02/11/2025
Sharing this post from a great friend and mentor, Ashton from Kent Family Farms. She speaks about why health testing dogs and seeking out breeders that health test their dogs is so important. It will reduce (but not eliminate) health problems in our family pets, AND it will also ultimate lead to smothering puppy mills and ill-intentioned breeders and reducing the strain on shelters.
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/12CefNcnRox/
I had someone post something recently saying ‘kennels that brag about health testing still have puppies that aren’t perfect’ insinuating that what is the point in even testing dogs as it doesn’t guarantee healthy puppies, so I thought we should look at this.
Let’s take hip dysplasia for instance, we see a significant difference in the rate of hip dysplasia in dogs that parents have high ratings, verses low ratings. For instance if you breed an excellent rated dog to an excellent rated dog, the percentage chance of the offspring being dysplastic is 3.6%, Good to Excellent is 5.8 to 6.1%, Good to Good or Good to Fair is 9.4 to 9.6%. On the other hand Severe to Severe or even Moderate to Severe, goes anywhere from 44.4 to 65.3% dysplastic hips. This shows a significant difference in your chance of getting a dog with hip dysplasia if they are either not tested or do not have a high rating. Hip dysplasia is one of the ones that has genetic components and environmental, so can’t be eliminated all together, but can be minimized significantly.
Then we have other diseases that we can literally eliminate all together with testing. Ichthyosis is a good example of this. It is found in a carrier status in Golden Retrievers at a rate of about 44%, with 29% being affected. Progressive Retinal Atrophy, Rod-Cone Dysplasia is another one that is found in about 23% of Goldens and 16.5% of Poodles, so with testing you can avoid this type of blindness in dogs. The list goes on for many of these diseases. Things like multiple types of early onset blindness, loss of hindlimb use later in life resulting in having to be put down, skin conditions resulting in scale like skin, bleeding disorders, cataracts, muscular dystrophy, neurological disorders and so much more are completely avoidable for all the diseases that have been genetically identified. Just Goldendoodles alone have 21 different diseases common to the breed that we can fully eliminate ever producing a puppy with these diseases by doing genetic testing.
On top of genetic testing, do you know that breeders that do orthopedic and genetic testing typically also do coefficient of inbreeding (COI) testing as well. This is the best way to minimize any disease we can’t test for. Many purebred breeds have average COI’s of 9% to 20%, which is very high compared to the average Goldendoodle litter of 5%, many of ours are even lower than that. If you are just throwing any two dogs together without any testing the risk is significantly higher of a genetic issue. I once inquired about a stud to purchase that lived a long ways away from me and when they sent his pedigree, he just happened to be related to three of my girls that are unrelated to each other. Genetic COI would probably be even higher than the pedigree based COI. If I hadn’t taken the extra precautions of checking it could have been very bad. Do you think breeders that don’t care about basic testing are going to care about this too?
The reality is that orthopedic and genetic testing although it doesn't always eliminate these issues, it does significantly reduces the risk of many diseases and in many cases it does eliminate it all together. If we care about dogs at all we wouldn’t purchase a puppy that didn’t have these things in place.
It doesn’t make sense financially because you will spend more long term on a dog that ends up with one of these diseases to treat it (if it can even be treated) or you will spend your money on training from the lack of socializing because if they aren’t going to health test, they probably won’t socialize or go above and beyond for anything else either. Believe me, I have had many, many people come to me with horrible stories after purchasing from people that didn't health test, only to end up spending a fortune on vet bills that were multiple times more than a fully health tested puppy, but even worse the amount of puppies that have not survived these things is even worse.
It doesn’t make sense morally because if you purchase a puppy from someone that isn’t doing things right, thinking that you are rescuing the puppy (even though you gave them money), you are actually just contributing to more puppies getting abused or neglected. The moral thing is to leave them there because if the person selling them is in it for the money then not being able to get money for them is the only thing that will stop them from breeding.
The reality is that if you want a healthy dog and to support people that care about dogs, you will buy from a breeder that fully health tests, socializes and raises their puppies as part of their family. If you are willing to risk getting an unhealthy dog that isn’t socialized, then go to a local shelter and adopt a puppy from there. There are many dogs you can help there without lining the pockets of an unethical person. Whatever you do, do not buy from someone that doesn’t health test, doesn’t raise them as part of the family, doesn’t socialize them properly or care about their welfare. If you want to help those puppies, don’t buy from those people. If everybody stopped buying from unethical people, all the puppies not raised properly will end up in shelters and can be adopted there and we will move towards a world where people only buy from people that really care, either from their breeder that fully health tests, socializes and raises them properly or from the local shelter that helps the ones that aren’t bred properly.
Health testing matters and makes a huge difference! It is not even a close call on whether it should be a focus when you are looking to get a puppy! The numbers don't lie!
Professional and ethical breeder of high quality goldendoodles for both pet homes and service work.
