if it says affected by HC on a dogs registration certificate what does it mean?john i know you will know:)

Hi Miloos, not John here :) But HC. stands for Hereditary Cataract.

Christine, Spain.

thanks christine :)

my work colleague has just got a lab pup and on the registration cert it says the pups dad is affected by HD.this stud dog is still siring litters and is from a well known kennels.is there nothing that can be done about this?I feel awful about telling her this news, she asked me cos she thought i would know straight away, i know about pra but not cataracts.can anyone help?:(

Hi Miloos, have you made a typo cos you`ve changed it fom HC to HD & that stands for Hip Dysplacia? :)
Think you have anyways so here`s a link with some info on cataracts.

http://www.aht.org.uk/fsheets/fsheets6.html

As for breeding from the stud with them, well maybe there could be a very good reason?? Would suggest your friend rings the breeder of her pup to have a chat about it.

Christine, Spain.

thanks christine its hc im talking about sorry im rubbish at typing.what could the good reason for breeding be though, money...?
ps shes too upset to contact the breeder even though i've told her to, it's such a shame, her dog might be ok and it might not according to my recent research :(

Thats OK Miloos, I`m rubbish as well! :)
Good reasons. Maybe he`s the last of an outstanding line, maybe it`s only just come to light?? I wouldn`t jump to any conclusions, I would prefer to give the benefit of the doubt & discuss it with the breeder.
You can tell your friend it`s not the end of the world & her pup may not even be affected by it! :)

Christine, Spain.

Just interested if anybody knows, if they did not declare this on the registration form then what would happen if it then comes to light ??

Lucy

Hi Lucy, I don`t know if it needs to be declared on the registration form. It`s obviosly on the stud dogs pedigree & I can only say I have bought 3 pups in total & was shown the pedigrees of both dam & sire before the litter was born & they had results for eyes & hips on them. The one case where the stud didn`t belong to one of the breeders, they still had a copy of the sire & faxed it to me. You can also get the breed supplement for each breed & this contains eye & hip results of all dogs that have been registered & pupies that have been born 7 sold.

Christine, Spain.

Labradors are affected by two types of hereditary cataracts.

Early forming, which as the name implies affect a dog very early in it’s life and are normally found by an ophthalmologist well before time for breeding. A friend’s young dog is so affected. She has put in months of training, now all in vain! I must say that we don’t see anywhere near as many of these because as I said, they would normally be found before breeding age so are so much easier to breed out.

The other sort, Late forming, is a totally different kettle of fish. It is not usually seen until six years or older so unfortunately the breeding life of the dog is usually finished before the breeder even knows thy have a problem. I feel so sorry for these poor people. They come to us year after year to test, do every thing they can then nature kicks them in the teeth! My own Bethany developed the late forming at eight years old so it was only the fact that she was epileptic which saved me!

The hereditary cataract in Labs is unmistakable. It is NOT an all over thing but is shaped like a Mercedes car badge, three bladed propeller shape. Although the dog will loose a certain amount of vision in a certain direction it will not go blind. In fact, if I had not had Bethany tested I would never have known. Proving the need for testing! The old story, “No, I don’t test but my dogs eyes are perfect!” is a load of rubbish and will only spread trouble even more that it need be.

I used to think that everything would be so much easier when genetic testing arrived but unfortunately not so! I know of two dogs tested, one passed the DNA test when known to be affected and another which came to our testing which had failed when it’s eyes were in fact, “Text Book Perfect!” not my words, those words were from a professor of canine ophthalmology!

For a person to test, fail, and still breed is totally irresponsible BUT, it is possible, with a 63 day gestation period for a dog to be used and to then be tested and fail AFTER being used but before the puppies are born. The test should be carried out at yearly intervals so may not have been due until after the mating. We hold sessions 3 times a year, around the same time each year so breeders can come to the same session each year and stay currant. Occasionally a dog fails and to see the look of devastation on their face when they come out of the consulting room. . . . . . . . . .They really do care and if they had mated a few days earlier with a perfectly valid certificate. . . . . . . .

Best wishes, John

thanks john and christine, i suspect the dog was clear when mated then went for a test after etc.my colleague was worried about blindness and i couldn't really help her as im not too well up on cataracts but know about pra.thanks both of you for your help, i'll tell her on monday:)

You can tell her to rest assured, the dog will never go blind. (or not from that anyway) It's doubtful if she ever even notices the reduction in vision. :)

Best wishes, John

Hi John, but as it`s only the sire who`s been diagnosed with the cataractss it doesn`t mean the pup will have it....or does it?

Christine, Spain.

Sorry, no! Your right, it takes two to tango! A puppy inherits two sets of genes, one from the sire and the other from the dam and it is only if the defective gene is in both sets that it will out. I should have said that.

Just like me, a post a mile long and I miss the most important bit out!!!

From a geriatric, John

It`s the latenesss of the hour J :) & maybe the amber stuff combined eh???? :) :)
I understand it all but for the life of me I`d never be able to type it all down so as miloos said, very well put in plain english!!! :)

Christine, Spain.

that info is so easily understandable john, thanks a lot, i looked in my search engine and it came up with a lot of american opthamology jargon which i found so hard to understand.
yeah christine as far as i know its only the sire thats hc affected.you know what it's like when you get a new puppy, you dread anything happening to it, and she doesn't want it to go back to the breeder or obviously not to go blind.i just feel the breeder should have mentioned it to her, and explained what it was, or am i being too idealistic?:)can nothing be done about breeders who breed from affected stock?

The thing is, breeders test, but how many actually understand the FULL implications of the results? We so often have to interpret them for them at our sessions. The internet has made the info so much easier to get but even then, as you say, it is not always easy to understand. I'm lucky in that I have the expert to ask and if I don’t understand what he says I can ask for an interpretation.

The Kennel Club's declared position is that they are not in business to police the breeders and there is no law which says you have to test. Sad, but there it is.

I'll give you something to think about:- When the bugs are out of DNA testing, with the number of hereditary conditions, it could well be that there is no dog without some fault in it's genes so what do we do then? It is only the number of humans that there are in the world which make for the few hereditary problems which we suffer from. If there were many less we would suffer far more! Consider this, Labradors have only been accepted by the Kennel Club for 100 years. I have traced Anna's pedigree back through over 1500 dogs and they all stem from only 7 dogs in 1875! What if just one of those was affected? Think about the Labradoodle. Think what would happen if it ever became an accepted breed and it stemmed from a perfectly healthy dog who was a carrier?

Best wishes, John

Hi Miloos, the breeder could have a good reason, we don`t know the full story, so as I said before I`d rather give the benefit of the doubt & like John siad, not many people understand the ins & outs :) I`d find it hard to believe it was done delibrately.
The pup shouldn`t be affected by it so you can put your friends mind at rest & tell her enjoy her pup :)

Christine, Spain.

i know christine like i said it was me being too idealistic again.thanks for the brill advice i'll pass it on to her:)

It will have the date of the last eye test on the certificate, and from that it will be possible to tell if it was after the bitch was mated.

How it works with eye tests and puppy registration forms is this; When the dog and bitch are eye tested the results go through to the KC who log the results against the dogs details. When a litter is registered the results of the most recently recorded test are automatically included on the pups registration.

Now it could be that the dog had previously gone clear, and was mated with a bit6ch, but had a new eye test done, and failed before the registrations went in, so that the affected staus was listed on the pups papers. Though of course it could be that the Stud dog owner doesn't care if this is passed on.

hi all,
my little brains been ticking over again.here goes, back to the problem of hc in my mates pups sire, as he is hc affected does this therefore mean that both his mum and dad are.god i find all this genetic stuff very hard to understand.john where are you?:)or anyone else who can explain things as well as john:)

Hi Miloos, you`ll have to make do with me till John logs on :) I think it can be passed on by only one of the parents being affected but I don`t think the experts are 100% sure of this. So no, they don`t have to be both affected.

Christine, Spain.

PS I think there might be a DNA test for this soon.

thanks christine, you'll do very nicely thanks:)sorry to keep on about this i updated my friend at work today, but she's still worried about the pup going blind, i'm trying to persuade her to contact the breeder so here's hoping she will. thanks for the info anyway:)

Right, I’ll make this as simple as I can. So simple in fact that it is not strictly true but it will give you a good idea of the genetics of the thing.

The DNA consists of a series of genes. These are the everything about the dog. They carry the overall design of the dog, it’s temperament, its shape, it’s colour, it’s size in fact every single thing that the dog starts out with! Things may get modified later, such as temperament for example, (Which of course we are quite capable of ruining!) but basically, what’s there is what we get.

When a bitch is mated, one set of DNA is passed in the dogs sperm and another set in the bitches egg. So in effect a puppy inherits two sets of DNA. The two sets of DNA dovetail together and where they are the same the puppy inherits that. The problem happens where the two sets are not the same!

Just take day one in the life of a breed, the Adam and Eve of Labradors as an example! Adam has a faulty gene for hereditary cataracts. Eve is clear. Their puppy’s will inherit a set of DNA from each, one clear and the other affected so because only one set is affected the puppy’s will not ever have HC.

The above is too simplistic to be really true so we will carry on from there. Adam and Eve’s puppies are getting older and Adam2 gets amorous with Eve2, 63 days later they are the proud parents of a lovely litter of puppies. Remember that both Adam2 and Eve2 inherited one clear set of genes and one affected set, so which set did the puppies get?

Some will get the clear genes which both parents carry and will be 100% clear!

Some will get a clear set from one and an infected set from the other and although these puppies will never develop HC they will be carriers in that they will have one set of affected genes which they COULD pass on.

Some will get the affected set from both parents and WILL develop HC!

The odds on how many will get what are quite easy to calculate.

Now to the next generation and now we have two other possibilities to cover. Apart from the carriers we have dogs with both sets of genes affected and dogs with no sets affected so:-

Very obviously unaffected to unaffected can only give birth to unaffected. A perfect situation!

Affected to affected can only give affected. Because both sets of genes in both sire and dam are affected there is no other option.

As with Adam and Eve, Affected to unaffected will give all carriers because both sets of genes from the affected will be faulty and both from the unaffected will be perfect.

Affected to carrier will give affected and carriers with no clears

Carrier to unaffected will give unaffected and carriers but no affected dogs

All this is a simple recessive condition but life is not always that simple and some conditions are what is known as polygenic. In other words the condition, for example Glaucoma in Flatcoats, is (or believed to be) carried in more than one gene. The problem then is that two carriers can be mated together and may still not produce affected puppies because they do not have the SAME faulty gene. Breeders never quite know whether the fact that all their puppies are clear means that they are absolutely clear or whether, by grace of god, the necessary bad genes have just by chance not been found yet! A terrible situation for them.

As I said, a geneticist would tell you that the above is far too simplistic to be true but it does give you a very rough working knowledge of the thing.

Now getting down to specifics, we can test puppies literally from the day their eyes open. For some conditions you have to, Collie Eye Anomaly for example. So it is easy for your friend to take the puppy along to a session and get the full story from the horses mouth. I can well appreciate that with the best will in the world she would take far more notice of that than she would from someone like me who she has never met! I know I’d be the same. It is quite likely to be far to early to know if the puppy is affected or not but he or she will be able to settle her mind about actually going blind. If she doesn’t know where to go let me know the rough area and I’ll tell you the nearest.

Best wishes, John

thanks john that is very clear even to me, i'm feeling v sorry for her cos i mentioned this breeder when she was looking for pups.anyway will tell her to go and see someone who tests dogs eyes locally.:)