The Importance of Parent Health Testing

We have made health testing one of our top priorities at Sanctuary Ranch, a healthy puppy is a happy puppy, and that starts with the parents.

All of our dogs go through annual health testing to ensure there are no unfavorable genetic or other defects being passed down. This ensures the best quality of litter and longevity for both mom and pup.

These tests include Hip dysplasia, Elbow dysplasia, Eye certification, Cardiac evaluation, and Ichthyosis.

So what're these tests and why are they so crucial?

Hip dysplasia is a deformity of the hip joints that occurs during growth. Hip dysplasia occurs when a puppies bones grow at an uneven rate, this causes stress on the joint and extreme pain and discomfort, and eventually loss of mobility. Testing parents for this reduces the chance of them passing hip dysplasia to their litters.

Like Hip dysplasia, Elbow dysplasia is an abnormal development of the elbow joint. the deformity causes the bones and joints to not fit together correctly, causing pain, and arthritis down the road. This can also lead to an ultimate loss in mobility. By testing our Adults we can lower the likelihood of passing elbow Dysplasia down.

Much like humans, dogs can carry genes that effect eye sight or eye health. We can test the eyes of our adult dogs to check for a long list of genetic and degenerative eye diseases. By eliminating the the genetic pattern in our breeding lines we can then drastically lower the possibility of your puppy having any of these eye diseases in their lifetime.

Cardiac examination may be one of our top most crucial evaluations. Dogs can carry congenital heart disease, this disease can be life threatening, limit the dogs ability to exercise, and potentially lead to heart failure. Ruling out Heart disease can not only save our adult dogs lives but protect our litters from carrying on the disease.

We work very closely with our vets and evaluators to ensure we are breeding responsibly and offering families the highest quality dog.

We strongly believe these tests are of upmost importance, the tests performed are accurate, reliable, and the best route to guaranteeing a healthy mom and pup.