Pwca
Posted : 1/31/2010 10:56:58 PM
e No, PRA and CEA are NOT the same thing.
And CEA is actually NOT linked to eye size- you can have affected dogs with larger, rounder eyes, and non-affected dogs with smaller eyes. However, the breeders who put type first tend to select for head type and fashion first, and CEA status only comes later. Collies should have medium sized, distinctly almond eyes- not big rounder eyes, which are more dominant, genetically. Because of that, the folks who bred for eye status above type tend to have eyes that are not as pretty- and vice versa.
I don't see a TON of really spooky collies- but the vast majority ARE sound sensitive. Valient (remember the Montana collies a efw years ago) was known for being incredibly sound sensitive, and those are the lines that nearly all modern CEA-clear stuff are based on (down through Van-M, and a great many of them are linebred on Dark Sultan, who was a known spook.) And this tendency seems to be VERY prounounced in the lines coming down from that.