I took it this way too J.

What a sensible post. Sometimes it seems that people believe that caring breeders would deliberately breed dogs with nasty/lethal health issues.

Sadly issues only come to light after the event, when statistically significant numbers of a problem are seen, which may be several generations later, and often after the dog is dead or no longer being used.

People are not realising that the dog mentioned was no longer used once the findings were brought to the attention of breed clubs in late 2010.

There is a silver lining, the only way to get a DNA test is to study affected dogs and their relatives and compare to unaffected (we assume) controls.

Sometimes as in my breed the very diligence for earlier breeders to avoid lines with problems has made it very difficult to eradicate them, purely as the incidence is too low to gain enough research material (DNA samples) they sit there in low numbers but ever likely to rear their ugly head eventually.

All breeds need to start taking and storing DNA samples from dogs at club events, so that they can be used for future research, should something crop up.

As far as i understand it Sal they need to have the affected gene to be carriers

Sorry for being vague - he wasn't a Boxer.

In my breed FRD is suspected, due to a cluster of cases in Holland and USA, and our breed club ask for kidney function to be tested, but unfortunately this is really a rubber stamping job, as my vet told me the bloods would not show abnormality until the dog falls below 20% of kidney function.

So if your bringing in a fit and healthy animal to be used for breeding he doesn't really need to perform a blood test to confirm the results will be normal.

We have been told that only a biopsy of the kidney can tell you for sure if the kidneys are abnormal, and this is far to invasive and potentially dangerous to be used as a diagnostic test, and then of course ti could only identify affecteds.

Inherited Abnormal development of the kidneys seems to occur in quite a few breeds, and they do have an Optigen DNA test in Cocker Spaniels. Unfortunately as in PRA, often the same/similar conditions can be caused by different genes in different breeds/populations.

My Elkhound died of kidney disease which the vets said was genetic. He was from a commercial kennels (pet supermarket type place) and we believe he was originally from Ireland, so most likely a puppy farm. His pedigree may well have been made up - it had some well known names in it but most were spelled badly. Sadly there were a number of Elkhound crosses around within the last few years and I wonder if the parents of these dog were from the same source.

Sorry to go off topic.

In FCI countries the FCI breeding strategies document advises that a dog should be limited to producing fewer puppies than 5% of the total of five years registration statistics. Some countries have set this limit.

In that case this dog has produced less.

In my own breed in this country would limit a dog to being used around only 4 times in his life depending on litter size (24 puppies).

This could mean problems in a dog using up his allocation of use all in a his youth, where he may have been more useful to the gene pool on future generations of bitches as a mature and proven long lived healthy dog.

As a stud dog owner how do you refuse one really nice bitch that may perhaps be better than earlier mates.

I think with over use of sires it is the bitch owners who have the ball in their court, and who should be looking at alternative options.

He was used in 2011, as per working group BRS, 5 litters - 17 pups registered.

In some ways the pedigree dog is an easy target, as there are records. As you say the unregsitered dog may well have had well known dogs names thrown into a made up pedigree.

Could these have been late registrations of litters conceived before/during Oct 2010, as surely the stud dog owner would not make such a statement that can be easily verified????