More DNA testing

Lynda, much like myself is a strong advocate for testing against disease and using everything available at our disposal to ensure the best possible outcome for any pups.  It's fairly new at the moment and a lot of people are not prepared to add to the list of tests already done (I won't go into all the arguments for and against here else I will never get this blog up to date !). My concern is that for most of the people that refuse to take tests that are available is that they are scared of the outcome.  That and people's reaction to using a dog identified as a "carrier". I think that some people are wary of using a dog that's been identified as a carrier, when all that really means is that you make sure you breed with a dog that is clear.  While they don't like the idea of a carrier, they seem to be more comfortable with not doing the test at all ? That is crazy to me - to be more comfortable with the unknown (and perhaps mating with an affected dog) rather than knowing the dog is a carrier (who will never be affected).

Anyway, I feel myself starting to rant so I will stop. There are lots of discussions/opinions out there on just how far to take the whole testing process. For me, I believe I needed to do all I could for the best possible outcome for both the puppies and their new owners !  Of course you could also argue that pedigree breeding (and historically lot's of very close line breeding or inbreeding) have produced all these results in the first place ;)

I absolutely loved Reed and felt like this was the dog I wanted to use so, since Reed is a carrier of EIC, I had to get Jess tested as well (at the moment, I have not had the results back - if she comes back a carrier then it's back to the drawing board !). It's typically a problem in the show lines though so Jess should be fine. While I was sending results off anyway, I decided to do the test for CNM as well. Reed has tested clear but CNM is a problem more with the working lines so figured I should put that to rest as well. I will explain these two tests in following posts.