Guaranteeing "health" in the absence of comprehensive documentation is simply false advertising and there are no comprehensive tests.
One of the enduring talking points of the fancy is that “health testing” means that their dogs are healthy. Breeders will trot out two, maybe three tests and declare total and absolute health. They’ll offer money back guarantees! And they hold that this makes them superior breeders and their dogs superior stock.
The truth is that you can not test for health. You can only test for disease, and only some diseases at that. Very, very few in fact. Health is defined by the absence of injury or illness, and thus it is an illusive and measured quality.
The menu of tests currently offered to breeders is simply too sparse to make any great claims about their ability to certify healthy dogs. For example, let’s look at the DNA tests currently offered for Border Collies:
Collie Eye Anomaly (Chorodial Hypoplasia) [CEA/CH]
Neuronal Ceroid Lipofuscinosis [NCL]
Trapped Neutrophil Syndrome [TNS]
CEA affects less than 2% of Border Collies and among those affected the disease ranges from minor expression to serious impaired vision. There is no treatment. It’s great there is a test and that most BC breeders have not given up the desire to work it out of their lines like most have in Rough and Smooth Collies where the gene is much more prevalent.
Rough and Smooth Collie breeders will tell you that CEA and the other eye disorders in their breed, despite being at near saturation levels, are not of much concern and there is little political will in that breed to do anything about it. Basically, if the vast majority of your stock is going to fail the test, just stop taking the test, appears to be their plan of action. Some have gone so far as to demonize the clear dogs in those breeds.
TNS is fleetingly rare and of more concern to breeders than to puppy buyers given that TNS puppies are ill from birth and rarely live to the age of placement as the disease effectively leaves the puppies without an immune system. There is no treatment. It’s smart for breeders to test for TNS and to avoid line-breeding on kennels known to carry the genes, but this is an issue that is never likely to affect a single placed puppy, let alone confer the greater quality of health to a breeding program.
NCL doesn’t affect dogs as soon after birth as TNS, but it is likewise a self-limiting disease as most affected dogs are symptomatic by one year old and dead or euthanized by two. The disease attacks the brain leading to blindness, seizures and brain death and there is no treatment. Clearly a horrible disease that has the potential to burn a puppy buyer, but no American Border Collie has been documented affected or carrier via the DNA test.
Outside of the paltry 3 DNA tests available to Border Collies (and at 3 tests Border Collies have a larger menu of tests than most other breeds), we have the more generalized diagnostics for hearing, vision, hips and elbows.
Taken together, these tests look at only a small fraction of the actual conditions known to affect Border Collies and there are no early tests for conditions like epilepsy, cancer, kidney disease, exercised induced collapse, osteochondritis dissecans, panosteitis, arthritis, cryptorchidism, or any behavioral issues like light and noise phobias, separation anxiety, aggression, or obsessive compulsive disorders.
No tests means no prior knowledge which means ignorance. And how often have you heard “I don’t know and have no good way of knowing save the worst case scenario happening” from a breeder? These breeders would rather offer “health guarantees” than to admit this ignorance. See, ignorance doesn’t make for a good sales pitch, but unwavering confidence does. This is why scam artists always have an answer to every question and well practiced lines that sound great but fail to address the truth.
You’ll often hear that experienced breeders can trump this ignorance with decades of experience and knowing their lines well enough. No amount of experience can tell you about what disorders your dogs carry that are not expressed, and few breeders treat their kennels like scientific experiments, taking detailed observations, applying randomness, and tracking every puppy they produce from birth to death. There are probably few breeders in any breed that could even produce enough dogs themselves to make statistically relevant observations for the more rare conditions.
Pedigree analysis and research also has its limits given how little health information is contained on most pedigrees (usually none) and how reticent breeders are to share negative health outcomes. I’ve called every living breeder on my dogs’ pedigrees and not a single one had a single issue to report. The odds of this being an accurate reflection of all those dogs and their offspring and relatives is remote at best.
Given the divisive and competitive climate most breeders find themselves in, full disclosure of extant issues is rare. It’s estimated that 3 in 4 Collies are affected by CEA, but you’ll be hard pressed to find top flight breeders who advertise this. Good luck finding a Dalmatian breeder that advertises that all of their stock is affected by a predisposition for high uric acid levels and kidney/bladder stones. How many Shar Pei breeders can you find that will admit that the characteristic folds of skin come at the price of a fever disorder?
Testing for disease is clearly a benefit and more information is almost always superior to less information. Despite the many advances science is making in this area, the current diagnostic tools available to breeders are few and growing very slowly. Treatments and successful breeding strategies are even more illusive. While it’s easier to say “health tested” and “money back guarantee” than it is to say “I don’t know, and not for a lack of desire or effort,” it’s time breeders had a bit more humility about the actual state of affairs in dog breeding. More honesty, less sales pitch. Fewer guarantees and more disclosures.
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Less inbreeding and minimizing breeding on affected stock would also help.
DNA-testing can only get you so far – trying to eradicate specific genes and at the same time continue with inbreeding in closed registries, breeding on affected stock and giving no regards to relatives’ health-status – is not exactly going to produce healthier dogs.
Many breeders focus on the symptoms of inbreeding (higher disease frequencies, smaller litter size etc.) instead of tackling the main issue itself by out-crossing with new breeds or at least trying to keep the inbreeding at minimum within the breed. I even heard someone mentioning that if you want to increase/keep your litter-size you have to linebreed – if you don’t you’ll “lose” that trait to outcrossing. Eh…?
Dijana recently posted..Hyperaktiva shelties ett idealmål?
The problem with the dog world is the closed stud books, unfortunately, it has been proven time and again that we are not able to breed dogs in this way. DNA testing is a great fly right now, but I do not think you should rely too much on it or any other health program. it is so easy to invest heavily in one or two diseases and the bargain as are any other problems common in the breed and so it goes, with more and more known issues. Better focus on removing the root of evil than to remove the symptoms, open studbooks, reduce selection that is not due to health or function, decrease popular sire breeding, reduce inbreeding, increase the effective population etc.
Popular sire syndrome is huge. Would that the AKC or the breed clubs would put a limit on how many litters each dog could sire in a lifetime!
Hopefully they are on the right track to finding the gene for BCC for your Border Collies too. Looks like the study is well underway by my friends up in Sask. Not sure how prevalent it is in your breed, but EIC is rampant in field Labradors. Unfortunately it became a witch hunt when our EIC test came out though.
I agree with all you posted, as usual.
That’s another aspect: the response by the breeders to new tests usually comes down in one of two ways depending on if the few most powerful breeders have the disease in their lines.
(1) The disease was entirely unknown or under-appreciated before, but now it’s an epidemic and all should be wary! This happened with TNS in Border Collies. I was active on several lists and boards at the time and had aggressively questioned them all about health issues in the breed. No one, not once, mentioned failure to thrive or any such problem. Then, two prominent breeders inbred too closely (against my objections and warnings) and they lost almost an entire litter to TNS. Suddenly they were up in arms for a test and a diagnosis and they were preaching to everyone that it must be all over the breed!
(2) If the disease happens to not be in the top breeder’s lines when the tests come out, there’s a witch hunt to use the test as a means of exacting attacks and revenge against other breeders in the breed for political reasons. Both carriers and affected dogs are ostracized and the gene pool is dried up at a detrimental rate.
I see very few breeders making rational statements on how to handle diseases. It’s either accept it and ignore it or cut it out as swiftly as possible. Neither is a good strategy. But they don’t have the guts to go down the healthy path. Manage disease slowly, breed to diverse mates, outcross to other breeds, and accept that it’s better to limit the expression of disease by preventing affected dogs but it’s not good to cut genetic disease out like cancer and kill the breed in the process.
My observations are the same for example:
Dog Leukoyte Antigen Class II Loci in American and International Collies…
Principal investigation by Dr. Leigh Anne Clark, Clemson University which basically to fight genetic autoimmune problems in this breed one must realize the lack of diversity in the Haplotypes of one’s breed.
There was an expansion by Dr. Leigh Clark’s genetic research supported by grants. When Dr. Clark was busy mapping the collie genome looking for the Dermatomyostis gene, seems her curiosity of certain (DLA) gens associated with this autoimmune disease when there is not a diversity in these genes. She continue to investigate on this curiosity and found there is very little diversity in these genes in Collies (be it normal controls or have DM) She desired to expand this research.
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Dog+Leukocyte+Antigen+Class+II+loci+in+American+and+International+Collies&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart&sa=X&ei=yH5aU_voH6nNsATijoGwDQ&ved=0CCwQgQMwAA
Now when the this site records its concerns regarding the introduction of Harlequin …they are actually addressing the necessary breeder discussion that should be taken place in the United States to produce collies that are suitable for breeding not just satisfying the whims of color fashion and fads in my opinion and studies.
Now if you do not know what DLA genes are here is something you can begin to understand about genetic diversity necessary in Haplotypes.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17445218
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21217030
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_leukocyte_antigen
http://ex-epsilon.slu.se:8080/archive/00002671/01/297_Maria_Wilbe-Kandidatarbete.pdf
http://www.kromfohrlander.fi/KROMFOHRLANDER-DIVERSITY-STUDY.pdf
There are many health-tests which are not detected early on either.
Early signs of retinopathy, which there are several types of without DNA-test, may show up as young as a few months, or as late as old-age. What credibility breeders have with progressive diseases which do not show symptoms except at random intervals?
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In many cases health testing is an excuse to continue inbreeding and popular-siring all willy-nilly. In other cases, health testing is considered unnecessary as long as you “know what’s in your lines.” :/
Yes, this statement is often made in defense of inbreeding. As if the fact that you know the status of 2 or 3 recessive diseases in your lines that you know about the hundreds of mutations which you don’t have a test for, which may not have been expressed in the last few generations, and which there might not even be a name or a diagnosis for.
The landmark TNS litter in US Border Collies happened this way. “We know the lines.” Well, they knew all the ribbons that the dog they were inbreeding on won. They most certainly didn’t KNOW the lines, and they had no ability to know what was lurking in the genes. They found out though, when most of the puppies they produced were dead before they went to their homes. Of course, they never did admit their ignorance and they wanted sympathy for the horrible luck that befell them.
“Testing for disease is clearly a benefit…”
Without making ANY excuses for the organized inbreeding practiced by dog breeders, I have to strongly disagree with your comment above… when it comes to improving the health of populations, more or mandatory testing is NOT “clearly a benefit”.
In this particular case (“purebred” populations), the problem is not lack of testing, it is the entire premise upon which populations are defined… close kinship rather than fitness and function. Adding health tests isn’t going to fix this. But it will CERTAINLY consume a lot of time, money and good will. Eventually, you’ll burden breeders and breeds with more tests than anyone can reasonably afford and YET you will still not have attained your goal of healthy breed populations.
Mary (MD, MPH)
I’m not sure we really disagree on this issue Mary. I didn’t say health testing was a panacea. In fact, I’m rather skeptical of the “death by a thousand cuts” that appears to be happening by people over-emphasizing minor dna tests and rushing to rid their lines as each new test comes out. The tolerance for carriers appears too low to me and testing has become more about shame than about information finding for some.
As a breeder, I want more information, not less. I also personally have a rather long term view of creating healthier dogs. I don’t believe in rushing to rid dogs of most disease and some diseases are minor depending on the circumstances. There are some conditions I would never want to produce and would thus like to have more tests.
My personal hope is not for X more DNA tests, but for cheap DNA profiling for dogs similar to what is currently available for humans. One test, a near complete gene sequencing that can be used to look at all currently known disease markers AND which can be scanned when future disease markers are found.
I think more rationality will prevail when breeders get MORE data, not less about the true scope of deleterious genes in their dogs. When they are presented with the true picture, I think they will behave more rationally instead of thinking a few DNA tests means your dog is healthy and that it’s a license to inbreed and make big claims about health. I think more information will also prevent this rush to have witch hunts and drive breeding stock out over affected or carrier status.
It’s very human to wish that there was One Big Thing that would ensure the perfect dog. Health testing, working trials, temperament tests, outcrossing, heck even Super Puppy exercises. There’s no magic bullet, but they are good tools (except maybe that last one). Inbreeding itself was supposed to be the way to create a more perfect dog.
There is actually an article in Dog World magazine this month about food allergies. It states that inbred dogs are more likely to have immune problems due to increased homozygosity, and recommends that allergic dogs should not be used for breeding.
Sorry I don’t have a direct quote, only had time to skim the article, but it’s nice to see a statement like that in a magazine that caters to breeders.
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Testing is about marketing. Sure, with a DNA test you can use carriers and even know if dogs are clear by descent, but the number of DNA tests compared to the number of diseases is miniscule. The number of diseases caused by simple recessives or dominants that we can develop tests for is miniscule.
Salukis have heart disease. Specifically, mitral valve disease is very, very common in older Salukis. The trend is to do an echo before breeding and declare the dog ‘clear.’ I was asked recently if I thought the OFA echo database was useful, and I had to say no. It’s self-reported, and many breeders don’t report negative results. And a clear echo at age five doesn’t mean the dog won’t be dead by age seven. If the information is not updated, that clear result is totally useless to the puppy buyer. It tells us nothing about the heart health of the dog’s future offspring, because we don’t know anything about the hereditary factors of MVD in Salukis, or why some don’t ever develop heart disease even though they have a murmur and may have an abnormal echo.
I can use echo, holter monitor, etc. to help me decide whether or not breed a dog AT THAT TIME. Obviously, dogs with disease would not be bred from. I cannot predict the dog’s future health, nor can I predict the health of it’s offspring.
“Health testing” is often misleading for the puppy buyer.
Is MVD mostly a problem in older salukis, or all ages but primarily the older ones?
Is there a push by the club to make a database of the dogs that develop heart problems as they age? Even if it’s voluntary, peer pressure can do wonders, or at create more educated consumers.
I have no truck with SCOA. I support clubs that have no provisions for non-voting members, or who insist on members having sponsors in order to get in.
I got my first Saluki in ’96; at that time there was a small (100 dogs) study being done on Saluki hearts due to the outcry over sudden deaths. There’s a current study on echo in Finland, to establish what is ‘normal’ and try to predict which animals will develop heart disease.
MVD is primarily confined to older Salukis.
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Is MVD found in the desert-bred dogs as well? I hope they don’t end up as bad off as the Cavaliers.
I suppose it depends on what one means by “test”. It’s true that for many problems there is no DNA test. On the other hand, it didn’t take a DNA test to discover the Clumber at Crufts had a health issue. A plain ordinary “health test” exam did that. Tests give data — be they physical exams (still the best way to discover many canine issues), DNA tests (would love to find one on missing teeth as an example), performance tests, agility/obedience/even CGC — which test for trainability and some social good manners. I’ve never known that lack of data was superior to having data. The problem is in assuming that the data one has “is sufficent”. To me, it is like checking to see that your aircraft is fully fueled but failing to see if you’ve attached the wings. Or failing to do a comprehensive engine test — that doesn’t require a PHD or even an engineer. A plain mechanic may suffice.
In conformation breeding (and Crufts/Westminster only address the conformation contingent of registered dogs, and the “top” ones of those), no one is checking to see if the aircraft can really fly — they are just checking to see if it’s been washed and looks good on the runway.
the flip side is the view that anything “flunking” a given test should never be used in breeding — which can be very short sighted. The real answer is to know enough and test enough to know what the requirements are for decent health and to breed dogs for that first. If there aren’t enough in the closed registry, then one should be allowed to go outside that registry — which is what FCI appears to be allowing. And one does need to know that no one test is going to “guarentee” anything. But to me, a good test is better than no test. You just have to know what the limits are for that test.
There’s also issues of relevancy and necessity.
Everything is data, life is data, most of it is useless and uninformative to the questions at hand.
A test is sufficient if it alone provides as much information as the entire dataset for whatever question is being asked. For example, if I want to know the temperature outside my house, the current spot price of Gold on the Nikkei is data, but it’s uninformative. It certainly doesn’t provide the information wanted. A thermometer reading would do just that and there is really no more data out there in the ether that would be needed. A thermometer reading is sufficient to answer the question.
But this is obvious. The more pernicious situations happen when there is data you might easily mistake for being informative but which is actually garbage. I would point to anything published by Kevin Trudeau. I would point to people who let their books of faith answer questions of science.
well of course some data is better than other data. I’m just saying that doing the physical health tests can have value even if the DNA type tests aren’t. And if you have nothing better, scooping water with a leaking bucket is often better than no bucket at all — one just has to recognize that the bucket isn’t perfect (and the more it leaks the less perfect it is). Hence I do support things like CERF,OFA, etc even though they don’t address the genetics. I would never tell a breeder that these tests are irrelevant. They aren’t perfect and they aren’t a guarentee of soundness nor do they say what the dog has genetically. But they are certainly of assistance in making good breeding decisions. You may not know if Dog A carries for PRA if it passes CERF, but you certainly know it does if the CERF finds the dog HAS PRA.
I’m actually pretty excited that there may in fact be a new test out there for the epilepsy gene in Belgians. PLOS one article: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0033549
from the article: Homozygosity for a two-SNP haplotype within the ADAM23 gene conferred the highest risk for epilepsy (p = 6.28×10−11, OR = 7.4).
ADAM23 interacts with known epilepsy proteins LGI1 and LGI2. However, our
data suggests that the ADAM23 variant is a polymorphism and we have initiated a targeted re-sequencing study across the locus to identify the causative mutation. It would establish the affected breed as a novel therapeutic model, help to develop a DNA test for breeding purposes and
introduce a novel candidate gene for human idiopathic epilepsies
This is a good example of the value of testing: Canine multifocal retinopathy in the Australian Shepherd: a case report
Ingo Hoffmann1, Karina E. Guziewicz2, Barbara Zangerl2, Gustavo D. Aguirre2, Christian Y. Mardin3
Article first published online: 20 MAR 2012 Veterinary Ophthalmology
DOI: 10.1111/j.1463-5224.2012.01005.x
Abstract
A 1-year-old Australian Shepherd (AS) was presented for a routine hereditary eye examination. During the examination multiple raised, brown to orange lesions were noted in the fundus, which could not be attributed to a known retinal disease in this breed. As they clinically most closely resembled canine multifocal retinopathy (cmr) and no indication of an acquired condition was found, genetic tests for BEST1 gene mutations were performed. These showed the dog to be homozygous for the cmr1 (C73T/R25X) gene defect. Furthermore, ultrasound (US), electroretinography (ERG), and optical coherence tomography were performed, confirming changes typical for cmr. Subsequently, the AS pedigree members were genetically and clinically tested, demonstrating autosomal recessive inheritance with no clinical symptoms in carrier animals, as was previously described for cmr. To our knowledge, this is the first reported case of canine multifocal retinopathy in the AS breed. Further investigations are under way.
I note that the test results were pursued, which is what, sadly, is not done very often. Does this result in perfect eyes in the AS? of course not. But it does identify a problem previously unknown, and which might not have been detected if that 1 year old dog hadn’t been taken in for a health test (I suspect it was a CERF, but the abstract doesn’t say).
Thumbs up for “a near complete gene sequencing that can be used to look at all currently known disease markers AND which can be scanned when future disease markers are found” . . . and which will also provide a much more functional index of diversity than the COI or EPS. But it’s going to require a major increase in the average scientific literacy of dog breeders before such information can effectively be used.
p.s. With Labradors we now have the option of doing genetic tests for narcolepsy and exercise induced collapse (EIC). Narcolepsy is almost never found except in laboratory bred dogs ‘created’ as disease models; a huge number of dogs, including many Master Hunters, carry EIC and more than a few well known dogs have turned out to be affected. Affected dogs often live their entire lives without showing symptoms.
Jeez. Wish we could have meaningful tests for propensity to cancer or epilepsy instead. Who knows, with the cost of sequencing halving every couple years and the geneticists ability to make sense out of genomes doubling almost as rapidly, that time may be closer than we think.
I wish you will have a chance to play around with a sequencing interface platform like 23andMe. It actually does all the “scientific literacy” work for you. When new papers are published, it updates your dashboard and it will tell you what your genes say in relation to the new information. While the single gene carrier status disease tests are interesting, one thing that I find even more intriguing is when there are multiple genes shown to have a correlation with a condition and you get mixed results. Some of your genes give you average risk, others increased risk, others decreased risk.
This sort of thing helps to promote the idea that genetics and expression are complex and not always guaranteed and simple.
I’d love to play with 23andMe. But not sure I’m up to reading the papers it points to. Educationally (not financially) I’m in the top 2%: I’ve got a science PhD, once had university tenure, and I’ve got the hutzpa to bull my way through a lot of jargon. Still, Nature Genetics is tough slogging.
If the complexity and rapid change in the world of the double helix baffle the likes of me, I don’t know how people who have never had a hard-core probability and stats course . . . and aren’t familiar with the general format of a scientific paper . . . stand a chance of staying informed.
Right – but that´s where people like Chris, Jemima Harrison and others come in, isn´t it?
Bodil Carlsson recently posted..OCH SÅ VAR DET DETTA…
Likely already been said but to render it in simple terms(and it really is)..it is a matter of reactive or proactive. Evade proactive and you will perpetuate reactive.
If you continue to bang your head into the wall then that becomes detrimental to your health..let us don a helmet to curb the detriment..still some discomfort but lesser detriment..brilliant as we are we add padding to the wall..getting better but hardly comfortable..more padding..pain relievers..and other such brilliance..and then a child suggests we stop banging our head..and then comes denial ‘I am not banging my head, simply shaking it and the wall is in the way’. Yes, I realize this is a silly analogy..or is it? Isn’t there 100+ years of science (and practicing folly) that simply indicates..’don’t do that’.
One problem is that many who use “TESTING!” think they are being proactive, but they are actually being very reactive. They would consider proactive measures such as outcrossing before you dead end your lines to be unthinkable. Adding new blood to the gene pool as a matter of routine instead of the rare and unexploited exception, a fool’s venture.
But get some new DNA test and you can slash and burn it out of your gene pool as fast as possible and then claim a major health victory!
It seems to me that the only time these breeders decide to be circumspect about disease is when they actually don’t want to do anything at all about it, such as CEA in Collies. It’s so pervasive that they’ve just admitted defeat and some even demonize the clear dogs (god forbid anyone seek out clear dogs to make progress, those dogs might become more popular than the Best In Show Dogs and we just can’t have that).
Yes..and there is the fundamental problem…various degrees off the center mark. Obvious for the seeing..pun intended
Perfect analogy, actually.
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But then responsible brdeeers never have any of their dogs wind up in shelters because they screen homes and take back thir own pups at any time for any reason. Well, not always. I too consider myself a responsible breeder, but I have also worked the shelter side of it. The biggest problem shelters face is IRRESPONIBLE breeding. Out of a couple thousand animals I have seen go through rescue and shelters, only ONE was a dog from a responsible breeder problem is, that breeder was dead. She couldn’t take back her dog, and a neutered Champion titled pomeranian landed in our shelter. Yes, the responsible breeder made sure he was neutred before she placed him. ONE responsibly bred dog out of thousands.Where did the VAST majority of our shelter dogs come from? They were mutts that were Free to Good Home after some jerk let his mutt b- itch get pregnant. hey went to whomever would take them, and were tossed out like trash when they weren’t cute little puppies anymore, because, hey! You can always get some cute little mutt puppy for free, so why bother training, vaccinating and caring or some worthless 13 month old dog? Did you know the vast majority of the dogs I euthanized were between 12 and 18 months old?And of the purebreds that came in, which did indeed make up 25% of the incoming animals, every single one was a case of Muffy had papers, and Biff has papers, so let’s breed em and make money , not one was of genetically tested parents. Not one breeder’ of these offered to come get their pup back in cases where we could find the breeder. Not one of these dogs was reasonably close enough to the breed standard to even remotely be well bred.So yes, some brdeeers’ ARE to blame for the overpopulation problem, but so are the BUYERS who buy these poorly bred dogs because they are cheap and easily found in newspapers. There is no ONE cause of overpopulation wait, yes there IS! IRRESPONSIBILITY!!!!
Haven’t read all the comments yet, so I apologize if someone has already addressed this. I think a major thing many breeders overlook is ease of whelping, good mothers, & vigorous puppies, as well as general longevity in the lines. How many breeders move heaven & earth to save every single puppy born, who will breed a bitch 3 or 4 times even though she ignores her puppies or even kills them, who routinely have to A.I. & perform Caesarians to have a litter at all? Or those who continue to breed from lines where the dogs are elderly at 5 & dead at 8. The latter would of course take a little time to determine, since by the time you know a dog is going to die at 8, you’ve probably already bred him or her. But why on Earth would you re-breed a bitch who has serious trouble whelping or who can’t or won’t care for her pups? Or fading pups. Sure, save them all, keep them on heating pads, tube feed them around the block, keep them alive. But for heaven’s sake, don’t BREED them! Puppies who can’t even nurse or which don’t instinctively move TOWARD Mama’s body heat are already behind & they are just going to be more likely to produce weak, non-nursing, non-heat-orienting puppies themselves, thus continuing the cycle.
I have almost nothing to say in the various breeding/whelping/neonatal care forums I’ve joined because it all just seems to be discussions on how much help the dogs need. I’m present for my girls, but they don’t NEED me. I don’t pull off sacs & clean the pups myself. I don’t sever umbilical cords & point pups towards the nipple. Sure, problems are going to happen sometimes. But not every single litter or every single puppy. If your bitches need constant assistance with every single litter, never have enough milk, never want to be with their pups, & you’re constantly having to perform feats of heroism to save puppies from death, you really need to rethink your breeding program.
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There is a useful test for the defective MDR1 (Multiple Drug Resistance) gene which is relatively common in the collie breeds but has also been reported in other breeds. The gene apparently allows the blood-brain barrier to let some chemicals that negatively affect brain function to cross the blood brain barrier. It is recessive, but there are some reports of heterozygous dogs also reacting to the drugs it allows into the brain).
https://www.animalgenetics.us/Canine/Genetic_Disease/MDR1.asp
Dogs that lack MDR1 are much easier to keep parasite free at a lower cost. It is worth doing the DNA test for this reason. Also there are a number of useful medicines besides anti parasite drugs that MDR1 dogs do not tolerate.
Bonnie I totally agree this is a very valuable test not only to pet owners but a fantastic breeding tool. This testing is now used in human cancer treatment to create greater success in designing cancer treatment to the individual with great success. This research I was fortunate to be on the ground floor in Collies for the ultimate marker. Now have all our Collies are MDR1 normal Collies through using this testing. What a difference in general health over the decades we have found in our breeding program. However, does anyone besides myself question this Statement. Source: http://vcpl.vetmed.wsu.edu/ “Dogs, especially those with the MDR1 mutation, should not be given large animal formulations that contain ivermectin, selamectin, moxidectin, milbemycin or related drugs except under the direct supervision of a veterinarian. Severe neurological toxicity can result. FDA approved small animal formulations containing these drugs contain much lower doses and have been tested for safety by the manufacturer.” I have witnessed even hound breeds seizure, vomit, lose weight etc taking heart worm and parasite combination approved FDA products. We understand external parasites, such as fleas, mites, ticks and mosquitoes can cause skin irritation and are often carriers of other diseases or of internal parasites. What we must recognize that paraiste medications are poison. Treatment of an infected dog is difficult, involving an attempt to poison the healthy worm with arsenic compounds without killing. Is there not still a culmative nature to health issues of poisoning one’s dog once a month? ……even when there is no mutation of this MDR1? Many feed fish but now there is even warnings to feeding raw fish? https://oregonvma.org/care-health/salmon-poisoning-disease. In line with this Blog .”.I see very few breeders making rational statements on how to handle diseases. It’s either accept it and ignore it or cut it out as swiftly as possible. Neither is a good strategy. But they don’t have the guts to go down the healthy path. Manage disease slowly, breed to diverse mates, outcross to other breeds, and accept that it’s better to limit the expression of disease by preventing affected dogs but it’s not good to cut genetic disease out like cancer and kill the breed in the process.”
Read more: http://www.border-wars.com/2012/03/the-limits-of-health-testing.html#ixzz47EOWZHYG