This is Part 1 of a series of blogs that will address health clearances for golden retrievers. It is vital that puppy buyers understand the terms reputable breeders and their national breed clubs use when describing the health testing and certifications dogs have, so buyers can make informed decisions when picking a breeder or a litter, and when deciding whether it is worth waiting for a particular breeder to have a puppy available. Future parts of this series will get into the specifics of the health clearances you may see when researching a golden retriever puppy, its dam and sire, or its extended pedigree. Part 1 defines the term “health clearances” especially relative to golden retrievers. Future parts to the series will address hip and elbow clearances, heart clearances, eye clearances, and other clearances for goldens, and help you decipher the reports and certification numbers for all those clearances.
WHAT ARE HEALTH CLEARANCES?
PERHAPS MORE IMPORTANTLY, WHAT AREN'T HEALTH CLEARANCES?
Health Clearances in General
The term “health clearances” is a term of art with a very specific meaning within the community of dog breeders. Health clearances officially certify a dog meets a set standard for what the national breed club or other organization has established is the baseline for a healthy dog. Each breed has specific health problems the clearance standards are designed to address. Experts recommend what tests breeders should do and when a health clearance should be issued based in part on the health issues common in that breed, and in part on what can be evaluated phenotypically or by genetic testing. For each of the recommended clearances, the breed club delineates specific tests, performed by specific types of doctors or labs, submitted at specific times, to specific databases. Conscientious breeders consider health clearances in a pedigree when determining to do a particular breeding, and puppy buyers ought to consider health clearances of the pup’s parents at a minimum when looking to buy a pup. In general, breeders who don’t obtain these clearances are considered unethical or irresponsible, because they are breeding in a vacuum without knowing what health risks they are taking with their breedings and what health problems they are selling to their puppy buyers. Some of these risks are not terribly serious, but some are life threatening, and the best way to reduce or even eliminate these risks is to use health clearance information in making breeding choices. I’ll discuss below the specific health clearances golden retriever breeders should get for their breeding animals, as recommended by our national breed club, the Golden Retriever Club of America (GRCA). Here is a link to the GRCA web site addressing what it considers to be “health clearances”: https://grca.org/about-the-breed/health-research/health-screenings-for-the-parents-of-a-litter/ Quoting from that: “Breeders often describe their dogs as 'hip, elbow, eye, and heart certified' or as having ‘all their clearances’ and these statements usually can be verified on the OFA website.”
Buyers should demand any puppies they purchase are bred to at least the minimum standard set by the GRCA COE, not because the GRCA recommends it, but because it’s basic common sense.
Health Clearances for Golden Retrievers
Under the GRCA Code of Ethics (COE), for all its breeding animals, a golden retriever breeder or stud dog owner should at the least:
“Possess examination reports and certifications as outlined below to evaluate and document status concerning recommended screening examinations; and these reports should be publicly available in an approved online database.”
“The following reports are acceptable for dogs residing in the U.S.:
Hips – a report from the Orthopedic Foundation for Animals (OFA) or PennHIP at 24 months of age or older. Since PennHIP results are not automatically published, these results should be recorded in an approved online database as described above.
Elbows – a report from the OFA at 24 months of age or older.
Hearts – a report from a Diplomat of the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine (Cardiology), at 12 months of age or older. Report should be recorded in an approved online database as described above.
Eyes – a report from a Diplomat of the American College of Veterinary Ophthalmology. Examinations should be done within 12 months prior to a breeding, and results should be recorded in an approved online database as described above.”
What does all that mean? Basically, a golden before breeding should have hips x-rayed and certified by the Orthopedic Foundation for Animals (OFA) or PennHIP, elbows x-rayed and certified by OFA, heart cleared by a veterinary cardiologist by auscultation or echocardiogram after age 12 months, and eyes cleared by a veterinary ophthalmologist within 12 months of breeding. All those clearances should be available in a public online database. Golden retriever health clearances in the United States are entered in the OFA database.
The GRCA COE in that succinct section lays out the four primary health clearances, which are a large piece of the puzzle responsible breeders put together in determining whether a particular dog should be bred and which dog it should or should not be bred to. In turn, puppy buyers should use the GRCA COE to determine a puppy’s parents meet the national breed club’s basic health certification levels, and be reassured puppies bred in accordance with the COE have a greatly decreased risk of having health problems in those four areas. The GRCA COE are not intended to be punitive, and are recommendations rather than requirements. However, the guidance exists because the golden retriever community at large has periodically become aware of health problems common enough in the breed to be concerning, and has recognized the need to protect the breed - and puppy buyers - by setting a minimum testing standard. Testing is widely available, and it needs to be done on any breeding animal. Within the community of responsible breeders who care about the health and longevity of the pups they produce, these recommendations have almost become canon law.
The four primary clearance tests for hips, elbows, hearts and eyes are phenotype tests, meaning the veterinarians are doing physical exams rather than DNA (genotype) tests to determine if the dog has any of the disqualifying conditions. As a result, the tests are not a guarantee offspring of tested individuals will have zero risk of developing a health condition in those areas. But, the four primary clearance tests have proven over many years to be an excellent method of determining which parents have the greatest risk of producing puppies with those conditions and either removing them from the gene pool, or using them for breeding with great care and consideration and putting buyers on notice of an increased risk of those conditions occurring in their puppies. The conditions those four tests are looking for clearly have some hereditary components, so the testing is an excellent predictor of the health problems future generations might have. Until we have DNA tests for the conditions covered by the clearances, physical exams to find the problematic phenotypes are what we use.
Breeders who do not at a minimum obtain those four primary health certifications are not only failing to follow the GRCA COE, they are preventing a buyer from making an educated decision whether a pup is at risk of sometimes serious or debilitating health conditions, or even early death. Not all breeders, even reputable breeders, are members of the GRCA, but buyers should demand any puppies they purchase are bred to at least the minimum standard set by the GRCA COE, not because the GRCA recommends it, but because it’s basic common sense.
Buying a puppy from a breeder who doesn’t meet the standards of the breed in terms of structure or testing is like buying a house from a builder who doesn’t build to code or do inspections. It may save you a little money up front, but it will cause expensive heartbreak later.
Buyers may ask, since they have no plans to breed or show their dog, and since all this testing must make the puppies from breeders who follow the GRCA COE more expensive, is it really that important? First, the reality is testing does not generally make the puppies significantly more expensive. It should, in my opinion, because doing things the right way is more expensive, and puppies with health clearances behind them are superior and in higher demand. But, somehow the puppy producers who breed frequently and always have puppies available while never doing full health testing are generally not charging much less for their pups than those that do, and sometimes charge more. Buyers should be aware that a puppy from one of those types of breeders absolutely should cost significantly less than a puppy from a breeder who fully health tests their dogs. The breeder who does not obtain clearances has very simply spent significantly less in preparation for a breeding than a breeder who obtains full health clearances. Second, buyers are paying good money for a living creature who will spend perhaps the next 12 or more years under their roof. Buyers should want to be assured their pups are not at high risk for painful, expensive, or life-shortening health problems. It seems logical before you plop down thousands of dollars on a pet who will be relying on you for its maintenance for more than a decade you ought to do at least as much research into the purchase as you do before purchasing a major appliance or cable TV plan. If by purchasing from a breeder who gets health clearances on their breeding dogs you can greatly reduce the chance of your pup needing major orthopedic surgery, having a lifelong health problem requiring medication or causing pain, going blind, or dying suddenly very young, why would you not do so? A meme that was making the rounds not long ago said it really well. It went something like this: Buying a puppy from a breeder who doesn’t meet the standards of the breed in terms of structure or testing is like buying a house from a builder who doesn’t build to code or do inspections. It may save you a little money up front, but it will cause expensive heartbreak later.
WHAT AREN'T HEALTH CLEARANCES?
- Basic veterinary checks of a litter of puppies or their parents are not health clearances.
Many less reputable breeders advertise their adults or pups as “health tested” or “cleared by a veterinarian,” and the really sneaky ones actually refer to them as having “health clearances” if the pups have merely been checked by a vet. This is not what the term health clearances contemplates. Those veterinarian exams are obviously hugely important and must be done on any puppy a buyer purchases. The veterinarian can determine if the puppies have health issues ranging from worms, to retained testicles, to very serious conditions, all issues the breeder can address and use in making placement decisions. But, when a breeder indicates he or she is selling a “health tested litter” based on their neighborhood veterinarian’s well puppy check, that does not mean the pups or the parents have been tested and certified clear for the specific hereditary health conditions recognized by that breed’s national breed club as being of concern in the breed. Responsible breeders go through a time consuming and expensive process to get the appropriate health certifications for their breeding stock, and to keep those certifications up to date. Doing so means there is much less risk their puppy buyers are purchasing a major headache in a cute golden package.
- An Embark or other DNA panel run on a dog is not by itself sufficient to say that dog has its health clearances.
DNA testing may provide health clearances for specific genetic conditions, but those several clearances are only part of the total recommended health clearance picture for goldens. For example, a breed specific panel run by one of the respected labs for some or all of the several genetic conditions we look for in goldens is important information to have, but without hips, elbows, heart and eyes properly cleared, those DNA tests are insufficient to say a golden “has its health clearances.” You may have noted at the link I provided above on the GRCA web site page regarding health clearances, DNA testing is only a part of the discussion. The primary clearances are for hips, elbows, heart and eyes. Similarly, an Embark panel run for a multitude of genetic conditions and traits - more than 100, most of which do not affect golden retrievers at all - is likewise not sufficient on its own to say a dog has its health clearances. Embark and other DNA panels are very valuable to the breeder and buyer. It certainly is important to know whether the dog is affected or a carrier for the several genetic conditions which do afflict goldens, but, again, without hips, elbows, heart and eyes cleared, an Embark or other DNA panel is only part of what a breeder should be doing. My dogs have the four primary clearances, hips, elbows, hearts, and eyes, and I update the eye clearances for life. I also have done DNA testing at a variety of labs for a handful of other conditions. We have had a couple new tests become available to us over the past couple years for genetic conditions of which we only recently became aware, NCL and what is being called ICH-2. It's helpful to see a breeder has done extensive DNA testing on the parents of a litter. But the DNA testing alone is not nearly enough to say their dogs have their health clearances. An educated buyer should know what else is required.
Now you know what health clearances are in general and specifically under the GRCA COE. NEXT UP IN PART 2: A detailed discussion of hip and elbow clearances, as well as how to decipher hip and elbow clearance numbers.
Karin Shinego is an AKC Breeder of Merit of golden retrievers, and with her daughter breeds, trains, and handles golden retrievers in AKC conformation and performance events. Eta D'Oro Goldens dogs have titled in numerous disciplines, and are much loved family pets, as well.
