At 05:10 PM 4/26/99 -0500, jan wrote:

>        I got this from the collie club of America site which gave the 2
>year mark for a BCO (Board Certified Opthamalogist) to be able to see it
>during an eye exam....

I saw that. It is quite possible that the PRA that affects collie is an
early onset type but I have a nagging feeling. Gina knows more about this
than I ever will.


>        so in this regard it is like the folks with dogs who have never had
>hip problems saying their dogs are all okay... odds are pretty good the bad
>genes will catch up to you....

Maybe, maybe not. Since we don't know all the causes of CHD, I wouldn't say
that a particular line doesn't have it. But if the line has never been
tested, how is anyone to know. Just because a line has never had a crippled
dog, doesn't mean it doesn't have CHD. If a dog has CHD and compensates for
it, might it not have a shorter life span than if it didn't? Bets me. Many
questions, few answers.


>        I'm a firm believer that health is more important than looks but as
>the casual puppy buyer I think CHD would scare me more than CEA, maybe
>because CHD is more prevalent or because the effects are often more obviousl

Maybe more obvious. But more prevalent. We are back to lists like Padgett's.
Don't get me wrong. I like the list but we apparently don't have good
incidence rates. We don't know if a disease he reported for collies is a 1
time mutation, Billy Bob's dog jumped the fence and what you have really
isn't a pure collie, or there are thousands of cases. But if you go back to
the CCA article, what do they say about the prevalence?


>        But the fact that CEA can be totally elimianted while CHD is so
>multifactored that it may always exist certainly puts a lot of weight on
>getting rid of CEA first. One less thing to worry about.

If I had to pick between just those two, I who go for CEA because as a
simple recessive, it could be eliminated. Until we pinpoint the genes for
CHD, we don't know even if when we breed better hips, we are getting rid of
it. But if good hips can be bred in within 4 or 5 generations, I think that
says hips are workable. Of course, at some time we could find that a gene
that has allowed the improvement of hips, judged by xrays, has been lost.


>        Good point about the fact that the website was not created by
>disinterested parties....

As a Collie Club of America member and Collie Club of America Foundation
contributor, I regret having to point that out.


Dean Mair
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"To the attentive eye, each moment of the year has its own beauty,
 and in the same field, it beholds, every hour, a picture which was
 never seen before, and which shall never be seen again."
                 --Ralph Waldo Emerson