You can’t buy your dog’s health!
When looking at different breeds one of the first things you should consider is what health issue’s that breed suffers from and whether there are current health tests which can be obtained from governing bodies such as the British veterinary association.
There are now D.N.A test’s that can be obtained before breeding which can guarantee the offspring would be clear of the said disease which had been tested for.
Clear x clear = clear
Clear x carrier = clear and carriers
Clear x affected = carriers
Carrier x carrier = normal, carrier and affected
Carrier x affected = carrier and affected.
Affected x affected = affected
So the main note is that as long as one of the parents is clear the offspring will never be affected by the disease. If your dog is a carrier please remember this isn’t a health risk your dog still can’t become affected.
However, there are health tests out there which can be obtained in certain breeds which should be obtained but doesn’t clear the next generation even though both parents can be clear.
Hereditary cataract is one of the biggest eye diseases which affects a few breeds which we have little control over. As there isn’t a D.N.A test available for this disease we cant be sure if our breeding stock is clear, carrier or affected.
There is an eye test which can be obtained from a B.V.A eye panelist for hereditary cataract this test will tell you if your dog is clear or affected at the time of the test. I can hear you say so what is the problem?? Well, your dog can be unaffected and obtain a clear eye certificate but your dog could be a carrier of the gene.
As we have already noted a carrier to carrier mating can produce clear, carrier and affected dogs. So the affected dogs keep creeping in to our dog population and keeping the disease alive!
Even though the disease then affect’s more puppies I must stress this hasn’t been done knowingly.
The same thing happens with hips and elbow score’s.
Hips are scored out of 106 in most breeds allowing 53 points on each hip. 53 being the worst score you can get and 0 being the best. We know from past results a 0/0 hip score on both parents won’t produce 0/0 hip score’s on every puppy born.
Unfortunately if truth be known if your dog score’s even 1 point it has hip dysplasia as this is a scoring system to score the onset of hip dysplasia.
There is a huge amount of stress put on dogs from environmental factors such as exercise, food and living conditions. There are breed average hip score’s available to monitor potential dogs for breeding stock.
Elbows are very similar however, do have a different scoring system. Elbows are scored in grades 0,1,2,3
If your dog score’s 0 / 0 it becomes a grade 0. If your dog scores a 1 / 2 it then becomes grade 2. Your dog takes the grade from the highest point on either elbow. The B.V.A have a leaflet explaining elbow scores and what they mean and the B.V.A do stress that dogs with the elbow grades 2 and 3 should be avoided for breeding if possible.
