Why we at Stonehill Breeders DNA genetic health test ALL of our dogs before breeding.

All of our new potential breeding dogs, immediately have a visit with our expert reproductive vet for a visual inspection that looks at health and breedability and things like the health of their knees, hips and other issues that do not show up in DNA testing.

Next, we Embark DNA test. We are looking to rule out hundreds of genetic health risks by making educated breeding decisions. in contrast, we see far too many people just blindly breed a pair of dogs because they have a male and female of the same breed, We are talking about so called well established breeders that do not health test. This can create health issues that the buyer will be stuck with for the life of the dogs. We do our best to eliminate those risks right out of the gate so that you have a happy, healthy dog and will remember us years later when you want to add another puppy to your family.

By genetic testing our dogs, we look for past inbreeding in their lines, we look for desirable traits as to their size and body features such as eye color. We look at their coat color genetics and coat color modifiers to find out which pairs will product the most desirable puppies. And because we also breed the Merle coat, we are looking to protect from every breeding double Merles which can cause extreme defects such as blindness and deafness. We are also looking to make sure that an unaffected dog that carries an undesirable gene, is not paired with another dog that carries the same undesirable gene. Pairing them, even though they are unaffected, would create puppies that actually have the disease or issue because you would have doubled up on the undesirable gene.

Then, we rule out dogs that we are unwilling to use their genetics in our lines. Sadly we have lost thousands and thousands of dollars on breeding dogs that we have purchased and found that they did not have the health background that we were willing to pass on to our puppies families. We would rather take that loss than pass on bad genetics to our buyers.

Next wait until our females are between 18-24 months old, do OFA testing on most of them and then and only then begin to pair them with our proven males. While we are waiting for our dogs to mature, we often show them and Champion some of our foundation breeding stock.

If you are shopping for a puppy to add to your family, we recommend that you also ask how old the parents are. Some unethical breeders will breed on a dogs first heat when they are far from physically mature which can do damage to the body of the mother. Another recommendation that we make is that if a breeder tells you that the Embark test is “clear”, ask to see the test. We have found that many breeders will erroneously use the word Clear when it is not correct. And to avoid the many online scams, we recommend that you always video chat with a breeder if you are not visiting them in person to verify that they really do have the puppy.

We can not police the entire breeding population, we can offer you our promise that we have screened our dogs so that we can provide you with the best puppy that we can.