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I was asked to write an article
on Health Testing and have put it on my website for your
information:-
HEALTH TESTING – by Linda
McGregor
If breeders truly
care about Bull Terriers, what more can they do for the breed then to
improve it by having their animals health tested before they breed them in
order to ensure they are not knowingly passing on hereditary faults.
“Knowingly” is the key word here, of course you can still have problems, but
at least if you have health tested your animals you can put your hand on
your heart and say I did all that I could to produce a healthy litter. When
people in the U.K. talk about Bull Terriers being health tested this usually
refers to three main things, hearing, heart and kidney testing.
HEARING TESTING –
Surveys done both here and overseas show that one in six white Bull Terrier
puppies will be deaf in one ear (unilateral) and one in twenty will be deaf
in both ears (bilateral). Coloured puppies can also be deaf but to a much
lesser degree. It is essential that affected animals are identified early
and removed from breeding stock if the number of cases of congenital
(present at birth) deafness is to be reduced.
I have heard of
breeders saying their puppies are hearing tested, and when enquired upon,
all they have done is to bang two saucepans together! Obviously this is not
the scientific way to have animals hearing tested, the definitive way to do
it is by means of a Brainstem Auditory Evoked Response (BAER) test. Although
this can be carried out on adult dogs, (they may have to be slightly
sedated) it is far easier to have puppies tested; this can be carried out
from the age of 5 weeks, (I have found that the age of 6 weeks is perfect).
If you do this with all the puppies you breed you will know that if their
future owners use them to breed from at least their hearing would have been
checked and there is no need for the test to be repeated. (I will talk later
about what to do if they can only hear in one ear or are completely deaf).
The price of
having puppies BAER tested can be as little as £24 each which given the cost
of puppies these days is hardly anything, of course you will have to put
yourself out and spend a good part of a day taking them to be tested.
Nowadays I use The Animal Health Trust at Newmarket, Julia Freeman who does
the testing there tells me that she has never had to sedate a young puppy of
any breed in order to BAER test it. To dispel any myths, I will go into a
little detail of the practicalities. Having taken some puppy food with me,
on arrival in the room where the puppies are to be tested, they are placed
in a safe area and left to eat and play; eventually they get tired and begin
to fall asleep naturally. One by one I pick them up and acupuncture type
pins, attached to wires, are placed under the skin in front of the ear to be
tested, on top of the head and on the neck, this is done in order to pick up
a tracing of how the puppy reacts to a series of clicks via an earphone, the
procedure rarely causes any discomfort and the puppy usually sleeps through
the whole event. You will then be told if the puppy can hear properly and
given a certified result with a printed graft showing the actual reading.
Since we have been testing over the last six years, having had six litters
during that time, we have only had one puppy that had a hearing defect ie he
could only hear in one ear. We found him a home purely as a pet and had
“Progeny not for registration” put on his registration certificate (animals
that can only hear in one ear carry the same genes as animals who are
completely deaf and should not be bred from). Bull Terriers that can only
hear in one ear make perfectly good pets, but Bull Terriers who are
completely deaf are a great liability and should not be given away, passed
on, or sold! As a responsible breeder if you decide to keep a completely
deaf puppy then it must stay with you for the rest of it’s life.
There are several
places to go in the UK where you can have your animals hearing tested and I
list these below: -
Animal Health Trust,
Newmarket – Contact Mrs J. Freeman, Tel. 01638 552700
Animal Medical
Centre, Manchester – Contact Mr P. Boydell,Tel. 01618 813329
Chestergates
Referral Hospital, Chester – Contact Dr. Judith Skerritt. Tel. 01244 853823
Hearing Assessment
Clinic, Hampshire (Mobile) – Contact Mrs Cox Tel. 01962 713155
Vale Vets,
Gloucester – Contact Miss S Fitzmaurice, Tel. 01453 542092
Small Animals
Clinic, Midlothian – Contact Prof. I. Mayhew, Tel. 01316 501000
Church Farm
Veterinary Clinic, Liverpool – Contact Mr G. Skerritt, Tel. 01513 271885
Wey Referals, Surrey
– Miss S. Fitzmaurice, Tel. 01483 729194
HEART TESTING –
There are several different heart defects in Bull Terriers, one being Mitral
Dysplasia. This is a congenital defect (present at birth) as a result of
genetical problems that cause faulty heart valves, which can be detected as
murmurs by Vets. Most ordinary Vets can normally only detect murmurs from
grade 2 –6 upwards and as the mode of inheritance is still unknown, animals
with murmurs should not be bred from. Breeding stock should be tested by a
Vet with a certificate in cardiology and can be detected on auscultation
(listening to sounds made by the heart using a special stethoscope) or by
performing a Doppler ultrasound scan if results are unclear. The results are
given either as clear or as a murmur graded from 1 –6, six being the most
severe. Some Bull Terrier Clubs have held screenings carried out by
Veterinary Cardiologists that show that 25% to 40% of Bull Terriers have
heart murmurs. It is not unusual for young puppies to have mild heart
murmurs, these are sometimes called innocent murmurs or juvenile murmurs and
the puppies can grow out of these by time they are older. Details of
Veterinary Cardiologists can be found on the website of The Veterinary
Cardiovascular Society
www.bsava.com/vcs/testing/auscul.htm Testing
should be carried out on bitches prior to mating and stud dogs ideally every
six months.
Cost of test
approx £22.50. Take advantage of when Clubs have a Cardiologist testing
session.
KIDNEY TESTING -
can be carried by taking a urine sample from your BT and taking it along to
your Vet to be sent away for a Urine Protein Creatinine ratio (UPC) test –
As long as the ratio result is below 0.3 it is classed as a normal result.
In America they use 0.5 as a cut off mark, however research undertaken in
Australia showed that a small minority of dogs with results above 0.3 and
below 0.5 still developed kidney disease. Kidney disease is a dominant
inheritance problem which means that 50% of progeny will die of kidney
disease if affected animals are used to breed from and it is no good trying
to use a mate who has tested clear, dominant means there is no getting away
from it. Tests should be carried out on bitches before they are mated and
stud dogs ideally every six months. Cost of test approx £25.
For further
information including a list of health tested stud dogs contact the Bull
Terriers Health UK website at
Please see
The Bull Terrier Club link for Health matters. | 
