The Test Results Are In

Well, the kids went for their Excellent Adventure and while it wasn't totally excellent it was still pretty darned good.  Of the ten puppies tested, we had 6 bi's (as in bilateral hearing), 4 uni's (as in unilateral hearing) and ZERO bilaterally deaf.  YAY!  All perfectly fine hearing Dalmatians.  Everyone was bilateral with the exception of Rose, Gehrig, Koufax and Rizzuto who have one good ear each. 

While we wish we could have had 20 good ears you have to realize that if you're going to have Dalmatians, you're going to have deafness.  Yes, there are things we can do to reduce the number of bilaterally deaf dogs but we'll never totally eliminate it.  Hearing is tied to color and the whiter the animal the more likely there is to be deafness.  Dals have the highest incidence of congenital deafness but other breeds are not immune:  Boston Terriers, English Setters, Jack Russell Terriers, Whippets, Australian Cattle Dogs (who have Dalmatians in their make-up) are all breeds who can produce deaf dogs. 

Blue eyes are also statistically linked to deafness which is why I won't incorporate a blue-eyed dog in my breeding program.  Some breeders say, "don't throw the baby out with the bathwater," and use uni's and blue-eyed dogs but in my opinion Dals have a large enough gene pool that you can eliminate those dogs from a breeding program without sacrificing quality or compromising the breed standard. 

For those of you not familiar with how BAER (Brainstem Auditory Evoked Response) testing is performed, it's process virtually identical with how babies and children who can't communicate yet are tested.  The dogs are hooked up to in essence an electroencepholograph machine and their brain waves are monitored to see if the sound is reaching the brain.  Each ear is tested individually and you can tell by looking at the printouts which ears are transmitting sound to the brain.  Peaks and valleys on the tracings = good; flat lines = BAD. 

But the dogs who are deaf in one ear have so totally compensated for it that we didn't even know they could be deaf in one ear until we started BAER testing in the late 80's.  We always figured it was all or nothing. 

So we took 10 puppies for testing and brought 10 puppies home and now they're waiting for YOU to come take them to their forever homes.