Health testing

[Dave at kelton]

Had an interesting debate today with one of the UK’s top triallers and breeders and a breeder of both working and show labs, also a trialler. It went something along the lines of where do we stop with health testing and what’s next? Our collective concern was breeders focusing on the scientific testing to the detriment of temperament and innate working ability. That is not to say that health tests are not important. Rather is the demand for 0/0 hips and elbows all too much especially when we see pet owners demanding it for dogs that will rarely move off the carpet and when what we as pickers up want are dogs that are biddable and do the job.

My personal approach is to require sensible hip scores and health tests are a nice to have but that’s where it stops. In over forty years of training and working I have never had a dog with a congenital problem nor a duffer in the field, by just being sensible.

Be interested in your views.

[Lloyd90]

I’ve seen it well said and totally agree… there are lots of people out there breeding dogs and studding dogs that are testing in every possible way, apart from in the field! 
 

Dogs that are mediocre / average workers (or worse) if even worked much at all, they’re hardly proven or tested in the field but they’ve got a list of health tests as long as your arm.

 

Personally I think it’s just another angle to try and pitch their dog for stud and make a past buck. 
 

 

I do absolutely think health testing should be done, but the point is the dog needs to be a bloody good example of the breed displaying good qualities and well tested before considering health tests, cos if it doesn’t have those qualities then the healthy tests are irrelevant. 
 

[PERCE]

DNA testing has done nothing for the breed, all it's done is reduce the gene pool. I'm waiting to see how the stargadts **** show develops as it's carried by several well know trial dogs & some of the ones with very good social media that get a lot of studs. People run away from carriers which is completly wrong. I've spent an awful lot of money breeding out carriers from my dogs.

Hip & elbows are slightly different. I'd never breed anything with an elbow score other than 0 & I've set my own maiximum mark for hips at 14 total with a maximum differential of 7, ie I wouldn't breed an 11 - 3. I've actually never bred from a bitch with a double digit hip score.

All my picking up team are home bred, I have two bitch lines & I hope to get to the 4th generation of both in the next year.

[12gauge82]

I would say there's nothing that has done more harm to dog breeds health as a collective than showing, if dogs were selected purely on working ability alone (excluding any dogs with obvious conditions), I believe we'd have healthy dogs in general. The evidence for this is you only need look at the breeds from years ago and how congenital diseases that are present now, that weren't in the past, despite health testing not occurring at the time.

[Dave at kelton]

5 hours ago, PERCE said:

DNA testing has done nothing for the breed, all it's done is reduce the gene pool. I'm waiting to see how the stargadts **** show develops as it's carried by several well know trial dogs & some of the ones with very good social media that get a lot of studs. People run away from carriers which is completly wrong. I've spent an awful lot of money breeding out carriers from my dogs.

Hip & elbows are slightly different. I'd never breed anything with an elbow score other than 0 & I've set my own maiximum mark for hips at 14 total with a maximum differential of 7, ie I wouldn't breed an 11 - 3. I've actually never bred from a bitch with a double digit hip score.

All my picking up team are home bred, I have two bitch lines & I hope to get to the 4th generation of both in the next year.

I am with you on this. Whilst I have never bred I have a really promising dog at present with a nose that would smell a gnat **** two hundred yards away. I had a few people asking about using him at stud so started with eyes, all clear, then hips and elbows. Hips less than 10 but elbows 1 & 2 sadly. So decided that was the end of that and had him castrated. No way was he going into the gene pool despite everything. He will remain a picking up dog and I dont see I have really lost anything apart from the cost of tests to date.