Stress levels fluctuating...
You are the dear friend I refer to in my email to my group.
I’m sorry, Valerie, I just don’t believe that. I don’t think you think of me as a ‘dear friend’ at all. I know you’ve been concealing things from me, and talking badly about me behind my back. I know that you didn’t call Kirstin back at the camping trip because you were afraid I would be there, and I know you campaigned to have me banned from the NIRO show after you were. I’m not stupid. And 90% of the breeders you know have known me longer, so if you think I won’t hear about these things, I can’t imagine why.
I know I’m the only person who was willing to speak with you after you got banned for Quarantine issues, I spent over THREE HOURS on the phone with you when I had company over, and yet all I hear is that “no one will talk to me!” I’m pretty sure that ‘no one’ in your mind is me.
Sweetheart…. Please Please Please do not think I am blaming you or angry with you.
YOU angry at ME? I haven’t done anything to you. Quite the reverse. Why would I think you’d be angry at me? As for blaming me, you can feel free if it blows your hair back. We BOTH know this comes from BVR Hiroku.
Look I have had too much happening at once here. Too many Holy Fuck blows!! Also, my washer is not fixed yet and it has been 4 weeks since it broke. We keep getting the run around and it is VERY stressful! I have not been able to do laundry in all that time and it is piled way past my ears around here. I also have family this past weekend, then the following 2 weekends coming to visit and I have a house full of dirty laundry…UGH!
You know what? You’re not the only one whose life has been hard lately. We lost Caesar’s 10-year-old cat, that cat was his absolute baby and we’ve had her since she was 5 weeks old. She died badly and there was a lot of drama surrounding it. I almost lost another cat to an unrelated cause this weekend. There are other bad things going on in my life as well, and I’m dong my very best to separate those things from these things. For someone who’s always complaining about how ‘busy’ Kirstin is, I’m surprised to see you using this as an excuse for your own behavior.
I’ve pretty much been advised at this point that there’s really no point in talking to you, that you’re determined that you know better than everyone and nothing that anyone says will convince you of anything. That’s probably true - it’s certainly what you’ve demonstrated time and time again. But hope springs eternal, so here I am replying to you. I hope to God you decide to finally listen for once.
I did not want to write you until I received AZUR Heebie Jeebies pathology results. I just wrote the group because that is my place to journal and talk. With my stress level being at its height right now, I did not want to come to you without all the facts.
I find it odd that you didn’t feel like you could come to me without the facts, but you could talk to Kirstin, could bring up rats to blame it on, and let her know what was going on, but not me.
The problem came out of BVR Hiroku. He was the weak link. I’m very sorry to say that, being that he’s one of my rats and out of a bloodline I know very well, but that’s just the fact of the matter. I should have been deeply involved in this from day one, not finding out after the fact. I’m very, very disappointed with the amount of disrespect that you’ve shown me, and Kirstin, in the matter of breeding rats that we trusted you with - and yes, you are a new breeder.
Jeebies passed away all of a sudden, but peacefully. Next day I had the Necropsy done after hours at the Vet. I sat in and took pictures as usual. Then not even a week goes by and Calypso has this mass in her belly. Thinking it was just a uterine tumor I quickly scheduled a removal and spay. Then I get the blow on Friday during her procedure that it is attached to her bladder and is a Transitional Cell Carcinoma, inoperable of course.
So now we are here.. Monday and my washer is still broken and my rats are all dying on me.
So you have to understand I am not in the best of spirits or moods.
Here are the recent findings that I posted to the group….
“Pathology is in on AZUR Heebie Jeebie. I will pick up a hard copy of the report later this week. What Jeebies had, would not have killed him. It was a Benign Fibroma. The only trouble was it was getting it’s blood supply from the Jugular, making it inoperable. Pathologists state that they can not confirm heredity with this sort of Tumor.
Valerie, why do you think it changes ANYTHING or makes ANYTHING better that the tumor isn’t what was the direct cause of Jeebie’s death? He HAD the cancer. It was affecting his systems, his immune systems, his general health, there’s no way that it wouldn’t be. Do you honestly think that whatever killed him at 17 months would have done it if he hadn’t had the cancer? And if you had the pathology done - what WAS determined as the cause of death, exactly?
But the kicker of it all is that AZUR Heebie Jeebies father, BVR Hiroku had a Spindle Cell Sarcoma with giant cells. The form BVR Hiroku had; was basically a malignant form of AZUR Heebie Jeebies Fibroma. At least this is how they consider the type of cell structure at this time. The issue is that even with Hiroku’s diagnosis and Jeebies, they can not conclude that this is genetic in nature. *sigh*
From my stand point, I have been hit extremely hard. My Vet is suggesting that we consult a geneticist about all this. Which I think is a great idea. What some may not understand is that Cancer does not just move forward.
I have no idea what you mean by “cancer does not just move forward.” Obviously it does. Cancer is in fact a genetic fault in some cases - in many cases it is environmental, but in some it is genetic. The fact that Hiroku and Heebie had the same type of cancer, and now the daughter/sister out of the same litter has cancer should tell you pretty clearly that Hiroku DID pass the cancer along.
Consult a geneticist? A human one? What is that going to do? We’ve been discussing this case with several experts who have a ton of experience in rodent pathology and they all pretty much say the same thing: don’t breed from those rats. It’s not rocket science, Valerie.
Genetic faults DO occur seemingly at random. Look at Queen Victoria, who passed hemophilia on to her children without any previous members of her family tree having it. And rats are little cancer factories. Hiroku was a bad genetic factory. That should be pretty proven at this point - between the cancer and the hydrocephaly that came out of the “fraggle” litter inbreed. Why are you insisting on continuing to breed from his offspring?
And why did you un-retire Jugs? You told us categorically that the hydrocephaly that came out of the complete-equivalent sibling breeding (Fergus x Begoony) disqualified that entire litter for breeding. Why in the WORLD would you un-disqualify her? The hydrocephaly didn’t disappear, and she’s descended ON BOTH SIDES of her pedigree from Hiroku! Why would you want to breed her… and to another Hiroku descendant? STOP BREEDING from Hiroku, Valerie!
Valerie, I trusted you with my bloodlines. I took an enormous chance on it, and Kirstin vouched for you, and I assure you there is a LOT of regret there now. You do NOT have to breed from Hiroku’s children or grandchildren, you DO have other options. And if you had listened to Kirstin and I when we said that before the show, you wouldn’t have done the Circceth and Thunderstruck litter and put more of this bloodline out into the world.
What AZUR Calypso Beat has, is different from the Tumors that BVR Hiroku (her father) and AZUR Heebies Jeebies (her brother) had. AZUR Calypso Beats is deemed hereditary, but only in 19% of occurrences. For me, that is enough to say it IS Hereditary and that all her children should be taken out of my breeding plans.”
Nothing to hide ok.. I was directed by a friend to your post on NIRO’s site.
Good, I hope you read it. It isn’t 100% to do with you, you’ll notice every single example I made was with MY OWN rats, including the fact that Hooperbloob’s litter is warning-flagged for me now. But I hope you did read it and take it into consideration, not that I expect you will.
Look I am not mass breeding my rats. I have been trying to cut down on my litters, but I still never had more or less really than you or K with your breedings in a year. I would say it is pretty even as far as count for how many per year.
First off, I didn’t say a thing about you overbreeding your rats. There’s nothing in my post about numbers. So I’m not sure where this is coming from.
However, why are you comparing yourself with Kirstin and I? I’ve been breeding since 1995, and Kirstin started in May of ’04. You bred your first real pedigreed litter in 2006, which was LAST YEAR, and you have more rats than we do in your general population. Kirstin says you’ve told her have about 70 rats in your general population. You don’t think that’s a problem? However, it’s not MY problem.
Kirstin’s the one who said it won’t hurt you to slow down and have some time without babies, not me. I do agree with her, however. You need to slow down. And more importantly, you need to STOP breeding your males twice while they’re under a year. I don’t know ANYONE who does that, even people like Robin and Dayna do not do that - though they’ve been breeding a lot longer than you have, so they are more established.
I understand when you are first starting a bloodline to get one really prime male and use him as your foundation, breeding him twice to two nice girls to get a nice genetic spread to begin working with, and then inbreeding. That’s the smart way to do it, it’s how Carol Lawton recommended I do it when I started establishing my blue line, and it’s perfectly fine. It would definitely be smarter to start with a male who’s at least 12 months old, there’s really no reason to breed a male younger than that. But you bred Hiroku at 5 months and then at 9 months and he died at 16 months. Do you know what that means? It means if you’d waited until he was a year old (and yes, I realize you wouldn’t have been able to use Emma since she was 9 or 10 months old when you bred her to Hiroku, but oh well, you could have gotten another female, or just used Whatif, the Emma litter is the one turning out the biggest problems now anyway) there probably would have been just one litter from Hiroku.
Then you bred Heebie Jeebie twice, once to his sister and once to an outcross, which isn’t a smart way to be establishing a line from a foundation male. At that point, you should have bred him to a daughter, and a son/daughter out of the first 2 litters, and then inbred from those litters. There’s no reason to bring in an outcross that early.
You keep repeating breedings, Val. I don’t know many breeders who bother to breed a male or female a second time, and certainly not twice in a row. I think I’ve only used the same male more than once three times since 2001! You breed him once when he’s in his prime, 12-15 months, then maybe again if he hits 2 or does really well at a show. Breeding the same rats to multiple siblings, or 2 sets of siblings from the same litters - what’s the point of that? It’s the same breeding, and it’s redundant. You should have gotten what you wanted out of the litter and be moving forward, not repeating them. And you wouldn’t have such a giant mess to untangle and so many rats out of Hiroku’s line of you hadn’t done it.
Overreliance on a single male’s bloodline can really eff you up. And I know from experience. I did the same thing with Rogue’s Sterling, and 4 years later I had to scrap the line. I’m not telling you anything you don’t know, Valerie, I don’t think you’re stupid, but I do think you’re stubborn and emotional. You’re determined not to stop Hiroku’s line, or if you do have to stop it, you think it’s a good idea to take everyone else with you, just like you tried to get me kicked out of the NIRO show if you couldn’t show in it.
Cancer does not just move forward or show up out of the blue. Just taking out the rats directly related is not the way to solve it all. Sue and I are looking into consulting a geneticist and I thought you would be interested in that.
No, Val, you’re wrong. Cancer DOES carry forward, and it DOES appear in a line where it previously hasn’t been a problem. This is over 10 years of breeding talking, and despite what you think, you do NOT have more experience than I do. Genetic disorders pop up, and that’s why we bother to select for the healthiest rats to breed from. You AREN’T selecting for the healthiest rats here, Val, and you know that.
Why are you so insistent on trying to keep breeding this bloodline? It was one bad rat who came out of a long line of decent rats - and yes, some bad ones, but none in the direct descent. Do you understand the difference?
If we tried to cut out every rat who had ever been related to a rat with cancer, no one in the fancy would have a single bloodline to work with. There is NO bloodline in existence that hasn’t had cancer, heart issue, respiratory issues, or SOMETHING like that crop up. None. And when you get a bad rat, you stop breeding from that rat and his descendants, you go back a step to aunts and uncles, or you use siblings, but you don’t breed from an unhealthy rat if you can help it.
No one will fault you for breeding Hiroku, except that you chose to do it so young, and yes, I told you that you could use your judgment in breeding him so early. I tend not to interfere in other people’s breedings, I don’t like to do it, and aside from a general heads-up I don’t get involved. I trust the people I sell breedable babies to, and I trusted your judgment. I don’t think I was wrong to trust you there, but I do think you’re no longer trustworthy, because you completely refuse to do what’s obviously the best thing for the fancy and the rats you’re producing.
No one would fault you for breeding his sons either, except that you did some redundant repetitive sibling breedings. But once you found out that Heebie Jeebie had cancer, that should have been the end of ANYTHING descended from Heebie.
What we DO fault you for is CONTINUING to breed this stuff after you KNEW that there was more than one internal organ tumor in the line.
I will tell you what I told K… I am not some ignorant ass that needs to be patronized or have her hand held, as you have had to do in the past with people. I know what I am doing and I know my rats.
Sorry, but we disagree. And these really aren’t ‘your’ rats - you’ve been breeding the bloodlines for a year. We trusted you to do the right thing and you refuse to. You’re bringing rats out of disqualification and continuing a line you don’t need to keep breeding, for no reason. You won’t listen to ANYTHING we have said to you if you don’t agree with us. You CONSTANTLY patronize the two of us and treat us with terrible disrespect.
I’m telling you right now, that I have three babies from EKO Mark Cohen - Oil Change, Wilhelmina, and Jo’s litter when she has it, and they are all vital to my lines and plans right now. Mark is over 50% descended out of BVR rats, but if something went wrong with him and Emilie emailed me and said “I don’t think you should breed from anything out of Mark,” even though it would greatly hurt my breedings on both my Russian Cinnamon and Siamese sides, I wouldn’t even hesitate. I would respect that Emilie knows her stuff, she’s a vet tech and a lab tech and more importantly, she knows that bloodline and has worked with Mark and his immediate ancestors much more recently that I have. I respect her opinion and I respect that she gave me the opportunity to use his offspring, so even though it would really fuck up my plans, if she asked me not to breed from his offspring, I wouldn’t.
The fact that you’ve completely ignored my request not to breed any more of Hiroku’s descendants, and ignored the fact that Kirstin doesn’t want you to breed from the UK mink “minions” that she never intended you to breed past one test breeding but you keep talking about it, speaks very poorly for you and your respect for us.
You have been given the opportunity to breed from some really great bloodlines, and we’re all really regretting it now because you can’t show us a single ounce of respect with regards to our bloodlines, that we were working with before you were ever on the scene.
Do you have any idea how IRONIC it was when you sent us all a DNA on someone because “Everything I suggested and said in my initial email about their application was disregarded and taken as if they are experts and I know nothing.”? That is EXACTLY how you treat us, Valerie.
Shit I have the bills, paperwork, and photos to prove it! I believe I dive deeper into the inter workings than ANY breeder out there.
No, you don’t, and don’t dislocate your arm patting yourself on the back, Val. You do your research and you sit in on your necropsies. That’s great, but it’s STANDARD. It isn’t over and above. Emilie, Kirstin and I have been doing more than that for our rats for a lot longer - hell, we spearheaded getting necropsies done on breeding stock and doing regular bloodtesting for a rattery years ago. You have NOT done more or delved deeper into this shit than the three of us have.
I do this because I care and because I want to breed better for the sake of my rats. The WHOLE rat is not just a saying for my website. It is what I do every time there is an issue. I also will never hide/cover up or sugar coat things. I have never done that in my life and I am not going to start now. Breeding is serious shit to me and I highly doubt that I am taking it lightly as my actions have proved.
If you cared about the whole rat, you wouldn’t have Rhuddlan x Jugs on your planned breeding page. Besides the fact that it’s a REDUNDANT breeding because you’ve already crossed those bloodlines plenty of times, you disqualified Jugs because of hydrocephaly and Rhuddlan is out of Heebie Jeebies!
All your actions have proved is that you will not stop breeding a litter until you have a rat die. You’re going to keep going until you have actively unhealthy rats, when you could have PREVENTED it in the first place.
I am not pointing fingers or blaming you. So do not think that.
And what exactly would you blame me FOR? I’ve been trying to help you this entire time, and you’ve completely blown me off. Digging back into the pedigrees to try and blame this on Prince Sameth (which is a complete WTF to me) or some MAR rat who’s so far back they don’t even matter (and btw, I did a NARR search, there’s no MAR rats listed with Transitional Mass that I could find, so I don’t even know where you’re getting these things) does not help. You have the ability to end this with some immediacy - Hiroku’s cancer clearly passed on, and any reasonable breeder would not breed from him. I mean, even Robin from Deer Creek, who I generally can’t stand, totally nailed it on the head in her reply to my thread:
“Tumors at a young age are also pretty serious. Internal cancers (ie non-mammary tumors) are taken very seriously while non-cancerous mammary tumors are not as life threatening in my eyes. I will not breed female offspring from a doe that develops mammary tumors at under 2 years of age. If the doe's offspring have already been bred and grandma develops a tumor, then they are watched carefully for any other instances. If there are no more occurances or the doe is older, I'll just watch the line to make sure nothing else pops up. Rats with cancers of the lungs, liver, heart or any internal organs are obviously not bred. If it pops up after they are bred, the offspring are not bred and that part of the line is ended. That rat's siblings may be bred if they prove to be hearty, but if any instances of cancer show up, the other siblings and their offspring are not bred at all.”
I have had a hard couple of weeks and I have a lot to think about. What we need to do now is figure out what to do with the information we are getting. This does not just affect the rats at my house. This affects your rats, Kirstin’s, and Emilie’s. So to just have me stop in areas is not going to help the situation. This is obviously a huge issue.
If it's a huge issue that you think affects so much, why are Hiroku's offspring still on your planned breedings page?
And you’re wrong, Valerie. It doesn’t affect us the way you think it does. Except for the rats we have that are descended from Hiroku, who none of us will be breeding… and the fact that we have to watch you continue to breed it. If you think we aren’t worried sick about that line continuing, and you crossing our other lines into Hiroku’s stuff, think again. We are.
If you think that you’re going to rob us of what we’ve worked so hard for just because you can’t accept responsibility for what you’re perpetuating, you’re wrong. No reasonable breeder would end an entire pedigree, sides and all, because one rat is throwing bad genes. They would stop the bad line and try and salvage the side lines. We’re not going to stop breeding our rats out of Tago x Fantasia and Sameth x Whimsy because there has been ONE recorded incident of cancer in ALL the breedings and crosses since then. I keep at least 25% of all my Siamese litters, and over 50% of them go to people I know well and breeders I trust, so I’m not flying blind here. I’m in no way discounting that you did INDEED crop up some genetic cancer out of the line, but the rest of us have not, and there’s no reason we should throw the baby out with the bath water.
And if you HONESTLY thought that the right thing to do was end anything in any way related to Hiroku, you wouldn’t still have his descendants on your planned breedings page, but you do. So what are we supposed to think other than this is a total ‘If I can’t have it, neither can anyone else’ play? There was a time when we would have been happy to supply you with other rats out of the same bloodlines you love so much that were not descended from Hiroku so that you could keep going.
There isn’t a single breeder in the fancy who isn’t working with lines that have, somewhere, thrown a tumor or something along those lines. That is what we deal with breeding rats. The best thing that we can do - the only thing, really - is try and be proactive about our breedings and the health of our rats. That means really watching lines where this kind of thing pops up, seeing what we can pare away, and trying to avoid anything that directly descends from what we know aren’t the BEST rats. That means breeding as late as we can healthily do, and doing all the testing we can to ensure we’re breeding healthy rats. That means watching our rats closely, and even though it can pain us, sometimes cutting our favorites out of the breeding lines.
No one is expecting you to do anything all of us haven’t done. I invested a lot more into Sterling’s line that you have into Hiroku’s; Kirstin spent a ton of time, energy and expense getting the UK line she made the hard decision to end; breeding a healthy hairless line was Emilie’s original goal and one she’s had to set aside for lack of healthy foundation stock. EVERY breeder has a story like this, if they’ve been breeding for any length of time and have any kind of ethical standards. ALL of them. Everyone’s gotten a dream rat that for one reason or another turned out not to be someone we could use. And it hurts like HELL. But if you’re going to actually breed for the whole rat, and the whole fancy, you bite the bullet and suck it up and do the best you can to do the right thing.
We should be breeding from our BEST rats. That means health, temperament, conformation, pedigree. Sometimes we makes exceptions to try and keep a rat we really like in the line, and sometimes that bites us on the ass.
I know you pretty well, I know you’re very emotional, and I’m sure you’re either totally pissed off or crying or both now. I really hope that you take some time, maybe set this aside for 12 hours or something, and then come back and read it through again. Then I hope you will actually answer the points I brought up. Because despite what you may think, I don’t hate you, but I am very disappointed. I’m not telling you anything you don’t know, Valerie.
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She's so full of contradictions it literally overwhelmed me trying to answer them. If she believes cancer doesn't move forward then why would she stop breeding from Calypso's babies? If she DOES believe it's hereditary, then why discount the cancer in Heebie and Hiroku? It's just completely insane and hypocritical. And if she's not hiding anything, why didn't her post to her adopter group mention that she's planning on bringing Jugs out of disqualification to breed her to yet another rat out of Heebie Jeebies?
I'm freaking exhausted by all this shit, and I don't need the stress. I'm having to reshuffle my breeding plans now because of this stuff, Hoop's stuff, and some new stuff, and frankly it's just tiring me. So I'm going to try and put Valerie on a shelf and see if she replies to me, and if her reply has anything resembling sanity in it. Probably it will be a lot of incoherence on why she's still right and I'm so wrong about her. Meh.
She won't be getting any more rats from me until I have proof she's shaped up, and let's not hold our breath. Hope springs eternal, but there's a point at which it's just plugging your ears and shouting.
Oh, and also annoying - I've posted 2 videos here from Youtube TWICE in the last week, and none of it's showed up. WTF is with that? shosen, are you having any trouble posting vids?
I’m sorry, Valerie, I just don’t believe that. I don’t think you think of me as a ‘dear friend’ at all. I know you’ve been concealing things from me, and talking badly about me behind my back. I know that you didn’t call Kirstin back at the camping trip because you were afraid I would be there, and I know you campaigned to have me banned from the NIRO show after you were. I’m not stupid. And 90% of the breeders you know have known me longer, so if you think I won’t hear about these things, I can’t imagine why.
I know I’m the only person who was willing to speak with you after you got banned for Quarantine issues, I spent over THREE HOURS on the phone with you when I had company over, and yet all I hear is that “no one will talk to me!” I’m pretty sure that ‘no one’ in your mind is me.
Sweetheart…. Please Please Please do not think I am blaming you or angry with you.
YOU angry at ME? I haven’t done anything to you. Quite the reverse. Why would I think you’d be angry at me? As for blaming me, you can feel free if it blows your hair back. We BOTH know this comes from BVR Hiroku.
Look I have had too much happening at once here. Too many Holy Fuck blows!! Also, my washer is not fixed yet and it has been 4 weeks since it broke. We keep getting the run around and it is VERY stressful! I have not been able to do laundry in all that time and it is piled way past my ears around here. I also have family this past weekend, then the following 2 weekends coming to visit and I have a house full of dirty laundry…UGH!
You know what? You’re not the only one whose life has been hard lately. We lost Caesar’s 10-year-old cat, that cat was his absolute baby and we’ve had her since she was 5 weeks old. She died badly and there was a lot of drama surrounding it. I almost lost another cat to an unrelated cause this weekend. There are other bad things going on in my life as well, and I’m dong my very best to separate those things from these things. For someone who’s always complaining about how ‘busy’ Kirstin is, I’m surprised to see you using this as an excuse for your own behavior.
I’ve pretty much been advised at this point that there’s really no point in talking to you, that you’re determined that you know better than everyone and nothing that anyone says will convince you of anything. That’s probably true - it’s certainly what you’ve demonstrated time and time again. But hope springs eternal, so here I am replying to you. I hope to God you decide to finally listen for once.
I did not want to write you until I received AZUR Heebie Jeebies pathology results. I just wrote the group because that is my place to journal and talk. With my stress level being at its height right now, I did not want to come to you without all the facts.
I find it odd that you didn’t feel like you could come to me without the facts, but you could talk to Kirstin, could bring up rats to blame it on, and let her know what was going on, but not me.
The problem came out of BVR Hiroku. He was the weak link. I’m very sorry to say that, being that he’s one of my rats and out of a bloodline I know very well, but that’s just the fact of the matter. I should have been deeply involved in this from day one, not finding out after the fact. I’m very, very disappointed with the amount of disrespect that you’ve shown me, and Kirstin, in the matter of breeding rats that we trusted you with - and yes, you are a new breeder.
Jeebies passed away all of a sudden, but peacefully. Next day I had the Necropsy done after hours at the Vet. I sat in and took pictures as usual. Then not even a week goes by and Calypso has this mass in her belly. Thinking it was just a uterine tumor I quickly scheduled a removal and spay. Then I get the blow on Friday during her procedure that it is attached to her bladder and is a Transitional Cell Carcinoma, inoperable of course.
So now we are here.. Monday and my washer is still broken and my rats are all dying on me.
So you have to understand I am not in the best of spirits or moods.
Here are the recent findings that I posted to the group….
“Pathology is in on AZUR Heebie Jeebie. I will pick up a hard copy of the report later this week. What Jeebies had, would not have killed him. It was a Benign Fibroma. The only trouble was it was getting it’s blood supply from the Jugular, making it inoperable. Pathologists state that they can not confirm heredity with this sort of Tumor.
Valerie, why do you think it changes ANYTHING or makes ANYTHING better that the tumor isn’t what was the direct cause of Jeebie’s death? He HAD the cancer. It was affecting his systems, his immune systems, his general health, there’s no way that it wouldn’t be. Do you honestly think that whatever killed him at 17 months would have done it if he hadn’t had the cancer? And if you had the pathology done - what WAS determined as the cause of death, exactly?
But the kicker of it all is that AZUR Heebie Jeebies father, BVR Hiroku had a Spindle Cell Sarcoma with giant cells. The form BVR Hiroku had; was basically a malignant form of AZUR Heebie Jeebies Fibroma. At least this is how they consider the type of cell structure at this time. The issue is that even with Hiroku’s diagnosis and Jeebies, they can not conclude that this is genetic in nature. *sigh*
From my stand point, I have been hit extremely hard. My Vet is suggesting that we consult a geneticist about all this. Which I think is a great idea. What some may not understand is that Cancer does not just move forward.
I have no idea what you mean by “cancer does not just move forward.” Obviously it does. Cancer is in fact a genetic fault in some cases - in many cases it is environmental, but in some it is genetic. The fact that Hiroku and Heebie had the same type of cancer, and now the daughter/sister out of the same litter has cancer should tell you pretty clearly that Hiroku DID pass the cancer along.
Consult a geneticist? A human one? What is that going to do? We’ve been discussing this case with several experts who have a ton of experience in rodent pathology and they all pretty much say the same thing: don’t breed from those rats. It’s not rocket science, Valerie.
Genetic faults DO occur seemingly at random. Look at Queen Victoria, who passed hemophilia on to her children without any previous members of her family tree having it. And rats are little cancer factories. Hiroku was a bad genetic factory. That should be pretty proven at this point - between the cancer and the hydrocephaly that came out of the “fraggle” litter inbreed. Why are you insisting on continuing to breed from his offspring?
And why did you un-retire Jugs? You told us categorically that the hydrocephaly that came out of the complete-equivalent sibling breeding (Fergus x Begoony) disqualified that entire litter for breeding. Why in the WORLD would you un-disqualify her? The hydrocephaly didn’t disappear, and she’s descended ON BOTH SIDES of her pedigree from Hiroku! Why would you want to breed her… and to another Hiroku descendant? STOP BREEDING from Hiroku, Valerie!
Valerie, I trusted you with my bloodlines. I took an enormous chance on it, and Kirstin vouched for you, and I assure you there is a LOT of regret there now. You do NOT have to breed from Hiroku’s children or grandchildren, you DO have other options. And if you had listened to Kirstin and I when we said that before the show, you wouldn’t have done the Circceth and Thunderstruck litter and put more of this bloodline out into the world.
What AZUR Calypso Beat has, is different from the Tumors that BVR Hiroku (her father) and AZUR Heebies Jeebies (her brother) had. AZUR Calypso Beats is deemed hereditary, but only in 19% of occurrences. For me, that is enough to say it IS Hereditary and that all her children should be taken out of my breeding plans.”
Nothing to hide ok.. I was directed by a friend to your post on NIRO’s site.
Good, I hope you read it. It isn’t 100% to do with you, you’ll notice every single example I made was with MY OWN rats, including the fact that Hooperbloob’s litter is warning-flagged for me now. But I hope you did read it and take it into consideration, not that I expect you will.
Look I am not mass breeding my rats. I have been trying to cut down on my litters, but I still never had more or less really than you or K with your breedings in a year. I would say it is pretty even as far as count for how many per year.
First off, I didn’t say a thing about you overbreeding your rats. There’s nothing in my post about numbers. So I’m not sure where this is coming from.
However, why are you comparing yourself with Kirstin and I? I’ve been breeding since 1995, and Kirstin started in May of ’04. You bred your first real pedigreed litter in 2006, which was LAST YEAR, and you have more rats than we do in your general population. Kirstin says you’ve told her have about 70 rats in your general population. You don’t think that’s a problem? However, it’s not MY problem.
Kirstin’s the one who said it won’t hurt you to slow down and have some time without babies, not me. I do agree with her, however. You need to slow down. And more importantly, you need to STOP breeding your males twice while they’re under a year. I don’t know ANYONE who does that, even people like Robin and Dayna do not do that - though they’ve been breeding a lot longer than you have, so they are more established.
I understand when you are first starting a bloodline to get one really prime male and use him as your foundation, breeding him twice to two nice girls to get a nice genetic spread to begin working with, and then inbreeding. That’s the smart way to do it, it’s how Carol Lawton recommended I do it when I started establishing my blue line, and it’s perfectly fine. It would definitely be smarter to start with a male who’s at least 12 months old, there’s really no reason to breed a male younger than that. But you bred Hiroku at 5 months and then at 9 months and he died at 16 months. Do you know what that means? It means if you’d waited until he was a year old (and yes, I realize you wouldn’t have been able to use Emma since she was 9 or 10 months old when you bred her to Hiroku, but oh well, you could have gotten another female, or just used Whatif, the Emma litter is the one turning out the biggest problems now anyway) there probably would have been just one litter from Hiroku.
Then you bred Heebie Jeebie twice, once to his sister and once to an outcross, which isn’t a smart way to be establishing a line from a foundation male. At that point, you should have bred him to a daughter, and a son/daughter out of the first 2 litters, and then inbred from those litters. There’s no reason to bring in an outcross that early.
You keep repeating breedings, Val. I don’t know many breeders who bother to breed a male or female a second time, and certainly not twice in a row. I think I’ve only used the same male more than once three times since 2001! You breed him once when he’s in his prime, 12-15 months, then maybe again if he hits 2 or does really well at a show. Breeding the same rats to multiple siblings, or 2 sets of siblings from the same litters - what’s the point of that? It’s the same breeding, and it’s redundant. You should have gotten what you wanted out of the litter and be moving forward, not repeating them. And you wouldn’t have such a giant mess to untangle and so many rats out of Hiroku’s line of you hadn’t done it.
Overreliance on a single male’s bloodline can really eff you up. And I know from experience. I did the same thing with Rogue’s Sterling, and 4 years later I had to scrap the line. I’m not telling you anything you don’t know, Valerie, I don’t think you’re stupid, but I do think you’re stubborn and emotional. You’re determined not to stop Hiroku’s line, or if you do have to stop it, you think it’s a good idea to take everyone else with you, just like you tried to get me kicked out of the NIRO show if you couldn’t show in it.
Cancer does not just move forward or show up out of the blue. Just taking out the rats directly related is not the way to solve it all. Sue and I are looking into consulting a geneticist and I thought you would be interested in that.
No, Val, you’re wrong. Cancer DOES carry forward, and it DOES appear in a line where it previously hasn’t been a problem. This is over 10 years of breeding talking, and despite what you think, you do NOT have more experience than I do. Genetic disorders pop up, and that’s why we bother to select for the healthiest rats to breed from. You AREN’T selecting for the healthiest rats here, Val, and you know that.
Why are you so insistent on trying to keep breeding this bloodline? It was one bad rat who came out of a long line of decent rats - and yes, some bad ones, but none in the direct descent. Do you understand the difference?
If we tried to cut out every rat who had ever been related to a rat with cancer, no one in the fancy would have a single bloodline to work with. There is NO bloodline in existence that hasn’t had cancer, heart issue, respiratory issues, or SOMETHING like that crop up. None. And when you get a bad rat, you stop breeding from that rat and his descendants, you go back a step to aunts and uncles, or you use siblings, but you don’t breed from an unhealthy rat if you can help it.
No one will fault you for breeding Hiroku, except that you chose to do it so young, and yes, I told you that you could use your judgment in breeding him so early. I tend not to interfere in other people’s breedings, I don’t like to do it, and aside from a general heads-up I don’t get involved. I trust the people I sell breedable babies to, and I trusted your judgment. I don’t think I was wrong to trust you there, but I do think you’re no longer trustworthy, because you completely refuse to do what’s obviously the best thing for the fancy and the rats you’re producing.
No one would fault you for breeding his sons either, except that you did some redundant repetitive sibling breedings. But once you found out that Heebie Jeebie had cancer, that should have been the end of ANYTHING descended from Heebie.
What we DO fault you for is CONTINUING to breed this stuff after you KNEW that there was more than one internal organ tumor in the line.
I will tell you what I told K… I am not some ignorant ass that needs to be patronized or have her hand held, as you have had to do in the past with people. I know what I am doing and I know my rats.
Sorry, but we disagree. And these really aren’t ‘your’ rats - you’ve been breeding the bloodlines for a year. We trusted you to do the right thing and you refuse to. You’re bringing rats out of disqualification and continuing a line you don’t need to keep breeding, for no reason. You won’t listen to ANYTHING we have said to you if you don’t agree with us. You CONSTANTLY patronize the two of us and treat us with terrible disrespect.
I’m telling you right now, that I have three babies from EKO Mark Cohen - Oil Change, Wilhelmina, and Jo’s litter when she has it, and they are all vital to my lines and plans right now. Mark is over 50% descended out of BVR rats, but if something went wrong with him and Emilie emailed me and said “I don’t think you should breed from anything out of Mark,” even though it would greatly hurt my breedings on both my Russian Cinnamon and Siamese sides, I wouldn’t even hesitate. I would respect that Emilie knows her stuff, she’s a vet tech and a lab tech and more importantly, she knows that bloodline and has worked with Mark and his immediate ancestors much more recently that I have. I respect her opinion and I respect that she gave me the opportunity to use his offspring, so even though it would really fuck up my plans, if she asked me not to breed from his offspring, I wouldn’t.
The fact that you’ve completely ignored my request not to breed any more of Hiroku’s descendants, and ignored the fact that Kirstin doesn’t want you to breed from the UK mink “minions” that she never intended you to breed past one test breeding but you keep talking about it, speaks very poorly for you and your respect for us.
You have been given the opportunity to breed from some really great bloodlines, and we’re all really regretting it now because you can’t show us a single ounce of respect with regards to our bloodlines, that we were working with before you were ever on the scene.
Do you have any idea how IRONIC it was when you sent us all a DNA on someone because “Everything I suggested and said in my initial email about their application was disregarded and taken as if they are experts and I know nothing.”? That is EXACTLY how you treat us, Valerie.
Shit I have the bills, paperwork, and photos to prove it! I believe I dive deeper into the inter workings than ANY breeder out there.
No, you don’t, and don’t dislocate your arm patting yourself on the back, Val. You do your research and you sit in on your necropsies. That’s great, but it’s STANDARD. It isn’t over and above. Emilie, Kirstin and I have been doing more than that for our rats for a lot longer - hell, we spearheaded getting necropsies done on breeding stock and doing regular bloodtesting for a rattery years ago. You have NOT done more or delved deeper into this shit than the three of us have.
I do this because I care and because I want to breed better for the sake of my rats. The WHOLE rat is not just a saying for my website. It is what I do every time there is an issue. I also will never hide/cover up or sugar coat things. I have never done that in my life and I am not going to start now. Breeding is serious shit to me and I highly doubt that I am taking it lightly as my actions have proved.
If you cared about the whole rat, you wouldn’t have Rhuddlan x Jugs on your planned breeding page. Besides the fact that it’s a REDUNDANT breeding because you’ve already crossed those bloodlines plenty of times, you disqualified Jugs because of hydrocephaly and Rhuddlan is out of Heebie Jeebies!
All your actions have proved is that you will not stop breeding a litter until you have a rat die. You’re going to keep going until you have actively unhealthy rats, when you could have PREVENTED it in the first place.
I am not pointing fingers or blaming you. So do not think that.
And what exactly would you blame me FOR? I’ve been trying to help you this entire time, and you’ve completely blown me off. Digging back into the pedigrees to try and blame this on Prince Sameth (which is a complete WTF to me) or some MAR rat who’s so far back they don’t even matter (and btw, I did a NARR search, there’s no MAR rats listed with Transitional Mass that I could find, so I don’t even know where you’re getting these things) does not help. You have the ability to end this with some immediacy - Hiroku’s cancer clearly passed on, and any reasonable breeder would not breed from him. I mean, even Robin from Deer Creek, who I generally can’t stand, totally nailed it on the head in her reply to my thread:
“Tumors at a young age are also pretty serious. Internal cancers (ie non-mammary tumors) are taken very seriously while non-cancerous mammary tumors are not as life threatening in my eyes. I will not breed female offspring from a doe that develops mammary tumors at under 2 years of age. If the doe's offspring have already been bred and grandma develops a tumor, then they are watched carefully for any other instances. If there are no more occurances or the doe is older, I'll just watch the line to make sure nothing else pops up. Rats with cancers of the lungs, liver, heart or any internal organs are obviously not bred. If it pops up after they are bred, the offspring are not bred and that part of the line is ended. That rat's siblings may be bred if they prove to be hearty, but if any instances of cancer show up, the other siblings and their offspring are not bred at all.”
I have had a hard couple of weeks and I have a lot to think about. What we need to do now is figure out what to do with the information we are getting. This does not just affect the rats at my house. This affects your rats, Kirstin’s, and Emilie’s. So to just have me stop in areas is not going to help the situation. This is obviously a huge issue.
If it's a huge issue that you think affects so much, why are Hiroku's offspring still on your planned breedings page?
And you’re wrong, Valerie. It doesn’t affect us the way you think it does. Except for the rats we have that are descended from Hiroku, who none of us will be breeding… and the fact that we have to watch you continue to breed it. If you think we aren’t worried sick about that line continuing, and you crossing our other lines into Hiroku’s stuff, think again. We are.
If you think that you’re going to rob us of what we’ve worked so hard for just because you can’t accept responsibility for what you’re perpetuating, you’re wrong. No reasonable breeder would end an entire pedigree, sides and all, because one rat is throwing bad genes. They would stop the bad line and try and salvage the side lines. We’re not going to stop breeding our rats out of Tago x Fantasia and Sameth x Whimsy because there has been ONE recorded incident of cancer in ALL the breedings and crosses since then. I keep at least 25% of all my Siamese litters, and over 50% of them go to people I know well and breeders I trust, so I’m not flying blind here. I’m in no way discounting that you did INDEED crop up some genetic cancer out of the line, but the rest of us have not, and there’s no reason we should throw the baby out with the bath water.
And if you HONESTLY thought that the right thing to do was end anything in any way related to Hiroku, you wouldn’t still have his descendants on your planned breedings page, but you do. So what are we supposed to think other than this is a total ‘If I can’t have it, neither can anyone else’ play? There was a time when we would have been happy to supply you with other rats out of the same bloodlines you love so much that were not descended from Hiroku so that you could keep going.
There isn’t a single breeder in the fancy who isn’t working with lines that have, somewhere, thrown a tumor or something along those lines. That is what we deal with breeding rats. The best thing that we can do - the only thing, really - is try and be proactive about our breedings and the health of our rats. That means really watching lines where this kind of thing pops up, seeing what we can pare away, and trying to avoid anything that directly descends from what we know aren’t the BEST rats. That means breeding as late as we can healthily do, and doing all the testing we can to ensure we’re breeding healthy rats. That means watching our rats closely, and even though it can pain us, sometimes cutting our favorites out of the breeding lines.
No one is expecting you to do anything all of us haven’t done. I invested a lot more into Sterling’s line that you have into Hiroku’s; Kirstin spent a ton of time, energy and expense getting the UK line she made the hard decision to end; breeding a healthy hairless line was Emilie’s original goal and one she’s had to set aside for lack of healthy foundation stock. EVERY breeder has a story like this, if they’ve been breeding for any length of time and have any kind of ethical standards. ALL of them. Everyone’s gotten a dream rat that for one reason or another turned out not to be someone we could use. And it hurts like HELL. But if you’re going to actually breed for the whole rat, and the whole fancy, you bite the bullet and suck it up and do the best you can to do the right thing.
We should be breeding from our BEST rats. That means health, temperament, conformation, pedigree. Sometimes we makes exceptions to try and keep a rat we really like in the line, and sometimes that bites us on the ass.
I know you pretty well, I know you’re very emotional, and I’m sure you’re either totally pissed off or crying or both now. I really hope that you take some time, maybe set this aside for 12 hours or something, and then come back and read it through again. Then I hope you will actually answer the points I brought up. Because despite what you may think, I don’t hate you, but I am very disappointed. I’m not telling you anything you don’t know, Valerie.
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She's so full of contradictions it literally overwhelmed me trying to answer them. If she believes cancer doesn't move forward then why would she stop breeding from Calypso's babies? If she DOES believe it's hereditary, then why discount the cancer in Heebie and Hiroku? It's just completely insane and hypocritical. And if she's not hiding anything, why didn't her post to her adopter group mention that she's planning on bringing Jugs out of disqualification to breed her to yet another rat out of Heebie Jeebies?
I'm freaking exhausted by all this shit, and I don't need the stress. I'm having to reshuffle my breeding plans now because of this stuff, Hoop's stuff, and some new stuff, and frankly it's just tiring me. So I'm going to try and put Valerie on a shelf and see if she replies to me, and if her reply has anything resembling sanity in it. Probably it will be a lot of incoherence on why she's still right and I'm so wrong about her. Meh.
She won't be getting any more rats from me until I have proof she's shaped up, and let's not hold our breath. Hope springs eternal, but there's a point at which it's just plugging your ears and shouting.
Oh, and also annoying - I've posted 2 videos here from Youtube TWICE in the last week, and none of it's showed up. WTF is with that? shosen, are you having any trouble posting vids?