More disorders that are found to be inherited will be undoubtedly added to this list in the future.
Incidence rate of Inherited Disorders is extremely important(Among other things) for deciding what is the best approach to take for controlling the problem in a breed.
Control of genetic disorders is not a "one size fits all" sort of thing.
A breed with a high incidence rate of some particular problem may require very different management approach than one with a low incidence rate of the same problem.
Unfortunately, at this time, there is little or no reliable assesment of incidence rates of most genetic disorders in most breeds.
Diagnosis protocol for any particular disorder so clear and precise that all and only dogs that truly have a particular disorder, are found to have that disorder?
This is partucularly important to think about when pondering whether some disorder may be on the rise in a breed.
Maybe the disorder is not increasing or decreasing, but the reporting and diagnosis is.
Often a reasonably observant person with no vet training can see that something is wrong.
That person may be able to go a long way to figuring out what that problem is (Educate Yourself).
BUT for many inherited disorders a professional diagnosis is necassary to be sure.
For example there might be 6 different genetic cause of deafness, and all are inherited in different ways.
So successful control of inherited deafness in a breed will depend to some extent on that precise diagnosis.
And even in the Veterinarian community there may and probably will be disagreements on a diagnosis as well as different SKILL levels for making a diagnosis.
Some disorders might have too imprecise a definition at this time for all Veterianarians to agree on a diagnosis.
Educate yourself as much if not more than you can about you favorite Breed and at least you will have some insight when concerns and questions arise about a particular disease or disorder
These next pages are Disorders and Diseases known to the Collie family.
The diseases and disorders on these next pages are possible for the Shetland Sheepdog.
If you have another dog within the Collie Family I will be providing a link to Dr. Padgett's Book.
I take responsibility for spelling errors on these pages.
I have not provided a link for these next couple of pages of diseases and disorders but there may be some links to certain ones on my other pages.
If you would rather not go back and try and find them on my pages then try a search for each on a Veterinary Data Base for more infortmation.
