Monday, October 24, 2011

full disclosure, again

I didn't bring it up this time! One of my chat groups(which as like a 1000 or more members) is having an interesting commentary about CHIC numbers. For those of you who don't know what they means, it's a database that keeps health testing information and based upon a breed clubs "requirements" if you do the appropriate tests, you can get a CHIC number for your dog. That's it in a nutshell, but here's the interesting part that MANY breeders feel very free to omit or not even mention:

http://www.caninehealthinfo.org/chicinfo.html#numbers "The CHIC number itself does not imply normal test results, only that all the required breed specific tests were performed and the results made publicly available."

It is also the last FAQ here: http://www.caninehealthinfo.org/faqs.html "Do test results have to be normal?" "No, CHIC is not about normalcy. CHIC is meant to encourage health testing and sharing of all results, normal and abnormal, so that more informed breeding decisions can be made in an overall effort to reduce the incidence of genetic disease and improve canine health."

What I find interesting is that so many breeders brag about getting dogs CHIC numbers on only certain dogs in the household. If it's so important, why don't they get them on all their dogs including those that they know will not pass a specific health test with an appropriate score, etc?

If you know your dog's dysplastic, wouldn't it be in your best interest to make it public? And get the rest of the dog's testing done, even if you decide that you'll never use it in breeding?

Just curious. It goes right along with a person I ran across bragging about a dog's offspring having passing hips(parent did not pass), or as they put it-all tested dog's passed. Well, unless you are talking directly with the sources, OFA only posts those that pass unless an owner signs a release to publish non-passing test results. Most owners don't. Or that a dog passed it's prelim hip screening and yet nothing is posted on the OFA website? Sorry, it shouldn't stun me to see this anymore, it's all too common, but it really tells me how much of a salesmen people think they need to be.

So again, what a breeder says vs what it really means, isn't always the full monty. Ask.

Later gators....
C

1 comment:

Jules said...

Wow! That is *really* interesting. I had no idea. Thank you for the informative post!