OFA…

Health testing always scares the crud outta me! I always worry that years of putting time and effort and love and seemingly endless amounts of cash into a dog will end in failed hips or bad thyroid or a seemingly endless list of other things that we test for not because of the high risk of them being bad, but so that we can catch those things before they do go bad…

We are blessed with a relatively healthy breed in Pointers. What bothers me is the “Oh well, why test for what isnt there?” attitude so many breeders have. So so so so so many dogs walk around their whole lives unilaterally deaf, or only able to partially see, or with a thyroid condition, or even with hip dysplasia. Asymptematic is just that – not showing visible symptoms of an underlying problem. Do you think Dobermans got the way they are because breeders were testing every dog before it was bred? Nope. And the average lifespan of a Doberman is 8 years. I never want to see Pointers go down that road, in this lifetime or the next. So I test. Anything in the house that I am even thinking of breeding, I test.

So, as we were sitting here debating pros and cons and possible future stud dogs, Juno turned 2. Now, its not only my personal morals but also in my contract with her breeder that she will have her hips xrayed and submitted to OFA at 2 years old. I managed to find a pretty awesome health clinic where I could get Hips, Eyes, and Thyroid done for the price my regular vet charges for just Hips, and I got her hips done with absolutely no sedation. Pretty awesome if you ask me!

So, we did all 3 tests. Hip xrays, a CERF exam, and an OFA Thyroid lab are required for submission to the CHIC program for Pointers. We obviously found out the results from the CERF exam while we were in the office, and Juno CERF’d normal, with no notations. We had to wait nearly a month for her hips and her thyroid to come back, and we finally got them back this past week. We also managed to get ahold of her BAER test results from when she was an 8 week old baby, and will be submitting those to OFA to add to her record as well (she is BAER normal as well, in case anyone was wondering! Thanks Sarah for sending them!)

Juno’s hips came back rated EXCELLENT. Her thyroid came back Normal, and her CERF we already knew was Normal. Proud of our little Junebug, even if we decided that breeding her is just not in the cards this year 🙂

Her OFA results page can be found at:

http://www.offa.org/display.html?appnum=1490498#animal