It hasn’t been my experience at all that working breeds are the healthiest - in my little agility bubble I’ve only heard of CEA litters for example in working lines, and have many friends who’s collies from farms have sadly got HD
I am assuming the CEA collies you are referring to are farm bred, unregistered collies?
Because ISDS registration requires both parents to have clear eye test results.
Any ISDS puppy should therefore be guaranteed clear of CEA and/or PRA as they should be clear by parentage.
All decent breeders of medium sized dogs up should be hip screening.
It is a unfortunate that breeders of both shows and pets and workers across all breeds either don’t or do then breed anyway when the scores aren’t great.
I would say too though, that hip dysplasia is a very tricky disease.
It’s largely environmental as well genetic.
One of the biggest risk factors is too much climbing up stairs, running, jumping etc before the growth plates are formed.
Your affected dogs are agility dogs.
I would argue that possibly their owners introduced them too young and if they hadn’t maybe those dogs would not be showing signs of dysplasia.
I just don’t like the way all show collies are dismissed as ‘the worst thing that can happen to the breed’
If we look at other working breeds though that the Kennel Club has got his hands on, it doesn’t look great....
Dobermanns were once valued working dogs.
Now, it is exceedingly difficult to find good quality working Dobermann’s in the UK and the breed is in a terrible state health wise with many dying very young of heart problems.
I forget the specific issue, it may be HCM, I can’t remember.
It is the view of some that inherited heart problems now affect so many Dobermanns that the problem can no longer be fixed within the breed.
To get rid of the heart problem you’d have to outcross to another breed, which the Kennel Club won’t allow.
German Shepherds used to be another valued working dog, their temperaments were usually very stable and confident and level headed.
Look at them now.
The vast majority of Germans shepherds now are really neurotic, nervous and couldn’t work if their life depended on it.
As for their health and conformation.
Well.
You can see just from watching a show German Shepherd walk the level of deformity and they are riddled with serious health problems.
Saint Bernards were once rescue dogs, can you imagine a Saint Bernard now having the agility and stamina to rescue someone in the mountains?!
Most Saint Bernards now struggle to manage even an hour’s walk!
Basset hounds!
Look what has happened to that once majestic working hunting hound!
And worse, like the Saint Bernard, the original working Basset Hound is as good as extinct.
Sooner or later the show bred border collie will mean the breed goes one of two ways.
Either you will get a severe split of work and show, as we have currently with Cocker spaniels and Golden/Labrador retrievers where the show version is so different in looks they might as well be a different breed, the temperament will be different as the herding instinct will be reduced and changed and most likely, they will start to be affected with more inherited diseases than they are currently as breeding to a specific ‘look’ will mean a reduced gene pool and having one or two top champion show winning studs fathering hundreds, if not thousands of puppies, the gene pool will reduce even further.
Or, they will go the way of the basset.
The show line will be the new ‘normal’ and working bred border collies will be a dog never seen except on working sheep farms.