Health clearance from breeders listed on ALAA

[YC]

Hi everyone,

First, thank you so much for your replies on my other posts. They are very helpful.

I am trying to find a breeder with adequate health clearances so I went to ALAA and found that they have things Gold Paw and Silver Paw program. May I assume if I find a breeder on ALAA Gold and Silver program, the parents of puppies should gone through all the health clearances. Is that correct?

Sorry for many questions and thank you very much for your help,

YC

[Deanna & Desi & Cori]

From the ALAA website:

ALAA Member Breeders pay a fee for annual membership, review/monitoring and for support of ALAA services to the public. ALAA Membership does not mean that the business' products or services have been evaluated or endorsed by the ALAA or that the ALAA has made a determination as to the business' product quality or competency in performing services.

In my opinion, this means that membership doesn't necessarily guarantee anything. Some fine breeders are members and rated, but some equally fine breeders choose not to be members.

If you're generally a good judge of people, I'd go with my gut (along with the DK guidelines) as well as personal references.

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

When it comes to health clearances of the breeding dogs, I would not assume anything, regardless of what kinds of memberships or ratings the breeder may have. As Deanna mentioned, the association is not checking or monitoring compliance. You must ask about the individual dogs' health clearances, and you must see proof. Anyone who has gone to the trouble and expense of having the health testing done should be more than proud and happy to provide you with verification.  

Also check the ages of the parents. Preliminary health testing (done before the age of 2 years) often doesn't mean much. 

[Dolly Dykhouse]

I agree with Karen, a good breeder is very proud to provide the health clearances of their breeding dogs; mine has hers listed along with each dogs generational pedigree (with each of their health clearances) and was willing to provide the copies of the actual testing. I also agree that breeders that are willing to wait until the age of two before mating is a best case scenario for many reasons but is much harder to find. In my search for a breeder I found that most start breeding after the dam/sires first birthday.

[Laurie, Wally & Charlotte]

Charlotte's breeder was more than happy to provide me with copies of the parent dogs' health testing, plus that of the grandparents. Charlotte is perfectly healthy.  

Wally's breeder was supposed to give me those documents, but never did, and I was too inexperienced to press her for them. Wally has hip dysplasia. 

I think this speaks volumes.