Breeding today is all about information and science. I started breeding dogs when I was 15 years old. Back then I was a big time rabbit hunter and we had a pack of beagles. So it was fitting that my first breed to raise was the beagle. I was just a backyard breeder I guess you could say. Most everyone would have been back then compared to today. Fast forward 37 years and our breeding program looks much different today thanks to experience, continued education, and science.
Sometimes we will have a potential customer contact us and ask about Health testing. They are looking for eyes and hips. These are the 2 major things some breeds do have problems with. I tell them we do not test for eyes and hips as huskies are least likely to be affected by these and we are driven by results. We have 4th generation dogs here at our kennels and starting on 5th generations this year. We also personally know the parents of our bloodlines that go back 8 and 9 generations and their health track record. Testing hips and eyes on just the parents of a puppy you plan to buy is just simply not going to ensure that puppy won’t have hip and eye issues. The data is too small of a sample, plus hip and eye problems can be genetic and those tests are not testing the genetics of the dogs. They are doing an x-ray on the dogs hips and based on opinions they are scoring the hips on a numbers system. They have been found to be very inconsistent on that as everyone has a different opinion. So many factors play a part in breeding and producing healthy puppies. Genetics are more complicated than this. If it was as simple as breeding 2 health tested dogs then there should not be any puppies produced today with hip and eye problems or other health issues. Fact is those health tested dogs still produce puppies with these same issues they are tested for from time to time. You will not get a guarantee by anyone who does hips that your offspring will not have hip problems. As much as we would love science to eliminate these problems with just a simple x-ray of the parents they don’t. It’s a false security for customers who does not understand this.
No breeding program is perfect. The health of a puppy is influenced by many factors other than the health of just the 2 parents. A small sample size where you just consider the parents is problematic when trying to develop a statistical health pattern of possible offspring. This is because recessive genes, variables of a said gene, and even environmental factors, all play a role in determining whether a puppy will carry an unhealthy genetic trait. For this reason, we also rely on a vertical pedigree database to improve our decision making and understanding the health of our bloodlines. Most importantly we have to consider the heath of all the siblings. They play a big role in determining if a pair your breeding is good or bad. This is why the vertical pedigree is so important. The value of the vertical pedigree begins with this simple truth: full siblings are equally genetically similar to each other as they are to their parents. This means you can generate as much or more health data in a bloodline from each sibling in the litter as you can from health testing the parents. It also means that you can generate more health data by factoring in the health of the siblings than just looking at the health history of grandparents or great grandparents.
Often times health issues that are not recognizable through just health testing become blatantly obvious when looking at the data of a vertical pedigree. We use it here at Bama Huskies to help us determine where our breeding program is and we measure our success by these results. When we ask customers to stay in contact with us we do it because we care about our dogs, our customers, and we get valuable information this way. When we are keeping offspring to use in our breeding program there is nothing more valuable to us than the vertical pedigree. A breeder who has 4th and 5th generation bloodlines has a greater advantage and can produce higher quality puppies with less health issues because they have so much information based on results.
We are not against testing. We do genetic tests with some of our offspring and all our new generation of future sires and dames. We test for over 190 different health conditions in several categories. You can see it in more detail on this page health testing . This is still just one piece of the puzzle and breeding will not be decided by just one test. Many things factor into it. Every educated responsible breeder will consider many different factors when deciding on what dogs are best to breed in their breeding program and will match them accordingly.
We do not have a problem with anyone who wants to only buy their puppy from a breeder who does OFA testing on the puppies parents. We also don’t condemn any breeder who gets their dogs OFA certified. There is a lot of money generated from these tests. A lot of money is spent marketing to the customer for OFA and hip tests. We do have a problem when we see individuals stating that these certifications are necessary, or provides a guarantee that their puppies won’t develop Hip Dysplasia. It’s an unfounded and scientifically unsupported claim.
Hip dysplasia – do OFA certified parents mean your puppy will have good hips?
Inconstancy in scoring hips is a problem
Whether a breeder decides to OFA certify their dogs or not, is an opinion-based decision at best. Even then, an OFA certification cannot, will not, and does not, provide any guarantee that the dog in question will not develop hip dysplasia later in life, or produce offspring with or without it. Again not all hip dysplasia is genetic. Puppies that fall or jump from high places can get hip dysplasia if injured. This is why any breeder, with OFA certified dogs or not, should always have something in their health agreement covering genetic hip dysplasia. Bama Huskies has a health agreement. These are only as good as the breeder. We talk to people from all over the country that bought a dog from a backyard breeder that didn’t stand behind the health guarantee. There is not much you can do about it if they don’t. Best bet is to start with a breeder that has a good reputation. The puppies they produce will be good. Their reputation depends on it!
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