What to Look For With Labrador Puppy Health Certificates
‘I’ve heard and seen puppy adverts mentioning health certificates and wondered what this meant and why it is necessary?’
This is a very misunderstood area. Alongside temperament, the health of your Labrador throughout its life is of primary importance to you as pet owners. Three of the most frequent problems that affect the Labrador are Hip Displacia, Elbow Displacia and GPRA (a problem with the eyes that causes blindness, often by three or four years of age).
The eye problem is ENTIRELY genetic (so passed through the genes from the puppies parents to it and its littermates).
The Hip and Elbow problems have a very strong genetic influence, but can be aggrevated by overexercising a young puppy, falls, injuries and general roughhousing whilst the dogs joints are still growing.
Therefore, it is very very important that only dogs free from these problems themselves are bred from to give the puppies produced the very best chance of being free themselves of these painful and traumatic problems.
The common misconception is that only competition kennels use the health schemes or that they are not for breeders who ‘only produce pets’. The schemes are not expensive to put breeding dogs through, and, remember, every dog bred from is a ‘breeding dog’, NOT just those belonging to people who show or work their dogs. To NOT health test the parents before breeding for these conditions is selling both puppy buyers and the puppies they produce short as they are playing Russian Roulette by breeding ‘blind’.
To briefly explain the schemes:
Hip Scoring.
At around a year of age, when the dogs skeleton has fully grown, an xray is taken of the dogs pelvis area. This xray is then sent from the vet to the BVA (British Vet Association). They will score this xray with each hip of the two hips scoring between 0 (lowest) and 53 (highest). So if both hips are scored the total that dog achieves will be between a TOTAL of 0 and 106 (2 x 53).
Currently the breed average for a total of both hips sits at around 16. So dogs around or under this score have average or better than average hips to give a guide. The score can also be shown sometimes as two numbers, left hip/right hip – so, something like 5/4 (total of 9 – good) or maybe 33/21 (total of 54 – poor).
To recap, it is the PARENTS of the litter who are scored and not the puppies. This cannot be undertaken until a year of age as a minimum but can be done at any age after this. Only dogs to be bred from are usually hip scored, there is no need to score pet puppies not to be bred from. The information is FOR breeder and puppy buyers to decide if the dog is suitable to be bred from. Hip scoring is done once in a dogs life only and his score remains with him for the rest of his life. When buying a puppy, you should insist on seeing the official BVA/KC certificate with the dogs score on. NEVER just rely on verbal assurances that the parents are scored without seeing the proof. Hip scoring has been undertaken now for around 35 years and so the scheme is well known and well used. A breeder shows everything you need to know about them, even if a nice person with basically healthy looking dogs, if they do not use the health schemes.
Eye Test Certificate.
This is possibly even more essential for buyers of puppies to ensure they buy only from litters where both parents have been eye tested. GPRA is 100% genetic and so the status of the parents eyes entirely affects the puppies eyes for the future. This test is not undertaken at a regular vet but by a specialist. There are many many clinics and testing sessions around the country OR you can book a private visit to one of the dozens of test specialists. An eye test will be undertaken and a simple certificate given afterwards showing if the dog was affected or unaffected by the problems being examined for. This eye certificate should be renewed every 12 months and so, when puppies are produced, the certificate should be valid. they last only 12 months, like a Car M.O.T. so even if the breeder can show a certificate, firstly make sure the ‘unaffected’ box is ticked (not the ‘affected’) and secondly make sure it is dated within the last 12 months.
If it is not, chances are the dog was retested and failed OR the owner didn’t bother testing again. The trauma of a young pet dog going blind is so great that the £35 or so an eye test certificate costs a breeder is a SMALL price to pay to check their eyes are not affected before a mating is undertaken.
Special thanks to Diana Stevens from Wynlanbriar Labradors for putting together this article. Head over to their website for more advice, training and tips on Labradors.
