Hi!

I have just found out that my friend has a dog she wants to breed from who has just had an operation for abnormally growing eye lashes and I have fallen out with her over it.  She says she might still breed from her as the breed is small in number.  Am I wrong that she is being very irresponsible and that you should never breed from such dogs no matter what the reason?

Tell her if she breeds from it and a pup is also affected then she may well be sued by the new owner for the costs of operation to put it right. It is very irrespocible to breed froma dog with an obviouse defect like this. You are right to have fallen out with her. Well done for trying to educate her.
aileen

Well, her reason is that it is a small breed and that cutting out every inherited problem will only lead to bigger problems.  She says she will use a dog who has no history of the disease, but if it that small a breed i don't think there will be such a dog.

Does her  breed have any recomended health checks at all? If so she needs to do them first before she thinks of breeding. She is very irresponsible if not and just the sort of breeder we do not need.
Aileen

Yes she  does hips elbows and eyes, but she wont do it till the eyes are healed from the operation and i suppose they wont see anything by then

The eye test won't cover anything to do with eyelids or eyelashes, so this wouldn't ever come up on any such testing.
Is she part of a breed club? Would it be worth mentioning to them about this?  I'd be horrified too if a pup I had purchased had a problem, only to find that one of the parents had the same issue!!!

Not responsible or acceptable in my eyes and yes she can be sued if it came out that her bitch was affected with a problem and any of her offspring had the same issue...

Does depend rather on whether this is a hereditary issue, rather than just one of those things.  Stray lashes are rather different to structural defects of the eye or lids.

What do you mean by "stray eye lashes"?  I thought all these defect were hereditry.  I believe it is called disticia or intropien or something.

Does she show this bitch at all? If so she will have to inform the KC and request permission to show after the op. If it is Entropian then it is passed down to pups and she should not breed.
Has she got a mentor, or someone like her bitches breeder she can ask for advice?
She is being very silly to try to hide the fact that her bitch has it. If someone sues her then her Vet's records will be requested and she will be found out.
I know you say you have fallen out with her but try to make her see sense, does she really want to produce pups that will have the possibilty of a painfull life.
Better to try to educate if possible than to walk away however hard it may be to do.
Aileen

>What do you mean by "stray eye lashes"?  I thought all these defect were hereditry.  I believe it is called disticia or intropien or something.

Entropion and ectropion are where the whole eyelid is malformed; a few stray eyelashes are different.

Here is a link to some eyelid and eyelash problems, all of which i'd never breed from an animal which has suffered from..
Eyelid problems can be hereditary, but also conformation can play a part and there is no guarentee where the issue may lay, it can skip generations too..
http://www.animaleyecare.net/diseases/canine.htm

I don't speak to her anymore.  I have tried to ask someone as a general question, in the breed that she has, which is small so I won't say which one, not to protect her but the people who bred the bitch who I don't know if they know yet.  I got a vague answer that with a small jene pool it is not wise to try to not breed from dogs to get rid of every defect because the pool gets smaller and smaller and the problem becomes worse.  If this is true maybe the breed ought to die out then.

Actually Merlot, entropion can be either a primary or a secondary condition.  As Suejaw says, it can be difficult to establish the cause definitively.  If it it is the inherited, primary type, then it is readily inheritable.  In this case, we do not know for sure if it is the eyelashes or the eyelid that are involved - it sounds from what's been said more like the eyelashes, so possibly the OP means distichiasis or something similar.

I also would not breed from an affected animal.  We too have a small gene pool, and when a couple of cases of entropion were thrown up a few years ago, we were told by the advising geneticist and an eye panellist not to breed from any affected animal, but also not to discard the siblings and the parents for the reasons that the OP referred to.  The experts could not agree on whether our cases were primary or secondary.

Entropion, or rather the conformation predisposing to entropion is believed to be hereditary in some breeds, but can just occur in any dog.

Disticiasis is found more often in some breeds than others therefore suggesting it is a heritable condition, but it is not clear cut, there is no simple answer and such a dog would not fail and eye test.

I suppose a lot depends on the condition, it's extent, and whether it impacts on quality of life.

The odd misplaced eye lash is a bit like an ingrowing toenail (I'm sure people with those probably had relatives with them), once removed it will be dealt with, not exactly surgery.  Rows of abnormal lashes would be something else.

Some links suggest these lashes are very common in puppies often very soft and disappear over time (we all know children have much thicker and more lashes than we do as adults).

In the end we inherit every trait somehow, and no living thing is free from imperfections, minor ones will not impact on functionality.

Many problems have emerged because of shrinking gene pools.  Apart from wars two reasons can commonly cause this, using dogs too often that are considered superior (you get the good and bad points), but also avoiding using dogs that have minor issues or have relatives with issues in conditions that do not have definitive DNA tests and in the past whole lines were lost because something in the line had an issue. 

The fact that there were lots of perfectly good animals produced too was ignored.

As someone said if we were to avoid every issue no breeding of any sort would take place, including us.

>> As someone said if we were to avoid every issue no breeding of any sort would take place, including us.

What a fabulously sensible post. Thank you Brainless for reminding us all of what our priorities should be.

Personally, I'm in favour of:

a) Testing

b) Full disclosure

c) Applying common sense to results

What breed does she have ?

> Entropion, or rather the conformation predisposing to entropion is believed to be hereditary in some breeds, but can just occur in any dog.
>

This is true but to breed from an affected animal is totally immoral in my eyes. Why perpetuate a problem?

Again a lot would depend on likely cause and severity of an issue. 

Is this an issue often found in the breed, (are there worse things that are being tackled and this individual may excel or be clear for a breed scourge) are there other affected close relatives,a dn previous generations etc.

Things are rarely black and white.

Though if an actual operation has been needed then I would agree.

Thank you all.  from what little I know I think there were a few hairs on the edge of each lid, not many.  She said the dog didn't have any symptoms but has droopy eyes which worried her and she was refered to a specialist who found the hairs, quite a shock for her and she had the op done immediately before it could cause problems, which is why I was so surprised at her intention.  All I will say is that it is a gundog and having looked it up it is known in this breed, but how well I don't know.

It is acceptable to name the breed on this board it is only the breeding board where this should be avoided.