Health & paperwork
Health tests, without the typing
A DNA panel can list twenty markers. Point your phone at it and StudBase reads them off. Then when a buyer asks to see them, you pick which ones and they go straight into the chat, stamped.
Health & paperwork
A DNA panel can list twenty markers. Point your phone at it and StudBase reads them off. Then when a buyer asks to see them, you pick which ones and they go straight into the chat, stamped.
How it works
Copying twenty markers across by hand is a slow job, and a mistyped result is worse than no result at all. Reading them off the certificate takes that risk out.
However it arrived: paper, email, or a photo you already had.
A twenty-marker DNA panel, filled in without typing any of it.
On his record, not in a folder on a phone you no longer own.
A buyer requests them, you pick which, and they go out stamped.
Who sees them
That’s the usual worry about putting them anywhere, so to be plain: nobody browsing your advert can download them. Nobody gets a copy unless you send one.
A request from a buyer arrives in your messages like anything else. Ignore it and nothing happens.
Not all of them, not automatically. You choose what goes, one enquiry at a time.
Marked PREVIEW before the mating and CONFIRMED afterwards, so a certificate can’t be passed off as proof of something that hasn’t happened. A copy that can’t be stamped doesn’t get sent at all.
The practical difference it makes is the enquiry that goes cold. With the paperwork on file, “can I see his health tests?” is a couple of taps. Without it, it’s hunting through a drawer that evening while somebody else answers them. Adverts live on studmatch, and the request comes back to the same inbox as everything else.
The code in the corner
The stamp isn’t only there to protect you. The QR code goes straight to his page on studmatch.co.uk: his photos, his tests, his fee and the button to enquire. And it’s on every page, not just the first.
Paperwork gets passed on. A buyer forwards it to the friend who’s also looking, shows it to their vet, or leaves it in a folder until the next season comes round. Every one of those copies is a way back to you, months after you sent it, and it costs you nothing to send.
On his record
The things a buyer asks about, and the things you’d otherwise be trying to remember.
Every marker and its result, in the wording the certificate used. “Clear – Degenerative Myelopathy”, not a guess at what it stands for.
The score and the date it was done, rather than “fully health tested”.
His registration number and whether he’s KC registered, with his pedigree filed alongside the certificates.
The certificates themselves, so the paperwork exists the moment somebody asks for it.
His paperwork sits alongside the rest of his record: every booking he has covered, the contracts signed against them, and what he has earned.
Day to day
Wormer, fleas, boosters, and whatever the vet has him on this month. With one dog you’d remember. With four, all on different dates, you won’t.
Log it once and StudBase works out when it’s next due and puts it on your task list with his name on it. Not “Wormer due”, but “Wormer due for Charlie”, which is the difference between a reminder you act on and one you scroll past. It can drop the cost into your expenses at the same time.
A course from the vet is treated differently, because it is different. Seven days of antibiotics runs and then it’s finished. It isn’t due again, and it doesn’t sit in your list pretending to be.
His welfare is the first reason to stay on top of it. There is a second, quieter one. If he isn’t right you won’t use him, and that means ringing someone whose girl is already in season to say it isn’t happening this time. Knowing what’s due, and when, is how you avoid making that call.
A word on health testing
There is a business case, and it is a real one. More licensed breeders ask for it every year, and a stud that hasn’t been tested, or has only had PRA done, will have people book elsewhere. That is true. It isn’t why I do it.
A puppy leaves here and goes to a family. If something shows up at three years old that a test would have flagged before the mating, they are the ones living with it and paying the bills. They didn’t choose that. I did, when I agreed to the mating.
So I test, and I keep the certificates where I can put my hand on them. Not because it sells, although it does. Because when it goes wrong, somebody else carries it.
— Gavin, StudBase
Most of the time it is simply whether the dog is health tested at all. Some will ask about hips and eyes by name. What matters more than the list is being able to show what was done, under which scheme and when, rather than answering "he is fully health tested", which tells a careful buyer nothing. Which tests apply depends on the breed, and your breed club or the Kennel Club will tell you what is expected for yours.
Nothing obliges you to, but more people ask every year, and declining tends to end the conversation. Nobody browsing your advert can see them: they go out only when somebody asks and you choose to send them.
Photograph one and see how much of it fills itself in.
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