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Border Collies "For Brains and Beauty" | |
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Testing
The health and welfare of the Border Collies we own and breed is extremely important to us. To ensure that we only breed from healthy stock all our dogs are fully health tested and so are the stud dogs that we use. Here is a list of the tests our dogs have had and the results: Sh Ch Goytre Prince Of
Dreams JW ShCM (Wizard) Date of Birth 11/11/01 Puppy Eye test Clear DNA CEA tested Clear DNA CL tested Clear DNA TNS tested Clear Hearing Tested Pass /Pass Hip score 5:6 Annual eye test Normal tested 20/01/09 Gonioscopy Normal Jupavia Prince Of Thieves (Alfie) Date of Birth 24/03/08 Puppy Eye test Clear DNA CEA Hereditarily Clear DNA CL Hereditarily Clear DNA TNS Hereditarily Clear Hearing Tested Pass /Pass Hip score Awaiting results (looking excellent) Annual eye test Normal tested 20/10/09 Gonioscopy Normal Goytre Image Of Paradyse At Jupavia (Fern) Date of Birth 18/12/03 Puppy Eye test Clear DNA CEA tested Clear DNA CL tested Clear DNA TNS tested Clear Hearing Tested Pass /Pass Hip score 6:5 Annual eye test Normal tested 22/03/09 Gonioscopy Normal Goytre Tia's Legacy Of Dreams At Jupavia (Tia) Date of Birth 15/07/05 Puppy Eye test Clear DNA CEA Hereditarily Clear DNA CL tested Clear DNA TNS tested Clear Hearing Tested Pass /Pass Hip score 7:7 Annual eye test Normal tested 21/10/09 Gonioscopy Normal Jupavia May Be Dreaming (Evie) Date of Birth 24/03/08 Puppy Eye test Clear DNA CEA Hereditarily Clear DNA CL Hereditarily Clear DNA TNS Hereditarily Clear Hearing Tested Pass /Pass Gonioscopy Normal Hip score 6:3 Jupavia Fifty's Girl (Charley) Date of Birth 22/07/08 Puppy Eye test Clear DNA CEA Hereditarily Clear DNA CL Hereditarily Clear DNA TNS Hereditarily Clear Hearing Tested Pass /Pass Gonioscopy Normal Hip score 5:3 The following information has been taken from the website of the Southern Border Collie Club and reproduced with their permission. On the whole the Border Collie is a healthy breed - but as with any other breed there are some medical problems which may occur from time to time, some hereditary and some not. As accredited breeders we make every effort to breed only from well tested, healthy stock and to carry out all necessary tests to ensure that our pups are healthy. CEA - COLLIE
EYE ANOMALY:
The more accurate name for it is Choroid Hypoplasia (CH) - the choroid is a layer of tissue under the retina, which in CEA can be seen to have underdeveloped, thin, almost transparent patches, in one or both eyes. Mildly affected dogs may have perfectly normal vision, but if bred from, can produce severely affected puppies. Severely affected dogs suffer a serious loss of vision and many have colobomas - holes or pits in the retina. At worst, severe CEA cases suffer intraocular haemorrhage, detachment of the retina, and blindness. CEA is inherited via an autosomal recessive gene, but thanks to the recent development of the gene test by OptiGen in the USA, producing affected puppies can be avoided in future by selective breeding. CL - CEROID
LIPOFUSCINOSIS:
An hereditary, fatal disease, similar to Batten?s Disease in humans, CL is also called Storage Disease - an accumulation of toxins builds up in the brain, owing to an enzyme abnormality, which prevents the dog from disposing of them normally. Symptoms appear from around 15 months of age and gradually worsen, beginning with abnormal behaviour such as fear of familiar people and objects, unsteadiness and abnormal gait, and progressing ultimately to dementia, disorientation, loss of bowel/bladder control, hyperactivity, rage and mania. As there is no cure, the only course is euthanasia. Confirmation of CL is post mortem. The recent development of the gene test to identify Carriers means selective breeding can eradicate this disease. TNS - TRAPPED
NEUTROPHIL SYNDROME: An hereditary disease where the bone marrow produces white cells (known as neutrophils) but is unable to release them into the bloodstream - as a result affected puppies have an impaired immune system and will eventually die from infections which they cannot fight. Research continues into TNS and testing is now available. PRA - PROGRESSIVE
RETINAL ATROPHY: PRA is a degenerative disease of the photoreceptors of the eye, inherited via an autosomal recessive gene. Usually the first symptom is night-blindness, especially noticeable when the dog is in unfamiliar surroundings, but eventually the dog goes totally blind. There is no cure. Our dogs are tested annually during the adult eye test. DEAFNESS: Figures from the Animal Health Trust indicate that 1 in 25 Border Collies tested suffers from congenital deafness. This still may not sound particularly important, but when you realise that the estimate for the incidence of deafness in the dog population as a whole is about 0.25 %, or 1 in 400 individuals, it begins to look a little more significant. Even the most experienced Border Collie breeders sometimes do not recognise an affected puppy in the nest, especially one that is unilaterally deaf, and yet there are still people who are reluctant to hearing test, because "we haven't got a problem". However, the only way to know that for sure is to hearing test all breeding stock and progeny. So how do we test for deafness? A unilaterally deaf dog is very difficult to identify as it hears perfectly in the non-affected ear, and so usually behaves normally. It is almost impossible to confirm that a dog is unilaterally deaf without performing an objective test, such as the Brainstem Auditory Evoked Response or BAER test. The BAER is the electrical response of the brain to auditory stimuli. When sound enters the ear, the auditory pathway generates electrical impulses. These are picked up by recording electrodes, which are positioned on the head, and passed into a computer. A series of clicks are passed into the ear through a headphone, producing a repeatable sequence of peaks and troughs, which are displayed on a screen. The test is usually very quick and non-invasive, and gives an accurate and totally objective hearing assessment. Puppies are tested from 5 weeks of age, and adults can be tested too. Now that the BAER test is available, no-one need ever find out that their much-beloved but somewhat wayward puppy behaves that way because he is in fact totally deaf, as it is no longer necessary to purchase a puppy whose hearing status is unknown. This is the aim of hearing testing - to ensure that breeders know the hearing status of the pups they are selling and to reduce (or in a perfect world, eliminate) the incidence of deafness in the Border Collie breed. Eventually it is hoped that a blood test will be available to identify carriers of the disorder, but until then, the only way to know with certainty the hearing status of each individual, and go some way towards reducing the percentage of affected dogs, is to evaluate every animal using the BAER test. |