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I do PennHIP and OFA, CERF, thyroid, DM, PRA. When I was breeding Danes I did heart echoes, etc. Which is why I know exactly how far to trust them
What you get with a heart echo is just a snapshot of a moment in time. Depending on the breed that might be a pretty decent predictor of whether they're eventually going to get DCM or a really terrible one. I sat and talked with the cardiologist at Tufts for a long time about it, after talking with the cardio at UPenn the year before - all they can do is tell you whether the heart is OK at that moment, not whether there will be a different picture in six weeks or six months or six years. Look at the Boxer people and the Dobe people, who now do echoes AND Holters, and they're still losing dogs right and left. Since in most breeds there's no genetic test and even where there is a test the influence of environment is great, I am very clear to my puppy people that if they buy a breed known to have heart problems, no matter how careful the breeder is they have no guarantees on their puppies. I can only replace a puppy, not predict its life.
If you have Chessies, you know the parent club isn't recommending breeding away from the at-risk DM test yet. 95% of those with an at-risk test are never going to get any symptoms. Until Dr. Coates and her team have some statements about the role of other genes or environment, I'm testing but NOT avoiding it in my breeding.
Thyroid - again, we're kind of whistling in the dark with the tests. If the dog is TgAA-positive, it often only shows up in the first year of life, then goes away, then resurfaces in old age. So testing at breeding age often doesn't tell you whether they're going to end up with a burnt-out thyroid. And even if you DO catch it, you have no idea whether it's genetic or environmental. Dr. Dodds is finding a very strong link between vaccination, large molecules like wormers, and an autoimmune storm that will choose the thyroid a large percentage of the time. The puppy is immunosuppressed by the vaccine, gets a dose of heartgard, and bang. Its thyroid will be cooked in eight years. Because of the way autoimmune reactions work, for some puppies it'll be thyroid and for others it'll be polyarthritis and for others it'll be AIHA and on and on and on it goes. You can't reliably connect a normal thyroid test in the parents, especially a breeding-age test, to thyroid health in the puppies.
Eyes - similar. You can pass a CERF and produce puppies with entropion. A CERF tells you about the fitness of the parents, not the fitness of the puppies who are but a twinkle in the eye at that point. I CERF to catch genetic cataracts and certain other stuff that I know is reliably passed on, but eyelids I've seen show up in dogs whose pedigrees were CHICed since the beginning of the program. Fortunately eyelids you can catch in the whelping box and fix them before they leave.
Hips are SO frustrating. The benefit of breeding according to OFA recommendations is not statistically different from zero. The heritability of the extended-hip view is squat. PennHIP is better IF you own one of their big-four breeds (Goldens, Labs, Shepherds, Rotties). Virtually all of their research has focused on those four. The less your breed looks like those, the less PennHIP's recommendations are going to help you. The Zuchtwert ("breeding value") scheme in some European countries MAY be the smartest, but it's completely impractical here; our numbers and our government are completely incompatible. And even the ZW is only in place for certain breeds and has very limited value for the odd ones - the dwarfed dogs and so on.
Health testing is one thing I know my way around. Which is why I do NOT use it as any kind of miracle worker. When I have puppy buyers come to me, I tell them exactly what health problems are common in the breed, tell them that I check on those in my adult dogs but that for most of them the value in predicting the health of the puppies is not very high. I tell them that if any of these problems are ones they can't imagine dealing with, if they have a real terror of a paralyzed dog for example, that they shouldn't be buying this breed from anybody, because no matter how careful we are we're doing very little to actually change the statistical incidence.
No breeder should ever tell a puppy buyer that their dog "won't" get something, unless it's a really simple recessive like PRA. Any of the more complex ones, we can tell them that we've tested and that we will replace the puppy, but we can't promise they won't get it.
Joanna Kimball
blacksheepcardigans.com
I do PennHIP and OFA, CERF, thyroid, DM, PRA. When I was breeding Danes I did heart echoes, etc. Which is why I know exactly how far to trust them
What you get with a heart echo is just a snapshot of a moment in time. Depending on the breed that might be a pretty decent predictor of whether they're eventually going to get DCM or a really terrible one. I sat and talked with the cardiologist at Tufts for a long time about it, after talking with the cardio at UPenn the year before - all they can do is tell you whether the heart is OK at that moment, not whether there will be a different picture in six weeks or six months or six years. Look at the Boxer people and the Dobe people, who now do echoes AND Holters, and they're still losing dogs right and left. Since in most breeds there's no genetic test and even where there is a test the influence of environment is great, I am very clear to my puppy people that if they buy a breed known to have heart problems, no matter how careful the breeder is they have no guarantees on their puppies. I can only replace a puppy, not predict its life.
If you have Chessies, you know the parent club isn't recommending breeding away from the at-risk DM test yet. 95% of those with an at-risk test are never going to get any symptoms. Until Dr. Coates and her team have some statements about the role of other genes or environment, I'm testing but NOT avoiding it in my breeding.
Thyroid - again, we're kind of whistling in the dark with the tests. If the dog is TgAA-positive, it often only shows up in the first year of life, then goes away, then resurfaces in old age. So testing at breeding age often doesn't tell you whether they're going to end up with a burnt-out thyroid. And even if you DO catch it, you have no idea whether it's genetic or environmental. Dr. Dodds is finding a very strong link between vaccination, large molecules like wormers, and an autoimmune storm that will choose the thyroid a large percentage of the time. The puppy is immunosuppressed by the vaccine, gets a dose of heartgard, and bang. Its thyroid will be cooked in eight years. Because of the way autoimmune reactions work, for some puppies it'll be thyroid and for others it'll be polyarthritis and for others it'll be AIHA and on and on and on it goes. You can't reliably connect a normal thyroid test in the parents, especially a breeding-age test, to thyroid health in the puppies.
Eyes - similar. You can pass a CERF and produce puppies with entropion. A CERF tells you about the fitness of the parents, not the fitness of the puppies who are but a twinkle in the eye at that point. I CERF to catch genetic cataracts and certain other stuff that I know is reliably passed on, but eyelids I've seen show up in dogs whose pedigrees were CHICed since the beginning of the program. Fortunately eyelids you can catch in the whelping box and fix them before they leave.
Hips are SO frustrating. The benefit of breeding according to OFA recommendations is not statistically different from zero. The heritability of the extended-hip view is squat. PennHIP is better IF you own one of their big-four breeds (Goldens, Labs, Shepherds, Rotties). Virtually all of their research has focused on those four. The less your breed looks like those, the less PennHIP's recommendations are going to help you. The Zuchtwert ("breeding value") scheme in some European countries MAY be the smartest, but it's completely impractical here; our numbers and our government are completely incompatible. And even the ZW is only in place for certain breeds and has very limited value for the odd ones - the dwarfed dogs and so on.
Health testing is one thing I know my way around. Which is why I do NOT use it as any kind of miracle worker. When I have puppy buyers come to me, I tell them exactly what health problems are common in the breed, tell them that I check on those in my adult dogs but that for most of them the value in predicting the health of the puppies is not very high. I tell them that if any of these problems are ones they can't imagine dealing with, if they have a real terror of a paralyzed dog for example, that they shouldn't be buying this breed from anybody, because no matter how careful we are we're doing very little to actually change the statistical incidence.
No breeder should ever tell a puppy buyer that their dog "won't" get something, unless it's a really simple recessive like PRA. Any of the more complex ones, we can tell them that we've tested and that we will replace the puppy, but we can't promise they won't get it.
Joanna Kimball
blacksheepcardigans.com
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