Questions- Health Testing

BlackLabbie

I just checked out kelrobin.com. Her dogs are beautiful!

I know!  Those dogs really embody the "look" that I prefer in labs--the dogs are just gorgeous..... 

Just a teensy little quibble. 

MDR1 is in collies, shelties, and BCs

Collies, shelties, Aussies, and many others who trace their heritage to the post-split Collie ("Bench" Collie) - yes.  Not Border Collies, who are not related to the individual in which the mutation occurred in Collies in the late 1800s. 

Here is a quick article from the BC Health and Genetics Committee, on their official position at the moment. 

 The only thing aobut attributing it to the post-split collie is that there were several documented cases of MDR1 in Cardis- and the Cardi was crossed iwth collies WELL before the split.

Will find the study when I get home to my links. 

 Possibly you mean the study referenced in the following post (from the above linked thread):

I have written one of the authors of Geyer, J. Doring, B. Godoy, J R. Leidolf, R. Moritz, A. Petzinger, E. Frequency of the nt230 (del4) MDR1 mutation in Collies and related dog breeds in Germany. J Vet Pharmacol Ther. 28(6):545-51, 2005 Dec. requesting more details on the border collies found with the mutation. Just as Denise Wall suspected, the breed designation is by owner description (and Vet confirmation). In other words, if the dog was not a registered border collie, but looked like one, it was included as a border collie. This makes it difficult to ascertain the relevance of the mutation in these 3 dogs to the gene pool of pure bred border collies.

Mark [Billadeau, ABCA H&G Committee]

Dear colleague,
In general we accept the owners declaration and a confirmation by the vet who took the blood sample.
With best regards
Ernst Petzinger
Institut für Pharmakologie und Toxikologie
am Fachbereich Veterinärmedizin
Frankfurter Str. 107
35392 Gießen
Tel: (06 41) 99-38401
Fax: (06 41) 99-38409
E-Mail: Ernst.Petzinger@vetmed.uni-giessen.de

I do encourage people to send in DNA to the program if they have the money to burn so that the data can be expanded, or if they have a dog with  unknown origins.

On Cardis, it's less important whether there was crossing before the mutation occurred, but rather whether it occured after the mutation occurred.  It doesn't have to be with collies - the gene can come from any breed that has itself crossed with the bench collie. 

The world of sheepdogs and bench collies diverged so rapidly and completely in the UK that the geneticists concede the probability that the mutation, if it ever existed in the BC, has vanished from lack of being "fixed" by continued crossing in the gene pool.