deepen as Phoebe's did. Right now she is rather "leggy" in appearance.
Molly at 8 weeks.
Huxley (Ch Wolfrun Brave New World): 4-year-old dog. Huxley has a nice fit to his shoulder and a good length of upper arm. Huxley is somewhat wider in front than the girls. Mature males do have more chest: compare the pictures in the Illustrated Standard (male – female). At the risk of boring the more knowledgeable readers, when we say that the chest should be “egg shaped” what we are envisioning is a hard boiled egg standing on its small pointed side. The big side is at the shoulders, the chest should come down in a point.
Kacy (Ch C-Myste Shepherd’s Moon), mature bitch who will be 13 years old on 4/3/09 and whelped a single litter. She is now becoming “the ancient one” and was not at all pleased about being on the table. Though she has smooth-fitting shoulders, Kacy has a round chest shape, which results in a wider and straighter front than is ideal. She also has oval rather than round bone, which you can note from her foot shape.
Recently we heard that a somewhat leggy bitch had been described as having “too long an upper arm”. I don’t think that’s possible. Many breeds including Cardigans have a problem with too short of an upper arm. My guess is that there was an incorrect understanding of which bone the “upper arm” is.
Here’s a Cardigan skeleton from the illustrated standard compared to a labeled “normal” dog skeleton. The “upper arm” is the bone labeled “humerus”. The bitch in question has a long forearm or foreleg (“radius”). We have also had dogs with long pasterns (“metacarpus”).
Here’s a glossary of terms from “The Kennel Club” (UK). It does help if everyone is on the same page and that when we use a word to describe something, that we use the correct word.
CODE IS POETRY
Really, at this point in your breeding program you have all pretty nice fronts. Alice’s is truly lovely, but the rest are good as well IMO. Awesome!
Nice post, Carolyn.
As someone whose extracurricular passion is Dog Rescue, my focus is always on temperament first.
I really appreciate a posting that helps me understand what breeders are looking at when they evaluate a Cardi. Thanks!
Thanks for taking the time to photograph and detail out each of your dogs…. it’s great to compare…
I was amazed at how much Sedona’s front looked like her mothers in her younger years! Let’s see how they’ve changed 
Ungroomed of course… baths are tomorrow 
Now for the sake of continuing the thread, I will go and do the same with mine… it’ll be fun to compare Sedona’s front to her mothers
Ok I’ll try to get the other 4 who are with me on the table tomorrow as well, as they are children and one grandchild of the 2 mature bitches
I wonder if Phoebe’s leg would look as different if the markings matched. Yes off, but the illusion makes it worse.
Thanks for the education Carolyn, I would love to see one that shows the correct way to stack.Keep up the good work.
Your dogs have GIANOURMOUS heads….lol
Yeah, I thought they were kind of cute that way. Like those big-headed Japanese dog pictures.
Fun with camera angles.
I do think that the markings accentuate the difference in Phoebe’s legs. If you imagine the left leg dark to below the pastern joint it looks more even.
This was a great learning experience …. please don’t give me a test though. I don’t like tests.
Having bred and shown Paint Horses, it is amazing to see what a difference markings can make.You notice it a lot when they are moving. The markings can throw everything askew. Denise
Well and hasn’t the standard changed over the years? When i look at old photos of cardis from 50 years ago or so, they did have longer legs.
I’ll try for shots tomorrow in the daylight — Chase (who wears a leg warmer on his judge side) and the Dink, and Kip (his front and his temperament may be his only redeeming features).
The “long upper arm” could have also been based on a telephone misunderstanding of an idiot newbie to Cardi conformation… I will admit I was trying to soak in everything being told to me, and a bit overwhelmed with info!
I would assume the breeder in question would have used correct terms! I think that’s what I heard, but I very well could be wrong
I’ll try to get pics of mine, since Traum is a good “what you don’t want”, including oval bone, and I think other than her round chest, Galaxy has a nice front. I also adore Galaxy’s pretty round bone. If only the game of ‘glue the dogs’ was an option! Little snip and glue here and there……
I’m loving this blog series on fronts, though I realize now I should have read from the first post up because they built on each other. I started with the last one and was quite confused!
Phoebe looks so great, and very relaxed. I second guess myself a lot on my major doggy decisions, but there is truly no better place Phoebe could have ended up. I know I say that a lot, but that’s because it’s true.
I think Kacy is absolutely gorgeous. I’ve only met her a couple times, but I like her a lot, and she looks terrific. I see what you mean about the straight legs. When I look at a dog I tend to notice either the really good or really bad (sometimes you see a dog and there is a feature that makes you either go “Wow” or “Ack!”). On Kacy I always notice her head and face- it really draws me in. I don’t know how her head is based on the standard, but I have always found her to be beautiful.
It’s been cool to read these blogs and hang out at the show with you guys, and be reminded of looking at the individual features on the dogs. Not really essential for a pet person like me, but interesting all the same, and definitely makes me sound intelligent when commenting on televised dog shows over a bowl of popcorn.
Side note, I remember when I was taking Phoebe to show class, Chuck used to tell me I could literally lift up her front off the table and set her back down with almost no adjusting at all. He thought her front was pretty darned close to perfect and we would just adjust her feet ever so slightly once in a while if she needed it. I don’t know what your thoughts are on that, but I thought it was worth mentioning.