Dog Health Tests

            

            Alright because this is becoming such a thing, same as running to a vet with every loose stool, I will shine some light on it. It will also become a bigger “thing” as vets can not do tails, ears and dewclaws now and this is such a nice sounding lobby. Everyone needs to get a health test for their dog, right? Wrong :)

            Vet health tests hold a little value for me. When it comes to hip and elbow dysplasia I can see it has 0 effect on the results of your breeding and the health of hips and elbows of your puppies or the breed as a whole. That is a fact, no matter how you wanna twist it and that was a primary reason why I ended my long relationship with the German Shepherd breed and started with GSP and Belgian Malinois. This was a big step for me as GSD are sort of a heritage for me and I love them very much. And FYI all German Shepherd Dogs must have hip and elbow tests before breeding in Europe! Yet they are about the worst for it now besides Golden Retrievers. Explain that! Honestly, this is where this article should end. Even with all the testing, the issue is only getting worse so obviously it has no effect on breeding and genetic health of the puppies the way we see it. 

Nobody was able to eliminate hip dysplasia nor know what and how it is caused. Imho mostly by inbreeding or line-breeding how people "nicely" call this sick practice. I have definitely never saw it caused by any environmental stress. Running or jumping, that theory has always been completely made up in order to present some sort of a smart-sounding idea and yet is so present online. (Which doesn’t surprise me) I have however seen many benefits to exercising your dogs vs leaving them to sit for the first 18 months without adding stress load on their body progressively. 

            

We run all our dogs on our sled team and that is partially how we test our dogs for their health. That is how every breeder should test their dogs, by working them to see their limits! Because Xrays don't show much at all till the dog is fully matured anyways and if your dog can run 30-50 milers, and not be sore and be ready to do it again tomorrow, his hips are perfect. We also dock dive with our dogs and again, if they can jump over 20 feet, their hips are in top shape. Etc etc. But oh wait, most breeders don’t do much with their dogs besides talking a lot and feed them space food so they will tell you all about their health tests and how important they are ;)

            I think heart test is the same as above, no point explaining much there except the fact that most veterinarians can’t really tell you much about your dog’s heart with a stethoscope. It has to be a specialist and even then, those results are sooo all over the place that there just isn’t much point to them at all as a preventative test. Again if you want to really test your dog’s health, you just have to do it with hard work and exercise. 

So here are my two cents again :) Keep it simple lol. I know it’s hard to understand sometimes lol.