What good health testing actually looks like

"Health tested" on an advert can mean three tests or thirty. It can mean a single DNA panel run cheaply through a generic lab, or a comprehensive programme run across years with a vet who specialises in the breed. The two are not the same product, and the buyer is rarely shown the difference. This piece is for the breeders we have been writing to this year — and for the buyers trying to read between the lines of an advert — and it tries to set out what a thorough programme actually contains.

The argument is short. Good health testing is not a longer list of tests. It is the discipline of running a tested programme matched to the breed, the use, and the breeding goal, publishing the results, dating them, and standing behind them when a buyer asks. The bad version of "health tested" is two words on an advert with no specifics behind them. The good version is a folder.

The sport horse programme

A serious sport horse stud runs roughly the same shape of programme across breeds, with small differences. On the genetic side there is WFFS — Warmblood Fragile Foal Syndrome — which a single DNA test rules in or out and which a responsible stud will publish in both parents before a covering. PSSM1 and the newer PSSM2 panels test for two distinct polysaccharide storage myopathies; PSSM2 is the harder of the two to interpret because the variants overlap and a careful breeder will discuss the result with a sport-horse-experienced vet before acting on it. The Five-Panel (the American breed-society standard, increasingly used in European warmblood crossbreeding) covers HYPP, HERDA, GBED, MH and PSSM1 in one workflow.

On the conformation and joint side, OCD radiographs of the hocks and stifles are the standard. A serious stud takes the films at the developmental window, sends them to a sport-horse-specialist radiologist, and keeps the report in the file alongside the parentage paperwork. The nuchal bursa scan is increasingly seen in young stallion approval workups — the studbooks that use it want it on the file before a horse is licensed.

On the fertility side, a published per-cycle conception rate is the single most useful thing a stud can offer a mare-owner, and it requires a stud owner who has invested in a thorough semen evaluation and tracks the data over years. A morphology number is not a conception rate. A volume number is not a conception rate. A serious stud knows the difference and publishes the rate that matters.

And on the welfare and behavioural side, the newer studbooks (the more progressive Dutch and German books especially) now require an annual welfare screening — a vet visit that scores the stallion's body condition, locomotion, behaviour and management against the studbook's published rubric. A stud that holds a studbook approval from one of those books is doing this annually whether the buyer sees the certificate or not.

The working dog programme

The structure is the same; the geography is different. On the joint side the BVA scheme runs hip and elbow scoring against a standardised radiograph protocol, with the films read by a panel of specialists and the result published in the BVA's database. The good version of this is a breeder who publishes both parents' scores prominently, names the year they were taken, and explains how those scores sit against the breed's median.

On the DNA side, the breed-specific panel matters more than the panel size. A serious working cocker breeder runs FN, PRA-prcd, AMS, and the breed-relevant ataxia panels. A serious Labrador breeder runs EIC, CNM, PRA-prcd, HNPK and increasingly the DM panel. A serious working sheepdog breeder runs CL, TNS, CEA and the breed-specific MDR1 panel. The list is not generic; the list is the list for this breed. A breeder who runs a single generic DNA panel because "the lab said it covered everything" has not done the work that matters.

On the eye side, an annual BVA eye examination — not a one-off — is the standard for breeds with progressive eye conditions. The certificate needs a recent date and needs to be in the parent's file before the covering. On the heart side, the breeds that need cardiac screening (some retrievers, some spaniels, some setters) get it from a vet who specialises in canine cardiology, not a routine annual check at the local practice.

What "publish" actually means

The hardest line to draw between the casual end of the market and the serious end is what happens after the test. A serious breeder publishes the actual results — the score, the date, the lab or veterinary surgeon who certified it, and where the result can be independently looked up. The Kennel Club's Mate Select database carries hip and elbow scores; the BVA carries the eye certificates; the breed clubs maintain DNA registries for their breed-specific tests; the studbooks publish stallion approval status and welfare scores. A breeder who publishes a result in the right place is signing their name to it. A breeder who only writes "health tested" without specifics is not.

A buyer can do a meaningful sanity check on this in ten minutes. Ask the breeder for the parents' Kennel Club registered names. Look the hip and elbow scores up on Mate Select. Look the DNA test results up on the breed club's registry. Compare what the advert claimed to what the public registry shows. The breeders who run a thorough programme welcome this check; it is the entire reason they ran the testing in the first place.

What good looks like over time

The other half of a thorough programme is what happens after the covering. The careful breeder updates the parents' records as they age — the eye certificate renewed each year, the hip scores re-checked if the dog has a working injury, the welfare scoring updated annually for the stallion. The breeder also tracks the progeny — the buyer reports back when the puppy or foal turns two, the breeder notes whether anything has emerged that the testing could not predict, and the breeding programme adjusts.

This is the bit that the casual end of the market never reaches. The two-line "health tested" advert ends at the point of sale. The thorough programme follows the litter forward, learns from it, and feeds what is learned back into the next generation's breeding decisions. That is what the buyer is paying for, alongside the puppy.

The discipline, not the credential

Health testing is sometimes treated, particularly in marketing copy, as a credential — a badge a breeder earns once and uses forever. It is not a credential. It is a discipline. The breeders who do it well run smaller numbers, keep better records, take the cost of the testing programme onto their own margins, and use the results to make the next year's breeding pair slightly better than this year's. None of that shows up on an advert in two words. All of it shows up in the file the breeder is willing to send you, in the registries that publish the results, and in the litter that arrives at your door eight weeks later carrying the weight of the work behind it.

For the breeders running disciplined small programmes in the sport horse and working dog communities — many of whom we have been quietly writing to and learning from this year — this is the work. We built GenoVaq partly so that work would have somewhere to show itself, and so that the gap between a thorough programme and a two-word advert would close.