“Health testing” is not health testing. It is disease testing. No test will ever tell you that your dog is healthy. Health is more than simply the absence of known diseases which have a name and a definitive DNA test.
Plenty of diseases that are serious and pervasive in breeds have no DNA test and some diseases like idiopathic epilepsy have no diagnostic test or conclusive diagnosis tool at all save the elimination of other suspected causes.
There are also countless conditions which have no name, and likely never will, caused by mutations that no one will ever search for or realize are responsible for some negative aspect in your breed, your line, or even unique to just one of your dogs. New, rare, and orphan disease paths often never get diagnosed or given names because they never reach a critical mass of victims such that anyone would notice a pattern or invest in the incredible overhead necessary to establish a cause and find a gene.
Maybe it’s an allergy to a food or drug they will never try or when they do it just gets written off as an idiopathic adverse reaction. Perhaps it’s a late-onset disease path that just gets chalked up to old age. And what if there’s a new mutation in your dog that is recessive or semi-dominant and it’s never doubled up on because your dog’s descendants are never inbred and the new mutation eventually disappears due to genetic drift.
Or maybe it’s a condition that breeders choose to hide and bury versus advertise and seek community awareness of, allowing diseases to proliferate and catch new victims unaware.
There are over 19,300 protein-coding genes in dogs and yet there are fewer than 200 Canine DNA tests, most of which are unique to just one breed and look at only a fraction of one gene. Few breeds have more than 3 DNA tests and many have none at all. How can we claim to have robust “health testing” in dogs when the number of tests we have is less than 1% of the number of genes? We can’t claim that in good faith and we shouldn’t because the degree of our ignorance is even worse than the unknown and untested 99+%.
There are over 2.8 billion base pairs in the haploid canine genome which is carried fully in each dog sperm and egg, so 5.6 billion base pairs define each individual dog, which means that there are 11.2 billion bases {G,A,T,C} of DNA in every dog’s genetic recipe.
There are Canine DNA health tests that tell you about only one base. One base out of 11,200,000,000. Other tests look at changes, additions, or deletions in anywhere from a handful of base pairs to several thousand base pairs. But no DNA test looks at more than a tiny almost insignificant fraction of the code that makes up a dog. Even if you applied every single DNA test available on the market you’d scarcely cover a noticeable portion of the canine genome.
Let’s look at the current DNA Disease Test offerings in Border Collies as an example.
Here’s 1 pixel out of an image with billions of pixels. Like doing one DNA test. What is the image of?
Neuronal Ceroid Lipofuscinosis (NCL) is a rare recessive disease in the family of lysosomal storage disorders which leads to progressive degeneration of the eyes and brain resulting in severe impairment and early death. There is no treatment or cure. Only 3% of Border Collies are believed to be carriers of this disease and fewer than 1 in 1,000 litters will produce affected puppies.
NCL in Border Collies is caused by a single base substitution (from a C to a T) in the CLN5 gene located on canine chromosome 22.
1 change out of 11,200,000,000.
5 pixels out of billions. Like doing 2 DNA tests. What do you know about the whole image?
Trapped Neutrophil Syndrome (TNS) is a is a relatively uncommon recessive disorder where the white blood cells that are produced in the bone marrow are unable to progress into the blood stream depriving the dog of an effective immune system. There is no treatment or cure. It is thought that 10% of the Border Collie population might be carriers.
TNS in Border Collies is caused by a 4 base pair (GTTT) deletion in the VPS13B gene on chromosome 8.
4 removed out of 5,600,000,000.
4 more pixels revealed by doing another DNA test. Where is this image taken?
Multi-Drug Resistance 1 (MDR1) is a semi-dominant mutation that causes a clinical sensitivity to a number of common drugs (including Ivermectin) by impairing the transport of those drugs out of the canine brain allowing for a toxic buildup of the drugs upon administration of sufficient doses, which can lead to neurological dysfunction and death. No pedigreed Border Collies have been documented to carry the MDR1 mutation although one suspected rescue Border Collie was identified within the pool of dogs used to study the prevalence of the mutation in herding breeds and was not included in the results and a handful of others out of thousands tested globally have been found with the mutation. The prevalence of the mutation present in much higher concentrations in Border Collie relatives like Australian Shepherds and Collies.
MDR1 in herding breeds is caused by a 4 base pair deletion (ATAG) in the ABCB1 gene on chromosome 14.
4 removed out of 5,600,000,000.
Even adding a few thousand more pixels with a big DNA test like CEA doesn’t give us a lot of information about the big picture with billions of pixels.
Collie Eye Anomaly / Choroidal Hypoplasia (CEA) is a recessive disease which impairs the proper formation of a layer of cells below the retina of the eye causing various degrees of blindness. There is no treatment or cure. Just over 2% of Border Collies will present with Chorodial Hypoplasia, about a half of a percent will have Colombomae, and less than 1 in 1,000 will have retinal detachment.
CEA in Border Collies is caused by a 7799 base pair deletion in the NHEJ1 gene on chromosome 37.
7.8k removed out of 5,600,000,000.
None of the diseases which there are currently DNA tests for affect even 1 in 100 Border Collies. The sum total of the Border Collie genome we get a look at when we do all of these tests is only 7808 base pairs out of 5.6 BILLION. That’s a glimpse of 0.0000014 of the genome. Just better than One-one-millionth. That’s like looking at 1 hair off of the heads of 10 healthy young people and trying to say something profound about who they are.
That’s like taking one word out of the world’s longest book (Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time at 1.2M words) and trying to ascertain the plot. That’s longer than two Bible’s worth of words or two read throughs of the entire Lord of the Rings series. More than all of the Harry Potter books combined. Just ONE word out of all those words.
Look at the series of photos and tell me what they signify, where and when they were taken. By the time we get a good chunk of information from the sizable CEA test, we might guess that the red cross has something to do with health, and it does, but that doesn’t even begin to inform us about the greater picture. I selected the most recognizable and apropos snippet out of an image of 3.8 billion pixels. If we were to look at all of the image at once, the area you see above would barely even register as one pixel on the screen.
Even with hundreds of times more information than is available to any breeder today, we have a decent idea of what we’re looking at but we have little context to make definitive claims about what we’re seeing and the greater picture. We might even be able to take a good guess about what we’re seeing and where it’s located based upon our extensive outside knowledge. But what’s given to us in the photo is still quite limited.
As we zoom out, we can begin to see how small the information we had at the beginning really was although just how small in relation to the 3.8 billion pixel image is not yet clear. Research and context with information we can learn outside of the isolation of this image can be used to guess the location. But that itself is a lesson, we need a frame of reference and research outside of the limited DNA tests to even begin to put them into context and to use the information to assess health in our dogs.
Out initial data is but a small speck, although we can now guess that we have a camp along the edge of a glacier.
Only now can we confirm that this glacier is the Khumbu Glacier that is located in the Khumbu region of northeastern Nepal between Mount Everest and the Lhotse-Nuptse ridge. The series of tents we saw before is the Mt. Everest base camp. But even now we are not even looking at 1/4th of the 3.8 billion pixels in the complete image.
The complete view of Mt. Everest and the Khumbu Glacier taken from the Pumori viewpoint. I obviously can’t recreate the entire 3.8 billion pixel image here, but you can view it in its entirety with a great interactive zoom and pan feature at the Glacier Works website.
When we look at DNA results we MUST understand that we are only looking at a tiny fraction of what makes up our dogs and an even smaller speck of what makes up a breed. We need to think bigger than a few DNA tests. We need to breed away from disease slowly and methodically, not cut it out with a hatchet. This will mean breeding dogs that are carriers and even possibly affected. It means devising a breeding plan BEFORE you test when you can be rational and circumspect about the results instead of acting rash after you test.
We need to appreciate that no dog is free of deleterious genes and that we don’t earn the right to inbreed with abandon simply because two or three DNA tests came back favorably. We also need to appreciate that we are breeding not just for one litter but for the breed as a whole and that means not being capricious with genetic diversity. We have to breed for what we don’t know as well as breed for what we do know.
We need to realize that all closed gene pools eventually dry up and that every year from when most breeds had their books closed a century ago we lose genetic diversity and condense all sorts of dangerous genes like reducing sauce on the stove. There’s a balance to be had between an ideal flavor that’s not too bland and watered down and not too condensed and congealed. Most breeds are already over-cooked and beginning to scald.
We need to appreciate the whole animal and its place within its breed and within the species of canis lupus familiaris. Disease testing has a place in this calculus, but we can not afford to over-react to the results of a tiny handful of tests that look at a minuscule speck of the genome and slash and burn our already genetically depleted breeds because of it.
We need to open the stud books and we need to regularly bring in new blood–even if just a few dogs per generation across an entire breed–via appendix registries and routine outcrossing. We need to move beyond the fascism of “pedigree” and realize that we can still have our breeds and mix them too. We can keep every single aspect of our breeds that we value and not doom them to deplorable health outcomes (except of course when we value them for their disease).
Health testing isn’t another kudo to add to your dog’s resume. It’s a tool to be used with the entire breed in mind and few breeders are using it that way. The test-result-as-ribbon mentality is poisonous to the genetic health of breeds and its incorporation into the “I’m a superior breeder because I health test!” mantra is patently bogus. You aren’t an ethical breeder if you paid for a DNA test that tells you about one rare gene that will only affect 1 in 1000 dogs, but you continue to propagate genetic and structural disease that affects every single dog you and everyone else in your breed produce.
You don’t need a health test to determine that Bulldogs, Pugs, and Shar Peis are diseased messes. You don’t need DNA to tell you that Rhodesian Ridgeback breeders will continue to place appearance above health. And no suite of DNA tests gives you the license to inbreed your line, use that popular sire, or reject any and all out-crossing without the dogs you produce having to suffer the consequences.
There’s no DNA test for stupid, and you don’t need one to conclude that the greater dog fancy both show and work, is corrupt and decadent and destroying the legacy we have inherited from our ancestors by continuing to live in the ignorance that plagued them and shaped their behavior. Except we have no excuse. We should know better and if we want to pass along a thriving canine legacy to the next generation we need to be better, act better, and breed better.
It’s not enough to health test, any more than Mt. Everest can be understood by a few pixels. Or even 3.8 billion of them. Even our best image is wholly insufficient to appreciate that reality. In dogs, we need to do more of the hard work, to actually climb that mountain and make hard choices and be practical and pragmatic and circumspect and a lot less dogmatic. No one would give you an award for looking at a really nice photo of Everest, but that’s exactly what the breeding culture is asking you to do by treating disease testing as a seal of approval. Don’t fall for it.
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“There’s no DNA test for stupid”
Unfortunate, that.
I would send you more money for frisbees but we just replaced our battery bank and had to buy a new generator, so you will just have to accept my thanks for this wonderful article.
Thank you.
Jess recently posted..Dog Food Advertisement FAIL
This is great. Thank you. 🙂
Great post. This needed to be said. Also, first time I’ve seen someone use the singular “kudo” before, LOL!
Let’s health test them, then inbreed and select away from those with the disease or who are carriers. That will stop all the bad genes!
That seems to be what people think in the dog world. It’s everywhere, too.
And they all want some simple test where they can just breed away from a recessive or dominant trait– a simple recessive or dominant trait.
Too bad that inheritance doesn’t work that way.
retrieverman recently posted..After the rain
I couldn’t agree more. I hate stud ads (in my breed) that say “clear of everything”. What? Really?
It’s not a problem until there is a test for it. DUH!
Not mentioned in these demands for ever more health testing is the fact that the pet buying public shows little interest in paying for it. When the price of an average pet rises to that of a good used car, then we can talk.
Whole genome sequencing for $100 that is updated with all new discoveries for life is the ticket, just like 23andMe does for humans. None of this paying for single disease tests nonsense.
Yes. It’ll be interesting to see where Genoscoper goes with their new testing service.
We also need a better understanding of the limitations of individual phenotypic tests. How the hip x-rays continued to change over the life of the dogs in the Purina long term diet restriction study comes to mind. How many breeders x-ray at 2 years and consider that a done deal? Bone remodels for the life of the dog.
Jess recently posted..The Afghan Hound as Symbol of Conspicuous Consumption
There are (or could be) meaningful, simple, health indices: for example, age of death and cause of death are useful indicators. It certainly wouldn’t hurt for breeders to put a premium on stud dogs who remain active and healthy into old age.
Too bad the pedigree-keeping institutions are so heavily focused on tracking titles, and so oblivious to health.
Christopher, I agree with your overall perspective that genetic testing at this point is not enough for the breeds’ overall health simply due to the small number of tests available for most breeds. However, I take serious issue with the “support” you have used for parts of your argument. You imply that since the genetic tests for the diseases you mention only involve a few base pairs out of billions, they really don’t help the breed. This is simply not true. The severity and prevalence of the disease are the factors that determine the role a particular disease testing and selective breeding strategy would play in overall breed health.
I understand that the point you were trying to make was that people should not feel complacent in breeding animals with reckless abandon simply because they have a clear genetic test. I STRONGLY AGREE! However, I think you have also managed to create an overarching impression that you believe genetic testing of dogs holds little value. This is an irresponsible (though potentially unintended) implication.
In addition, though many diseases are attributed to particular breeds, this is only because of historical scientific literature about those particular diseases and the breeds that they found the disease in. It is likely that many (or most) canine diseases currently cross breed lines, but we are unaware of how many. An example is Degenerative Myelopathy, a late-onset neurological disease originally found in German Shepherd Dogs. In veterinary school, this was the breed that we learned about. However, this disease has now been found in 60 or more breeds!
Full disclosure: I am a veterinarian and assistant medical director for a new canine genetic disease testing laboratory in Spokane, WA called Paw Print Genetics. We offer “panels” of tests for particular breeds and currently offer more tests than anyone in the industry. In addition, we offer genetic counselling services for our clients to help them pick a good mate for their breeding animal. I am very passionate about genetic testing of canines as a guide for selective breeding because, though coefficients of inbreeding (COI) are likely to help in preventing some diseases, the COI tells us nothing about an individual genetic mutation in an individual animal and carriers do not “show” the mutation in their physical make up. Therefore, breeding animals using COI is like playing Russian roulette; you will be fine a fair portion of the time, but eventually puppies are going to suffer with a disease that could have been prevented. As a general statement, the most popular dog breeds have the most genetic tests available, however, they also tend to have the most genetic health issues due to historical inbreeding and selection for particular morphological characteristics. Genetic testing can make a HUGE difference in the situations where a particular genetic mutation is known, tested for, and used as a guide for selective breeding.
Take note Dr. Carl, I do not IMPLY anything. I have tens of thousands of words published on this blog regarding health and genetics and health testing and I challenge you to find one sentence where I make an implication that is not spelled out in great detail and exacting language. There are 2401 words in this post and I take decimal places to seven digits.
I provided more detailed information in one sentence on these tests than your website or any of the other testing service websites have. Few if any of those sites list the name of the gene, its location or what the genetic signature is. For most of these I had to pull the original research papers to find that information. I did an exhaustive survey of the testing sites to compile a list to assess just how many tests were on the market currently (and let me say that your webpage is sub-par for not having a list of tests that does not require searching by breed or by disease).
The only place I make an abbreviation that would imply something of an unjust scale is clearly skewed to the benefit of the number of health tests versus the number of genes in canines. Fewer than 200 tests versus 19,300 genes. You well know that a single DNA test looks for the binary choice of a single allele for a single gene being present in the dog. That only gives you, at best, information about two alleles. There could be dozens of alleles within a breed and within dogs at large. So our denominator isn’t really 19,300 is it? It’s the total of all the alleles over all the loci and that is a much larger number. So I gave the benefit of the doubt to the tests and the testing companies here didn’t I?
Where do you get the notion that I said anything regarding not helping breeds? More accurate information is always superior to ignorance and nowhere do I state or imply otherwise. What breeders do with that information, or lack thereof, is an entirely different manner and there are many examples of genetic harm being done with overzealous responses to limited testing information. There are few success stories of making breeds healthier with testing, the Dalmatians being a case-in-point.
They don’t need another DNA test, they need a change in culture.
“What breeders do with that information, or lack thereof, is an entirely different manner and there are many examples of genetic harm being done with overzealous responses to limited testing information. There are few success stories of making breeds healthier with testing, the Dalmatians being a case-in-point.”
Buuuuuut Chriiiiiiistopher, if we outcross we might BRING IN DISEASES!!!!!! Looook at all the Dalmatian genes that were lost during that outcross!!!!! Why, we have lost the INTEGRITY of the Dalmatianess and now those mutts are in the gene poooooool!!!!! And there still might be Pointer diseases that will crop up in the fuuuuuuture!!!!!!! Even after fifteen generations!!!!!!!!
That’s about average for knowledge of biology or genetics for many breeders.
I would pay a pretty penny for DNA tests for problems prevalent in my breeds. But I acknowledge, as a breeder, that YOU CANNOT TEST YOUR WAY OUT OF A BOTTLENECK. The reverse side of eliminating a dog from breeding due to defective genes is that you are throwing away a ton of NON-DEFECTIVE genes. I’ve met few breeders who actually understand this concept.
I have also seen many, many pet people (and, sadly, some vets) who believed that DNA tests make a breeder ‘responsible’ (what about those breed with no DNA tests?) and that DNA or phenotypic tests mean the dog WILL BE HEALTHY. This is a misconception directly propagated by breeders who do not understand genetics, especially population genetics, themselves.
YOU CANNOT TEST YOUR WAY OUT OF A BOTTLENECK.
Jess recently posted..The Afghan Hound as Symbol of Conspicuous Consumption
Maybe I should add, to clarify, that many breeders firmly believe that DNA tests will eventually be developed for ANY and EVERY disease in dogs; not only is this, on it’s face, false (we have relatively few DNA tests for humans as compared to the number of diseases, despite much more time, energy and MONEY being spent on that endeavor), but once again, YOU CANNOT TEST YOUR WAY OUT OF A BOTTLENECK.
Jess recently posted..The Afghan Hound as Symbol of Conspicuous Consumption
Jess, I have certainly appreciate Christopher’s view point and agree. The issue in my opinion through studies and experience doing the DNA markers which do include Casey Carl, DVM, Degenerative Myelopathy, a late-onset neurological disease originally found in German Shepherd Dogs discovered by experience to exist in my breed the Collie. It is horrible to see an OFA Excellent Dog crippled by this disease. Therefore, would not consider a breeding without checking for this disease because it can tear your heart out if your love your breed and dogs. So dogs are man’s best friend.with degenerative myelopathy and related disorders like ALS/Llou Gehrig’s Diisease.
.
However, just as idiopathic epilepsy latest findings with yet another promised marker the Border Collie breeders need to participate in this study to be included. Now how many Top Winning Champion Border Collie breeders will step up to the plate and admit the problem?
http://www.cvm.umn.edu/vbs/faculty/Mickelson/lab/ie/home.html
It is a vicious never ending circle of autoimmune deficiencies caused by mutations. Dog breeders basically cooperate with science to actually discover the reason for epilepsy in humans is the reality. Let us address a disease called Cyclic neutropenia or in collies lay term gray collie syndrome or Lethal Gray. Fortunately, a marker was finally developed for the collies after decades of contributing to human studies of lymph nodes from affected collies to Childhood Leukemia. Would I bred without checking for this blood disease, No way. Do others. I am afraid so. DNA testing for diseases that have plagued a breed for decades without any solution should be utilized by ethical breeders in my opinion. It is the breeding protocol that needs to be addressed. Otherwise, it just seems new autoimmune mutation diseases just keep be adding to the list of health issues. It so futile when the pure dog breeders and many breeders contest the markers are not accurate…no they are accurate but not conclusive of the breeding protocol that continues to create new diseases.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6753968
Read more: http://www.border-wars.com/2013/05/health-testing-in-dogs-is-limited.html#ixzz3BdF8xMtM
The point you make.
“You cannot Test your way out of a Bottleneck” is the first issue of a breed with even varies testing available for health issues.
My answer might shock a few, as I do practice DNA testing such as CEA and PRA in Collies and a few others. Unlike the Border Collies our numbers rank in the 80 percentage range for health issues such as CEA and MDR1. It is the culture changes in breeding practices that requires the change in ideology of dog breeding.
I certainly don’t need a lecture on this front, I speak about incidence, prevalence and severity of disease quite often here.
Let me direct you to this quote:
I’m well aware of the need to look at incidence and severity. And on these fronts, my argument still holds!
The vast majority of disease tests in dogs are ancillary to human concerns and human research dollars not canine issues, prevalence of canine disease, or severity of canine disease. As an undergrad at Stanford there was a rather prominent canine research study that had been going on for years looking at narcolepsy in dogs. Why? Certainly not because it’s a severe problem in dogs nor does it have a high incidence in dogs. The funding for that study was because it’s a problem in humans. Simple as that. Human sleep research resulted in a team finding an animal base they could use for testing. They weren’t concerned with canine health or mouse health, they didn’t start as breed lovers who didn’t want their Chow Chow to keep falling asleep.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I figure new tests appear on the market driven by two main factors, the demand side and the supply side. Demand side is defined by research dollars and community interest and it is the minority of tests that are brought about because a few breeders notice something in their dogs and raise the funds to have a lab look into it. Any benefit to dogs is ancillary to most research.
One element of the supply side is the amenability of the disease to its causal factors be revealed by research. Is the condition even genetic? Is it a single mutation? Do the penetrance and expressivity make it straight forward to diagnose and fall out of the data with high correlation between disease and candidate mutations?
This isn’t exactly something you’d want to be objective on and advertise is it? Hey customers, we don’t have tests for the worst things your breed will face or the most prevalent things, but buy these expensive tests from us for really rare things because we do have tests for those! And spend some more on these things that aren’t really that severe!
Again, Dalmatians are a good example. They have the OPTIMAL scenario for dogs vis-a-vis testing. (1) There is a test for the most common issue in the breed. (2) The issue is severe enough to warrant altering breeding behavior. (3) Heck, we don’t even need to test pure-Dals any more because ALL Dalmatians are homozygous for the disease allele. We don’t even need to test pure-Dals bred to clear dogs, we know all the pups will be carriers. NO BRAINER.
But what’s happening? Very few breeders are overcoming their cultural biases to use the outcrossed dogs and testing their stock to keep F2 clears.
In the MOST clear example of how testing can help a breed, they’re failing. And then on the other end of the spectrum, I see breeders using testing for rare and in many cases rather harmless things to slash and burn the gene pool and argue against a culture that would lead to greater outcomes, i.e. outcrossing.
As far as genetic testing exists today, most tests do not pass the “sucker’s bet” test. Namely, the cost of the test is MORE than the expected value of the information the test will give you. The tests cost more than they are worth. An unwise investment.
Take the test for TNS. It is so rare, only 1 in 1000 are affected, the risk of breeding without perfect information is very low. So a costly test is simply not worth the investment for anyone who is not highly risk averse and willing to throw away money. But those people are the ones you’re trying to exploit, no? Risk averse people who suck at risk analysis and have money to throw around. Hey, buy these tests for related breeds to, because YOU NEVER KNOW!
Sure, more information is better than less information, but not at any cost. I’m sure I’ll get stupid people commenting that it’s morally reprehensible to put a dollar amount on a test, but any rational person knows that it is not only wise to do so, it’s morally appropriate to do so. You’re selling tests and they have a price.
If you’re an altruist unconcerned with the bottom line, give my dogs all your tests for free.
But we can put very accurate dollar amounts on how valuable tests are. Insurance companies do this already. They know exactly what the incidence of claims are and how much those claims are going to cost. The only test that I’m aware of which will get you a break on your insurance rates is a PennHIP score of less than 0.3 as those dogs have been shown not to develop osteoarthritis. And that’s just with one company.
Even worse than sucker’s bet tests are the number of tests which are essentially cosmetic and have no pain and suffering component we might put high dollar amounts on. Tell me why anyone should pay for the OFA’s test which COUNTS THE NUMBER OF TEETH your dog has? Really? This is something we need to pay good money for? We need to advertise these results to help dogs be more … toothy … and we need to axe breeding stock over this? PSH.
For disease testing to be a smart investment, it has to be a lot cheaper and cover many more diseases. The current basket of tests might be worth it on a case by case basis, but that’s not the case for most tests. My personal opinion is that à la carte testing services like yours are going to go out of business when a 23andMe style testing service makes one-test-for-life-for-all-known-diseases a reality. Perhaps MyDogDNA will be that company, perhaps not, but that’s the way the wind is blowing.
Ya know, I am sort of shocked to say I agree with you here. I have a friend who did all the possible genetic tests on her sheltie bitch before breeding. It was UNLIKELY that the bitch had any of those problems. There are plenty of Shelties out there, same thing–clear or clear by parentage for anything that genetic testing can find in Shelties. The MAIN problem with Shelties bred for dog sports is Early Takeoff Syndrome, and while it does seem to be inheritable, you can’t test for it.
At this point, I’d rather just see two dogs with decent structure (doesn’t have to be perfect, but balanced), good temperaments, thyroid tests (there are a lot of low thyroid Shelties), good hips, and CERFed regularly to catch anything that might come up. Even the MDR1 gene isn’t that big a deal in Shelties.
Unfortunately the TESTTESTTESTTEST rhetoric from breeders and the ease of DNA testing has skewed the perceptions of the more ‘educated’ pet buyer. I have actually had pet people tell me:
a) That even clear by parentage dogs should be DNA tested, JUST IN CASE there’s a mutation. (There’s so many things wrong with this concept that I’m not even going to take time to pick it apart.)
b) All breeders should test for everything possible even if it’s rare or a non-issue in the breed.
c) All breeders should go to GREAT LENGTHS, including ANY COST and CROSS-COUNTRY OVERNIGHT TRIPS to do ALL TESTING POSSIBLE, just for the sake of ‘information gathering.’ (No matter whether that information is actually informative or valuable or not.)
As an example, I do not CERF my dogs. Salukis have no known (read: need to be tested for) eye issues, and Afghans have juvenile cataracts and a form of corneal dystrophy which doesn’t affect sight or cause any other issues. There is no DNA test for the JC. Driving to another state for an overnight trip just to get a CERF number is not good value. Good value is have my vet examine the dog (any GP vet can diagnose cataracts or corneal dystrophy) and if he sees something hinky we can get a referral.
However, this goes directly against the ‘reputable breeder’ rhetoric of having some kind of trophy (number, certificate, etc) for taking or passing the test, and it goes directly against the current ‘reputable breeder’ assertion that breeders need specialist vets, and that GP vets cannot diagnose or recognize problems ‘unique’ to breeding dogs. IOW, ‘my vet says the dog is clear of cataracts’ in an eight year old bitch is not ‘good enough.’ ‘Here is the normal thyroid result from the lab, (OFA panel)’ is not good enough. You must have those trophies…er, certificates and numbers.
Breeder culture is going to make it nigh impossible to be ‘reputable’ unless one live near a large city with a number of specialists or near a vet school.
Jess recently posted..The Afghan Hound as Symbol of Conspicuous Consumption
Jess–agreed–what’s a problem in one breed is not necessarily a problem in another. In a Sheltie, I would want to know that the breeder did eye checks and see some documentation of it (though not necessarily CERF or submitted to CERF) but wouldn’t worry too much about it in an Italian Greyhound.
Ultimately what I would like to see instead of all these health registries is a central veterinary database. You take your dog to the vet, it gets diagnosed with something (or is clear) and you have the opportunity to have your vet put it in the database. The dog is given a number and you can make the name public or not. This would be a much better data aggregator than breed club surveys or health registry databases, where the participants are clearly skewed towards breeders and not puppy buyers and really don’t record that many dogs compared to the numbers that are out there.
Jess recently posted..The Afghan Hound as Symbol of Conspicuous Consumption
There would have to be an incentive for puppy buyers who don’t intend to breed to have that information recorded, and decent pricing for everyone. I asked the people who bought puppies from me to have them CERFed for my information, but I don’t really care about having hips done unless they want to breed (and the puppies were sold with no restrictions) and even then, based on parentage I don’t think they’d be anything less than good. A CERF at a local clinic is $30, but x-rays for hips can be much much more. I certainly wouldn’t do hips unless a) I intended to breed or b) I had a reason to be concerned (I do Agility and Flyball, but do not routinely x-ray). Same with thyroid–unless I intended to breed or had a reason to be concerned, why would I do it? (just to deal with the main concerns in the only breed I have ever bred).
You kind of missed my point. Breeders often tout ‘health’ testing as data aggregation. This is one of the reasons they push testing for rare or non-issue diseases so hard, “if you don’t test, you don’t know” (which is true, but only to a point.) To look at hip dysplasia rates, they point at OFA, etc, etc. This is a piss poor representative population. It’s like doing a breed health survey and only polling the show breeders. It’s crap for data collection across a broad swath of the population, and it’s crap for cumulative information over the lifetime of the dog.
What I am talking about is not ‘health’ testing. It is actual HEALTH. Dog is diagnosed with low thyroid, it goes in the database. No extra money involved, the dog is already there, at the vet, being diagnosed! THIS is data aggregation in regards to REAL HEALTH ISSUES. Not issues that might not be there at the time of the test but could occur later.
I have Salukis and they have heart problems. Specifically, murmurs in older dogs, and primary dilated cardiomyopathy in younger dogs. No DNA tests. Now, you can certainly do an echo at age five, before you breed, and you can put that in the OFA database, but if that dog drops dead of DCM at age seven, unless you update that database, no one will know. If you see a vet and he diagnoses your dog with DCM, it can then go in the database. And if you choose to have your dogs information made public, then a prospective buyer can look and see what you’ve got there, and they can keep up with the information, if they so choose.
This is a considerably different thing than “Hey, let’s x-ray at two, call the dog clear, and never do it again,” or hey, we passed DNA test for rare diseases look how responsible we are.
They are doing something like this in Labs in the UK but I can’t for the life of me remember the name of the thing.
Jess recently posted..The Afghan Hound as Symbol of Conspicuous Consumption
Sorry, Jess, you’re right–I didn’t parse that correctly and tried to correct in my next post, but did not do a good job. You are correct–what would ALSO be a help would be to know something about pedigree, if it exists.
Problem is, for me (and other people who do dog sports) that stuff like ETS is undiagnosable and does have an impact. You really have to SEE the dog to decide. Unfortunately.
The Bernese Mountain Dog has Berner-Garde. It’s an open database, and lists things like lifespan, health clearances, COI, even litter size and whether a C-section was done. Wish more breed clubs had something like this!
http://www.bernergarde.org/home/faq.aspx
The registries (and by extention, breed clubs) should feel shame that they are NOT all doing this kind of thing.
Jess recently posted..The Afghan Hound as Symbol of Conspicuous Consumption
Here in the UK we do record all aspects of BMD’s from surveys on health/diet/diseases/life span/ testing etc. Wonderful work done by Steve Green, Chairman of the BMDC of GB. Having owned and bred BMD’S for 30 years, we are doing our best to test WHERE we have a problem to help to eliminate it like HD & OCD, but I do appreciate that testing is only as good as on the day it is taken.
Jess–just realized I went slightly off your comment. Yes, a central database–but you wouldn’t necessarily test for or report something unless it was a serious problem that affected whatever you intended to do with that particular dog, OR if you were a really scrupulous and responsible breeder and wanted everything recorded and public. And how do you diagnose and report things like Early Takeoff Syndrome? I can see it, you can see it, but if someone is selling the dog as a pet or as a conformation dog, it really doesn’t matter in the least. The sheepdoggers (sheeple?) are dismissive of it. And that is the kind of thing *I* would want to know.
Note section. My dogs have a notes section on their vet records, why not? You could put stuff like:
Early takeoff syndrome.
Wacky depth perception.
Big weenie with even small injuries.
Tends to squeal for attention.
🙂
Jess recently posted..The Afghan Hound as Symbol of Conspicuous Consumption
“In addition, though many diseases are attributed to particular breeds, this is only because of historical scientific literature about those particular diseases and the breeds that they found the disease in. It is likely that many (or most) canine diseases currently cross breed lines, but we are unaware of how many. An example is Degenerative Myelopathy, a late-onset neurological disease originally found in German Shepherd Dogs. In veterinary school, this was the breed that we learned about. However, this disease has now been found in 60 or more breeds!”
I am sure that there are many mutations that are old and present across multiple breeds- but the point that is missed is that these variants, in a “normal” Hardy Weinberg population, or wild population, would stay at a low level, very rarely meeting up (if recessive or polygenic) or being weeded out (if dominant) by natural selection. Popular sires, linebreeding (often ON popular sires!), and breeding for criteria that are counterproductive to health, allow these alleles to become much more common in the population. Which diseases are more prevalent in a breed is likely due to which variants their popular sires have had, with some being older mutations, and others newer mutations. Until we change our breeding culture, we will continue to have diseases pop up, and whether that disease is due to an old mutation, or a newer one, is immaterial to the dogs, and the people who love them (though it will probably be easier for the companies to make a profit if they are old and already tested for in other breeds.)
Christopher, you are very correct about what is driving the marketplace. A huge number of the genetic diseases known in dogs are known because they are a great model for some human conditions. A good example are the diseases collectively known as “storage diseases”. Many of them were also identified in dogs and dogs have been used to develop gene therapies for these diseases.
You are also correct about marketing genetic tests to consumers based upon prevalence and severity. Unfortunately though, accurate incidence and prevalence of these diseases are not always known in dogs and probably won’t be until a large number of dogs get tested and results are compiled.
With the decreasing cost of genetic sequencing, many more disease causing mutations are going to be discovered for the dog over the next decade. As more diseases are uncovered, people must be informed enough to either choose the disease tests that will do the most good, or better yet, have a low cost testing strategy for all known diseases as is done by 23 and Me.
I applaud your concern with breeders using a genetic test to prove how healthy their dogs are. I have seen this behavior and it is not always valid as the limitations are great. However, at least we can be certain that the dog will be free of the disease they were tested for! When enough tests are created though, there will be a point at which we have to make decisions about what diseases we want to eliminate in a particular breeding. It is a challenge to perform genetic counselling when you have 50 or 100 genetic markers to compare between a breeding pair and even more complex if we were to learn the multifactorial contributions to disease. We will likely rely on computers to help us with matching in the future.
Despite a difference of opinion on the semantics of your argument, in the end, we are on the same team. We both want to see happier, healthier dogs. Genetics will help us get there, but we have a long way to go with our canine friends. The greatest strides will likely be made when we can figure out how genes function together and how their expression is influenced by environmental stimuli. A better day for canine genetics is still yet to come!
Yes, and in your opinion what’s the bigger issue in the next 10 years before sweeping and cheap testing is a reality?
Knowing breeder culture, my opinion is that breeders will continue to over-react to tests we do have and axe too many good dogs from breeding programs while at the same time holding fast against outcross breeding. PERHAPS, in a decade, when we have testing that passes the sucker bet test, then we MIGHT have breeders who understand that no dog is free of all issues and that we need to breed carefully and wisely and with populations in mind versus over-reacting to one individual test because it is new and popular and a meme.
In my own breed, Border Collies, two different issues come to light with this. PRA in the working dogs and TNS in the show dogs. When PRA became a splashy disease in other herding breeds, the Border Collie people decided to go after it in our dogs (not knowing that PRA was rather rare in comparison to say CEA) and they burned PRA out as fast as they could. Compiled pedigrees, implicated dogs, ostracized them. Well, I don’t know how we can retroactively assess the damage done there but I’d venture to say that the Frankenstein Monster pitchfork and torch response was not handled with due care.
TNS is a “new” disease in Border Collies in that it has a name now and some prominent show breeders got stung with it. Before I had this blog I was on the BC e-mail lists and I warned these two breeders that their obsession with line breeding on an already popular sire was a recipe for success, but NO, they knew more than me. They knew these lines, they said. They knew that this was worth the risk. He’d won so many ribbons!
Well, they inbred closely and they had an entire litter of TNS puppies with a scant few carriers and maybe one clear. Well, after that these same breeders went on a crusade to label anyone who didn’t TNS test their stock as evil and careless. While it’s nice they cooperated with a researcher to find the gene and get a test and it’s nice that they made a website to report DNA results, they did so not out of any great desire to improve the health of the breed. They did so in order to be able to keep the status quo, to breed as they had been breeding. They still want to inbreed on hot stuff dogs, they just want to get more show prospects out of the litter instead of dead puppies. They didn’t learn any lesson and they certainly wouldn’t outcross in response. No, they want testing just so they can continue to do stupid things.
I agree with this and my article is written for breeders to snap them out of the horribly myopic notion they have regarding the degree of knowledge vs. ignorance science currently possesses vis-a-vis canine health.
There are certain tests and breeds that have gotten to CRITICAL status. Like Dilated Cardiomyopathy and Dobes. It’s so prevalent and it’s so destructive that there’s no excuse to be breeding without that knowledge. And it needs to be happening right now.
But I see too many people propping up the close registry system based upon bogus claims of “I health test” and “responsible breeders health test” and “mutts aren’t health tested” as if health testing is but a drop in the bucket.
I think it’s clearly the case that you could breed blind with two dogs of different breeds and have vastly superior outcomes of breeding two fully health tested dogs in the same breed. There are simply too many private mutations and/or highly concentrated mutations within breeds for this not to be the case. So yeah, I think COI is actually a more useful tool than health testing at this juncture if you used it like that.
Well, I had to comment, even though as a biologist specializing in behavior I almost completely agree with your statements on depending too much on what few tests there are and not looking at over-all genetic diversity, health, and vitality (and temperament!) of the dogs. I am getting very tired of the occassional neural tube defect, aka dermoid sinus, being used as a reason to denigrate Rhodesian Ridgeback breeders as purposefully breeding “defective” dogs. This congential condition requires removal of the DS as a pup and then that specimen is a perfectly normal dog and does not suffer. We do not breed RRs that have DS, and the incidence has therefore been decreasing over time. In 11 litters I bred over 40 years (~ 80 puppies) exactly two had dermoids. Some other breeders have had a higher incidence, so there are factors other than the gene for the ridge that affect the development of dermoids. In fact, some half RRs without the ridge have had them. Dobermans and other breeds also get them occassionally. RRs have a relatively low incidence of several diseases/orthopedic problems, like 5% elbow dysplasia, 11% HD, some bone cancer and hemangio tumors, but <1% epilepsy, bloat, deafness, eye disorders, etc. It is, compared to most breeds, extremely healthy overall. Average lifespan is about 10, not bad for 85 – 100 lb. dogs, although many, including all the RRs I have owned, make it to 12 without severe impairment. I would say RR breeders have done a pretty good job, despite the inbreeding in some show lines. Please stop including us in the line-up of dog fanciers that create abnormalities of skeleton, soft anatomy and integument that cause pain and suffering and reduce the quality of life for the dogs.
Rhodesian Ridgeback breeders deserve every ounce of scorn. You have made the macabre calculus that a purely cosmetic feature of your breed which provides no benefit in any way other than making your breed “speshul” and unique is worth more than your dog’s health and well-being. Even worse, there are those among you that cull NORMAL puppies. There’s also the pathetic attempt to justify maintaining the defect by claiming that somehow the dogs with the ridge are better lion dogs. Well gosh, how many lions have you baited with your dogs?
Your statistics aren’t comforting in the slightest. Keeping the ridge is keeping the disease and there’s nothing to balance that out. That’s every bit as callous and unnecessary as brachycephalism, excess skin folds, hairlessness, etc.
Well, I am very disspointed at your disrespectful and sarcastic tone. I had assumed from reading the above blog article, which was posted on a dog genetic list I am on, you were a reasonable person able to engage in rational discourse, rather than someone so prejudiced. No “real” RR breeder I know of EVER has claimed that having a ridge affects RR behavior in any way. The ridge was selected for by the founders of the registered breed – and the South and East African ranchers and hunters before them – because they started as mongrels of Euro hunting and guard breeds mixed with the indigenous ridged village dog. Pure Euro origin breeds/mixes did not fare well in the harsh and disease ridden African environment, but of course the pariah village dog had been evolving there for thousands of years. However, it was not of size and substance to do the jobs the settlers needed, including guarding people, livestock and crops from predators. Thus the ridge was selected for in the mixes as an indication the dog would be better adapted to the environment, hardier. And they were, and still are hardy. In North America no one culls ridgeless pups now. 40 years ago when I started in the breed, yes, because it was a rare breed, with no internet to advertise them, and appropriate homes for ridged pups were hard enough to find. I would say the vast majority of breeders world-wide do not cull ridgeless. I myself have a waiting list for them, because people want everthing else that a RR is and they are half price. BUT in any case humane culling at birth does not create pain and suffering. Personally I would not care if all ridges magically dissapeared overnight and the breed would be just as beautiful and could go back to the original name: African Lion Hound. As a behaviorist I could say that I think scorn should be heaped on BC breeders for creating obsessive-complusive dogs that are so difficult for average people to live with thousands suffer in inappropriate homes and are euthanized each year for behavior problems. Of course, I would nto do that as those behavior traits were speciically needed and selected for when BCs had a real and specific job to do, just as the RR was selected for the ridge for the same reason.
Well, I’m very disappointed that you breed diseased dogs and have no shame for doing so and no desire to not continue to breed for disease simply because it’s a novelty. There’s nothing sarcastic about my tone, I don’t find what you do funny at all, I find it disgusting and immoral and needless.
I’m perfectly reasonable. I used reason to conclude that it’s not ethical to put a defect on a pedestal simply because it was unique and to cull perfectly healthy dogs because they were not defective. I used reason to conclude that people like you are brainwashed by romantic notions of colonial plunder, souvenir breeds with exotic flavors, breed history fairy tales, and a fetish for supposed primitiveness.
So it’s NOT the breeders who are perpetrating the “ridge = gameness” story? Whatever. If “real” RR breeders don’t believe this than that just hurts your position even further. If it’s strictly cosmetic and no one of import believes it has any positive aspect save “omfg it’s novel!” then you’re just callous shallow people who are weighing disease against NOTHING save vanity and siding with vanity.
Sorry, but if the ridge offers no advantage and substantial disadvantage it is, rationally, NOT an element that adds to the “hardy” quality of the breed. Would they not be more hardy without the ridge? Why yes, yes they would.
And if you want to pretend that your breed is somehow distinguished as hardy in the realm of dogdom, I don’t think that holds either. Besides the obvious dermoid sinus, they suffer from bloat more than most breeds and that’s expensive to treat and devastating. Those HD numbers are nothing to smile at, and of course they have another spinal problem with degenerative myelopathy. And throw in some deafness and cancer. NOT really impressed.
And whose fault is that? Who gives the sales pitch for a useless cowlick of hair that has plenty of baggage to go with it? People don’t demand the ridge, if they did we’d see every sort of get rich quick breeder adding them into their designer breeds. BREEDERS selling a story of RARE and EXOTIC and UNIQUE are to blame for that price difference. And it’s a shame that you continue to reinforce the notion that some of your dogs are worth less than others, especially when those dogs have EVERYTHING else that makes a RR an RR and no disease ridge.
“And whose fault is that? Who gives the sales pitch for a useless cowlick of hair that has plenty of baggage to go with it? People don’t demand the ridge, if they did we’d see every sort of get rich quick breeder adding them into their designer breeds. BREEDERS selling a story of RARE and EXOTIC and UNIQUE are to blame for that price difference. And it’s a shame that you continue to reinforce the notion that some of your dogs are worth less than others, especially when those dogs have EVERYTHING else that makes a RR an RR and no disease ridge.”
Yeeeeee HA! Hear hear! So glad someone else said what I’ve been saying for years now!
I am a volunteer for RRR Inc and I agree and applaud this! When I was a child in the 1980s, I saw RRs in a book and became enamored there and then ( the only dog that topped that obsession at the time was the Belgian Sheepdog groenendael). But no one had ever even heard of the RR at the time.
Now I hear new dog owners and casual owners talking about RRs all the time. Westminster entries have never been higher, and there are more and more breeders popping up everywhere.
And having watched all this happen, observing, well, YES, I have heard breeders claim the ridge being linked to desirable behaviors, even recently. And YES, I hear breeders say that most of them do not cull ridgeless pups any more, but that situation is the current state based on what has been a slow decline from a day when culling ridgeless pups was common; and while many fewer people do it today out of a public moral peer pressure, some likely still do.
Among many many breeds, for many many reasons, culling of this sort still happens behind closed doors. My mother told me in the 80s that she met a Belgian breeder in New Hyde Park NY who openly confessed to culling pups just for having a little white on their chests, with no thought to whether or not this was right.
Digressing, people who come to the RR breed usually don’t notice the ridge first, in my experience, or care. It’s the breeders who continually emphasize it. You can see on websites, on Facebook pages, over and over, pics constantly focusing on the ridge. http://folwarkzwierzecy.com/mainsite.php
I once saw someone on FB show off a logo that was just a ridge and no dog!
My own rescue uses a logo that makes sure the back is turned so you can see the ridge. http://www.ridgebackrescue.org/store/logo.html
It’s been used to distinguish the breed from others, as they say. That is the foundation of values amongst AKC purebred enthusiasts.
But if the ridge were not present, would this magnificent dog NOT be identifiable from other breeds? Can you honestly tell me that a passionated dog lover and judge would be so duped and dumb as to think these were now all just oversized Viszlas?
If they would, they have no business judging.
The RR would be an incredible animal without the ridge. And as stated, “African Lion Hound” would be a wonderful name to pick up and keep, and had that been used in the first place, there would be no self-induced pressure to keep ridges. There is just no reason for it other than the superficial reasons people invented for themselves.
What’s wrong with emphasizing THIS as a logo? Is the history of trekking and baying LIONS not more impressive than a line of backwards hair?
http://www.ridgeback-records.com/
I wish I could win the lottery so I could start my own breeding pool of ridgeless. No blue ribbons from the AKC? Who cares? My reasons for breeding would stand on their own.
You don’t need magic to make that happen? Why don’t you just breed ridgeless to ridgeless? How many times have you done that? If you place so little value on the ridge why do you bother to propagate it? Are you just a coward who is afraid to go against the other cadre of RR breeders? Do you follow the herd to win ribbons? Or do you really want to keep that price per puppy high? Or do you not want to do what is right by the dogs and until everyone else changes you’ll just take orders and continue stigmatizing health and fetishizing disease?
You should stick around and read my blog because you obviously have no clue if you think that’s an effective tactic to make against me and what I write on this blog. Wrong move. Unlike 99% of other Border Collie breeders, I dispel the romantic bullshit that you seem to be so fond of with your breeds. I write about how despite being one of the healthiest and longest lived breeds, the closed registry system is having its way with my breed as well. I write about the popular sire effect. I don’t sugar coat and idolize the popular sires, I expose them for the disease carriers they were. I write about rising rates of inbreeding. I write about agricultural obsolescence and the fraud of pretending that sport is work. Even this post is supplemented with an analysis that shows that health testing in my breed is nothing to brag about.
I lay all of my breed’s sins bare for all to see and I don’t use a Vaseline covered soft lens and warm lighting to offer up an unrealistic picture.
So don’t you dare try and pull that shit with me. I’m not the coward you are. I put my name and my beliefs out there and I forge my own path and suffer the consequences from romantic zealots like you because I think it’s what’s right for my dogs and right for the breed. I break down the bogus facades erected by the show people and the working people alike. You, apparently, drink the koolaid because everyone else whose esteem you seem to want does so too. I can say that I never have and never will intentionally breed disease into my dogs. Too late for you.
Another point that’s not really a reply to anyone as much as it is an addition is this:
“Disease” is a label we put on mutations that we feel do more harm than good. There is no cosmic definition of disease, and most mutations come with a trade-off. Of course the textbook example of this is Malaria resistance offered by Sickle Cell.
But there’s more to this. There will likely never be any sort of DNA tests for behavioral issues. No DNA temperament tests. No DNA tests for plenty of cosmetic issues which have no research/health values. No DNA tests for structure.
This is one reason, IMO, that Hip Dysplasia is going to be a problem for a long time. It’s not a simple disease mutation. It’s not like there’s just one missing protein and that CAUSES hip dysplasia. HD is a PROCESS. It’s about many factors like the geometry and engineering of the joint. That includes everything from bone shape and density and muscle mass and ligament placement, etc. etc. etc.
Think for a second how complicated it would be to devise a gene to create the shape of the human skull. All the holes in the right place, the right curve here, the right ridge there, the right density here and anchor points for muscles there. Incredibly complex.
This will not be like finding genes for storage diseases where we can simply TEST for the build up of compounds and thus deduce that (1) they are being produced too fast or (2) they are not being processed and broken down fast enough. That’s a pretty simple thing to find and trace.
How the genes make bone shapes… that’s just not that simple. NOR is there any f’ing guarantee that it’s not just a problem in the entire species. Like humans, we have shitty backs. It’s just something we have to deal with. We walk upright and put a lot of pressure on our lower spines. Our hearts give out too.
In dogs, it’s more likely that their kidneys give out and maybe their hips are like our backs. Something that is NOT magically designed to be optimal by a sky god.
Evolution is still in action and neither humans nor dogs are perfect beings.
I LOVE DNA. I’m one of a very few bloggers who even bother to talk about it in relation to dogs, so I’m not a Luddite preaching ignorance here. But I know the limitations and they are many and serious and the idea that testing is a panacea is dangerous.
The CULTURE needs to change and I see too many idiot breeders using testing to justify bad behavior instead of improve it.
One of my dogs looks great on paper. He’s OFA good, CEA and PRA noncarrier, MDR normal, from a big healthy litter and lines with good longevity. But he’s squarely built with poor angulation and his temperament isn’t the best (not bad, just some hesitation around loud noises and sensitivity to corrections). Nothing beats actually knowing and evaluating the dog as a whole.
For comparison, my other dog came from a breeder who does no testing (aside from puppy eye screens, which are pretty much a given). She’s also OFA good, but is light on her feet, turns on a dime, and leaps like a gazelle. She’s the product of a breeder who puts emphasis on breeding good structure and movement, and has been doing so for 40 years.
New Breeding strategy in individual pure breeds culture conflicts with new technology advanced findings is indeed a worthy topic of discussion in my opinion, observations and experience. If one’s breed does not have high incident of CEA like the Border Collie likely this test is unnecessary. Border Collies primary herd with their eyes, but take a Rough Collie or Smooth who herd with their shoulder and have CEA over 80 percent within gene pool. So a CEA DNA marker is important to a Collie not a Border Collie Breeder.
No one that knows enough about the usage of genetic markers will likely deny that we are witnessing the misusage of claims of genetic clearance markers. It is frustrating to see some taking advantage of the lack of education in this new breeding technique.
The basic issue in breeding modern usage of new breeding tools is one must breed for the entire specimen conformation structure. Example: You have good eye sight but the structural conformational of the shoulder in Rough/Smooth Collies which today can often be seen incorrect .and the tail set lacks a proper croup …the wear and tear of the faulty structure will sooner or later cause crippling. OFA testing for years never explained why Excellent and Good checks left an older canine crippled beginning at eight and eleven years old. Now we can find the cause with the new marker for Degenerative Myopathy. It likely takes more than a few years as a breeder to appreciate the tidal wave of new technology to address in one’s breeding program?
One must breed for the entire dog. Creating New Breeding Techniques in one’s breeding program with all the new scientific findings needs sorely to be wisely incorporated in my opinion, personal research and experience. Just like an outstanding specimen …First rule Balance.
Using COI must be based on pedigree and knowledge of what lies within outcrosses. It is a tall order to fill. It requires ethics and honestly among breeders for common goals for their breed.
Curious, what’s your opinion of testing for homozygosity in the DLA regions of the genome?
It has the potential to be the biggest bang for your buck in DNA testing when the research begins to make associations between DLA alleles and pathologies. It’s also one of the primary reasons one might want to outcross to bring in much needed diversity. We’re still in a state of much more ignorance than actionable knowledge though.
DLA and a ‘general’ homozygosity test like Optimal Selection are going to be necessary for preservation of genetic diversity as the dog broth continues to condense.
Jess recently posted..The Afghan Hound as Symbol of Conspicuous Consumption
Not long ago I PM’d you a link to a video via Facebook, where a veterinarian in Germany states that around 58% of dobermans come down with Dilated Cardiomyopathy at some point; it can happen in early life but also middle age, old age, etc. Vet Gen has a DNA test but the video said that it was not found to be reliable; that only heart screenings tell you for sure, and those screenings can only tell you when the disease has occured, so it cannot prevent the passing-on of DCM unless all dobie people want to wait to start breeding all their dogs at age 6 or 7, minimum.
I flipped by another site which put the rate of DCM substantially lower; I believe under 10%.
So, someone is lying. BOTH sources cannot be true with such different numbers.
If the former is even remotely close, I’d say the dobie is a huge candidate for outbreeding, or it’s doomed.
Very sad, to my mind.
Someone was good enough to find this for me. The abstract is depressing.
“RESULTS: DCM prevalence in various age groups was as follows: age group 1 (1 to <2 years) 3.3%, age group 2 (2 to <4 years) 9.9%, age group 3 (4 to <6 years) 12.5%, age group 4 (6 to 8 years) 44.1%. The cumulative prevalence of Doberman Pinscher cardiomyopathy was 58.2%. There was an equal sex distribution, but male dogs showed earlier echocardiographic changes than did female dogs, which had significantly more VPCs.”
A simple search for Dobermans on pubmed will get you a number of studies. DCM is well documented in that breed. The one gene that has been found to associated with DCM (there are other[s], some dogs get it but are negative for that gene) is a dominant with incomplete penetrance, so the number of dog with the gene is probably very, very high to produce that incidence of disease.
With such a high incidence of disease, you are looking at some serious hyperselection to eradicate from a closed gene pool, which means that something else is almost guaranteed to rear its head during the process.
Jess recently posted..The Afghan Hound as Symbol of Conspicuous Consumption
And I don’t doubt convincing doberman folks to outcross with other breeds would be quite a challenge.
German Pinscher? Beauceron? It’s a research topic I haven’t really thought about until recently. I doubt I’d look to the rottie. I don’t know the details of the breed but I have heard anecdotally that the American ones at least, aren’t lliving very long.
A friend’s sister – now not with us – used to breed rotties but got out of it, saying she was disgusted by what breeders have done with them here. Some show ones look like short-legged sausages similar to the development of the show labrador. Then there are the “oversized” rottie breeders.
Chris, in the description of the MDR1 gene, you wrote: “No pedigreed Border Collies have been documented to carry the MDR1 mutation although one suspected Border Collie was identified within the pool of dogs used to study the prevalence of the mutation in herding breeds.”
I took this word for word and sent it to Washington State U, asking if they feel this is an accurate statement. They responded by saying they found 4 of 306 BCs with the MDR1 mutation, although they also said they “believed” UC Davis used all pedigreed dogs.
They only mentioned a year for study ( 2008). I just asked them for more info on where it was published.
I made my statements based off of this (although I recall reading it in an actual study PDF, but many of the PDFs I have are not word-searchable and I’m not finding the quote at first pass:
And this:
And this:
In my re-search for the “unknown lineage” BC that was identified, I did find a German study that says they found the mutation in a small number of Border Collies there. But apparently according to the ABCA representative who contacted them the dogs were identified based on owner or vet say-so and not confirmed BCs. This is a problem given just how similar Border Collies can be to breeds with known significant incidence of MDR1.
http://psych.ucsf.edu/k9BehavioralGenetics/pdf/Literature%20PDF/Geyer%202005%20JVetPharmTher%20canine%20MDR1.pdf
Here’s the BC Rep contacting them:
This might be of interest.
http://vdi.sagepub.com/content/24/1/127.full.pdf+html
Rapid genotyping assays for the 4–base pair deletion of canine MDR1/ABCB1 gene and low frequency of the mutant allele in Border Collie dogs
Keijiro Mizukami, Hye-Sook Chang, Akira Yabuki, Takuji Kawamichi, Mohammad A. Hossain, Mohammad M. Rahman, Mohammad M. Uddin, Osamu Yamato1
Interesting. The woman who wrote me is named Katrina and I just sent her the link.
She said the study she referred to was published in the Journal of the AVMA, 2008. I asked for more specifics. Or else I will try to find it on my own for comparison.
Either way, it’s clearly of very low prevalence, but I wouldn’t mind scanning for differences in the studies.
Also so you know, I contacted Katrina through the Washington State U department that does the MDR1 testing.
Interestingly in their websites “affected breeds” list, they refer to the BC as being less than 5% affected. Even THAT seems high given all the studies.
Well, <5% is probably their lowest cut-off. Seems like fewer than 1% carriers and even fewer affected is the likely rate (and even that is suspect given that I've yet to see a study which confirmed pedigree BCs and not just self-identified BCs).
So the MDR1 has a super-low rate on BCs, and the point is that testing is overrated in some ways. All true. But remember, I was only pointing out that you said “NO” BCs have been found to be carriers and we have just spoken about three papers where this has been found to be not true; all papers have an incredibly low incidence, but a non-zero incidence.
And it seems to merely touted as an autosomal recessive, so I wonder how it’s managed to stay at such a low rate in BCs. It doesn’t seem as though Ivermectin treatment harming breeding dogs in real life should be the reason, because other breeds have accumulated higher rates.
Unless that’s because Collies have been bred in the USA for longer, and before Ivermectin and related products were commonly used?
My text was perfectly consistent with published data and I’ve updated the copy to reflect the chance that actual pedigreed Border Collies will be found with the gene and it will be traceable through breeding histories. It changes little to nothing about the points being raised in the article.
Pretty much true. It was just the Sage paper that had one BC as a carrier, I believe.
I read your new text. I’m just not sure I understand how the start can still say no pedigreed BCs have been documented to carry the mutation, while the end says a handful of others among thousands tested globally carried it.
“No pedigreed Border Collies have been documented to carry the MDR1 mutation although one suspected rescue Border Collie was identified within the pool of dogs used to study the prevalence of the mutation in herding breeds and was not included in the results and a handful of others out of thousands tested globally have been found with the mutation.”
I don’t mean to be tit for tat. I know it’s not the greater point.But you have always been super detail oriented after all, as you use exhaustive research to back up those greater points. 🙂
And well, whaddya know. Mealey IS the author of the 2008 paper. Doesn’t mean her work is incorrect, but, interesting eh?
http://avmajournals.avma.org/doi/abs/10.2460/javma.233.6.921
Well, I’m not paying $30 for this. Hopefully she can just hand over a PDF or maybe I’ll come across it elsewhere sometime.
As long as you’re on the hunt, would you mind contacting Katy Robertson at UC Davis and asking which study they published the “unknown pedigree” BC in? It’s annoying to me to not find where I read it (and I’m sure it wasn’t on the BC Boards).
“We have tested 362 Border Collies (not controlled for relatedness) to date and have seen the MDR1 mutation in only 1 dog. This dog was a rescue with unknown pedigree; therefore, we didn’t include the dog in our findings.”
Sure. Why the heck not? I’m actually getting a bit hooked on this issue. Katrina wrote me and said that pharmacogenetics is different from testing for genetic diseases; also that the author of this blog seems to be against testing, and that if he doesn’t want to test his dog, that’s his choice, but she wishes the author would not talk about things he knows nothing about.
She also said, to the link you sent me ( not Sage), that this was a European paper and she did not know if the BCs were pedigreed purebreds.
Some of my follow-up Qs to her in response:
“I’m not a geneticist, but I have a Master’s in biology. Could you give me a short explanation sometime as to what makes
the MDR1 test fall under pharmacogenetics as opposed to genetic testing for diseases, what makes pharmacogenetics different from testing for genetic diseases in the first place, and what the relevance of the differences is in this context?
Also, the prevlance of MDR1 in collies and Australian shepherds seems to correlate with the higher numbers found in those breeds in America.
Would we hesitate to believe those collies and Aussie sheps are purebred? Okay, one could say collies have a certain look hard to confuse with other dogs, but Aussie shepherds?
Not quite so.
What about the Sage paper? Not European.
I’m assuming the mention of European does not mean Europeans cannot ascertain validity of pedigrees.
It probably would be more accurate to simply say that there is nothing in the paper under “methods” stating any steps taken to check pedigrees.
I’m also assuming therefore that the 2008 paper you mentioned to me has such steps mentioned.
Is this 2008 paper the only one you base your testing on?”
Tell her she should post her beef with me here in the comments and we’ll have it out. We’ll see just how much I don’t know.
I actually would love to hear this person’s POV in this blog. I have to bail on the middleman junk anyway.
The responder politely declined, citing she feels she would better serve people who come to HER, as they do all day every day, with questions about their dogs and tests.
However if anyone wishes to inquire, the person is:
Katrina Mealey DVM PhD
DACIVM, DACVCP
College of Veterinary Medicine
Washington State University
SHe didn’t answer my other Qs, I asked her if she would when she has a free moment.
So endeth my middle-manning!
“I’m sure I’ll get stupid people commenting that it’s morally reprehensible to put a dollar amount on a test, but any rational person knows that it is not only wise to do so, it’s morally appropriate to do”
It’s also quite ignornant too, since anyone in America knows how much the bottom line is a part of the human medical field.
Look at the double edged sword that is human medical testing.
Every day I hear people complain about how the DOCTORS test and test because they just want your cash. It so happens I have had quite a stressful 2013 so far, involving unexpected procedures, tests and appointments with various doctors ( although so far the outcomes have not been as scary as I make it sound, knock on wood). Most doctors I have come across have, in reality, only done testing on me that they honestly felt was necessary, due to a likelihood of my potentially having problems.
A lot of this has to do with insurance. When I read insurance and medical forms, I will at some point see a statement that says it is illegal for my doctor to order tests deemed medically unnecessary.
So it’s not the doctors being evil and wanting more tests so they can profit. True, doctors, if left to their own devices, MIGHT be inclined to order more, charge more, but I think the majority would really only do so if it created a better medical profile of somebody, and there are probably cases where this could help someone, by catching something in advance.
But thanks to insurance bottom lines, it’s probably not deemed necessary to test someone unless they fall into classic symptomatic patterns, allowing doctors to order tests using standard protocols.
In short, the doctors are not allowed to think outside the box if they want to get paid at all; to stay in providers’ good graces.
It chokes certain freedoms, but it also prevents ripoffs; the double edged sword.
In veterinary medicine, these issues don’t exist. Not in the same way at least. You don’t HAVE to have pet insurance. In fact I think most pet owners still don’t, but the rates of insured seem to be rising. So pet owners have insurance options if they want it. I have it and I’m still trying to determine if it’s really worth it. Quotes from friends of unexpected incidents costing many thousands, plus improved payouts cited by the companies, made me go for it; estimated $3K for a lifetime of payments, which may in the end be half or 3/4 of what I’ll ever really need for the vet,and so in the end I’m betting that I may need all those thousands at once and won’t have it to put out in a lump sum. Also betting the company carries through for me in the end.
Having said that, no pet insurance that I have seen warns against unnecessary testing. But if you choose to get it and something comes back as positive for a disease, you revealed a pre-existing condition and there goes your coverage down the drain. Another double-edge.
I wonder if the biz will ever get so big that dogs will have their own Obamacare proposals?
Chris, someone sent me this Dbase regarding TNS in BCs. It seems like carriers are more than 10% going by this one. Have you ever seen it? What do you make of it?
Whoops. Sorry. Here it is. http://bordercolliehealth.com/TNSdatabase.html
Well aware of that site. You’re not going to get a representative sample from a project like that. The founder of that site had a TNS litter after inbreeding on a recent show sire who is over bred and popular in the small show breed pool from OZ and the UK.
Many of the dogs tested were high risk descendants, not a random and dispersed sample of dogs.
Oh wow. Clearly when people do their own online research there is a story behind different sites. Case in point your explanation of this site, and then there is the person from WSU who only cited one paper regarding MDR1 genes in BCs, and it turns out this was a paper the veterinarian researched herself; but the other papers I sent her, she found reasons to dismiss. She even found silly reasons, like, saying she could not be sure dogs from a European paper were all pedigreed, even though she later admitted she wasn’t sure dogs in HER own paper were pedigreed!
GIven this, you have reason for confidence in the sources you use, for sure. Which resources for TNS do you trust?
I knew about the lady who started that site before she started it. Kelly Whiteman of BonnieDune kennels. She and the idiot she inbred with were fixtures on the Border Collie show yahoo groups. I even told the two of them how inane their breeding plan was before they did it, and of course the “I told you so” after was not taken well. The other woman, Bonnie Harris, of Wildair kennel is now out of dogs entirely, and that’s a good thing. She was not only stupid, but a liar who just loved to talk trash about other breeders, none of it true. She was even implicated in stealing the dogs of another breeder and telling her that the dogs were DEAD so she wouldn’t have to give them back.
Insane people.
If you search the Border Collie lists for TNS before Kelly had her litter, not one mention. She has a TNS litter and all of a sudden she’s writing that it’s “COMMON IN THE BREED!” Well, I guess we should be thankful that she was open about it and started the website, but I don’t really think that the sample selection there represents the breed at all. It’s almost ALL show dogs.
And the problem itself, well it’s tragic but it’s self limiting. Affected dogs died very young, most won’t even make it to new homes. All things considered I’d rather get a dog that dies at 5 weeks than one who has $5k-10k worth of surgery in mid-life due to hip issues or some chronic disease that strikes after you’ve bonded and trained and grown to deeply love the animal.
If you search the same lists, show and working, for TNS symptoms that are not called TNS (like failure to thrive or puppy wasting) you might get a few hits but there is not really a consciousness about it until it had a name. I’m sure when it did happen it was not diagnosed as TNS, but rather “the puppy didn’t make it, it got an infection, it was the runt,” etc. Since it’s an auto-immune disease and all dogs that die from it are actually killed by something else like an infection.
I don’t breed close to avoid issues like this.
It always feels like a privilege to just take in and absorb the information you and the circle of cyber friends you hang with post. It’s like sitting on the shoulder of a giant among many and listening to the genius and their brilliant ideas evolve and take shape.
As always. Thank you.
Chatham Hill recently posted..Chatties, Flatties, Weims and Spaniels
I do health testing on all my breeding dogs to satisfy me, no one else. I have been breeding dogs since the late 1950’s. Then we had nothing but our good sense to rely on. Even the veterinarians didn’t know squat about the mode of transmission of inherited or genetic abnormalities. When OFA came along I was thrilled and began to participate in testing for those genetic conditions that affected my breeds. I did the testing for me and for the dogs. If I could identify even one dog with any given problem I prevented the dogs from producing puppies doomed to cope with the ravages of a genetic condition and I saved myself a lot of tears. Most pet people haven’t a clue and so be it. I can stand behind my breeding program as much as is possible with health testing. Epilepsy is still rampant in many breeds and there is still no genetic testing available. POAG (Primary Open Angle Glaucoma) testing became available just last year and I tested everyone here. The Testing was supported by our National breed club and that kept the cost at a reasonable level. Now I know I won’t have to worry about my dogs producing a nightmare of heartbreaks for my puppy buyers as this is a horrible disease. The dog’s eyes are usually removed and the pain is horrific. It is expensive for the owners and now completely preventable. Why wouldn’t I take advantage of this testing? Save one puppy from a life of agony and an owner from a broken heart. Put a price tag on that.