Pug Health
The Pug breed is considered by many vets as unhealthy, and one of the higher risk breeds of dog for ill healthy. However most vets can not distinguish between a true bred pug or those of unrecognised colours mixed with pugs. In other words cross bred pugs are being registered at vets as pedigree pugs. Why is this? Because the general public who buy the dogs are conned on a daily basis to sell dogs. The breeders claim they are pure breeds and they are not.
The poor breeding practises has catapulted to high levels of poor breeding, because Pugs became popular which was down to them being used a lot in advertising.
As a breeder of Pugs we can say the breed does need improvement. Health tests are set out to help improve the Pug breed which we can do at specialist vets. My closet one for example is 50 mins away.
Every owner should take up insurance to the value of £15,000. You have a duty of care to your dog and to treat your dog if it is sick.
The poor breeding practises has catapulted to high levels of poor breeding, because Pugs became popular which was down to them being used a lot in advertising.
As a breeder of Pugs we can say the breed does need improvement. Health tests are set out to help improve the Pug breed which we can do at specialist vets. My closet one for example is 50 mins away.
Every owner should take up insurance to the value of £15,000. You have a duty of care to your dog and to treat your dog if it is sick.
What should you do if you buy a pug and it develops a confirmed hereditary illness? Obviously you have to treat your dog, but ring also the breeder for advise. Breeders often know more about Pug related illness than their own vets. If the breeder doesnt know about the health problem they can not monitor then what’s needed to be done.
Their is a long list of health tests your adult Pug you can do before breeding them. The main ones which are highlighted as the most important are:
PDE = Pug Dog encephalitis
(PDE can be done by taking a DNA swab taken from the dog and submitted to the laboratory. The Pug club laboratory of choice is UCA Davis according to Breed club but their are UK laboratories called Laboklin.
http:??www.vgl.ucdavis.edu/services/PRE.php
http://www.laboklin.com
The results will come back as follows:
n/n clear
n/pde carrier
pde/pde affected.
PDE = Pug Dog encephalitis
(PDE can be done by taking a DNA swab taken from the dog and submitted to the laboratory. The Pug club laboratory of choice is UCA Davis according to Breed club but their are UK laboratories called Laboklin.
http:??www.vgl.ucdavis.edu/services/PRE.php
http://www.laboklin.com
The results will come back as follows:
n/n clear
n/pde carrier
pde/pde affected.
Understanding genetics is not as simple as disregarding all carriers. Because if we omit carriers we will end up with more health problems. For example a dog may carry pde, but it may be clear of inherited epilepsy or anything else. So we need to breed to carriers but only to clears. Because then no offspring can be effected and in the end day this is what we all aim for is to breed dogs which arent effected by nasty health issues. So breeders should breed clear/clear or clear/carrier. I can not see any reason to breed effected/effected.
HV = Hemivertabra
Any breed which has a screw tail can potentially pass on HV. It is not yet fully understood if it is actually hereditary or not yet. But by a x-ray done on the spine before breeding, you can send to Dick Whites Referrals, and they will look at the x-ray and tell you if your dog is affected or clear. By breeding only through clear dogs it is thought to avoid HV. The problem is no one will know for sure for several generations if this has in fact been the case.
Luxaxtion Patellar
Small toy breeds can develop Patellar luxation. The patellar is the knee cap on the back legs of the dog. They can simply slip out from the socket. They are graded by each hip 0:0 or 1:1 which is desirable to mate dogs from these scores. You also have 2:2 and 3:3 and 4:4 which is not desirable to mate your dog. 4:4 would be the worst case scenario where the dogs knee caps slip out and do not go back in. Most of these cases would need veterinary intervention to fix the knee caps.
Their are of course many other health tests you can do with pugs but the ones above are the main ones.
Those tests above are just a few for things known in the breed. Of course their are hundreds of health problems in dogs where there are no tests what so ever.