Raising Health Consciousness

Health testing and health consciousness is not about today and the litter you bred that is all grown up that has not had any issues, or at least any that you know of.   Breeder health consciousness is about what we don’t know;

• The 10 year old dog who has trouble in his shoulders because he jumped out of the SUV too many times before his puppy joints were properly closed.    Now he spends the next 4 years in pain before he dies because pet home says "oh he is just old".
•  The young dog who needs knee surgery and the pet home who does not understand the importance of being super diligent with post surgery therapy.
•  The family with a broken heart because their beloved dog has LP that they have spent years and lots of money and heart break because the vets thought it was a heart lung issue.   Turns out LP is in the lines. 
•  The pet home whose puppy is deaf and they have no idea and believe the puppy has behavior problems.
•  The 7 year old from a previous litter that dropped dead during the day while no one was home and the owners tell no one and do not find out why to give feedback to their breeder. 
•  Pet homes who do not understand about the signs that your dog is unwell and suffering. 
•  The two independent families with litter mates whose dogs are acting strange and are each spending more money than they have for diagnostics leaving the vets stumped and referring to them to a expensive Neurologist when the breeder has the answers but did not test the adults for a known heritable disease.  
• The 1000s of dollars spent on a 4 year old because the dog has early onset glaucoma.   This would have been discovered in eye tests as a puppy according to the canine ophthalmologist.

The stories above are very true.  I know more.  Some of them are very close to me and some happened to me.   I think I have forgotten more than I remember.  I can go on.    Breeders need to be hyper sensitive to health issues.    Breeders need to learn everything they can to educate themselves to be in tune and close to canine health and their lines as is humanly possible.     

The SBTCA recommendations are not pulled from thin air to frustrate us or make anyone look bad or less of a breeder anymore than watching a dog in the ring with a bad front or light eyes or any other fault does.  Getting a CHIC # does not cost anymore time or money than one out of state specialty weekend.   The CHIC program is not something created to give you some smug bragging rights but it is worthy of putting the # at the end of your dogs name like a title.   OFA is a free but valuable tool.  I am thrilled to use OFA every day.   How LUCKY are we to have this great database.   Unfortunately it speaks more about who is not using it than who is, at this time.  It costs money to send your tests in but basically it is free to look up dogs and kennels and breed wide statistics.   I check breed stats all the time.    It is so much easier than keeping paper documents in a folder or worse a pile of papers we never get round to filing.   

Unfortunately today not enough people use the tools.  It is a challenge to find stud dogs or lines who are like minded in health consciousness.   So we have to take chances at times.   It is what happens after that chance is taken that tells the mettle of a breeder.   I know we all care, but it is not about caring it is about doing too.    Even I still worry when a pet home calls with a problem on their 7 year old dog.    I wonder if I am going to be a shoulder to cry on or if I will have answers and suggestions, will they be angry and frustrated or heart broken.    I love that my concern about health travels down the line to most of my owners who then also care.   Health is not just DNA testing, it is a start but not enough.    It is about having your finger on the pulse of health in general.     

I was in the sport of pure bred dogs when health problems were hush hush and kept secret.  I remember when the breeds starting having issues and there were organized blood draws to send to labs to try to find a marker.  Even then there were breeders who did not want to participate.   We have come a long way but when it comes to health, complacency is not our friend.   One thing that really bothers me is when local vets are not supportive of the databases of information we are creating.  When your local vet looks at your hip xrays and says that they are good but does not send them in to OFA.    When our vets do not encourage the scientific value of data collecting.    My father was a scientist from 1959 to his retirement.   I imprinted on the importance of scientific data and its value for the future.

I love what Jane Killion says about Puppy Culture.   It goes something like you may be doing a good job rearing puppies but could you do better?   We can say the same thing about breeding dogs and health, can we do better?   If we are here to protect and preserve how can we do it without concentrating on health as much as we concentrate on type?

Today I am afraid that we are still concentrating why test and why bother rather than looking at all the good information we have on our dogs and their families.   Building the databases today is a tool for tomorrow.