I know TVD can appear anywhere, I just was curious if there was an advised "protocol". Thanks for the bit of history too, we don't learn unless we ask the question and others share. Just trying to do the best I can, as we all should be doing. :)
Yes, but doing all the screening we've done over the last 20-25 years really hasn't reduced the occurance of the disease. It's really not that common, just mainly in certain lines. It's getting harder and harder to avoid them, but I don't believe that TVD is on the rise, even in those lines. We just know it's there, screen for the expression and not use those that are showing it through an echo. It's also not an automatic death sentence for the dog either. The number of dogs that I've known to have had the expression of the disease usually live long, normal lives. I think we've had it in the breed a long time and advances in technology allowed us to find and then hysteria took over, just as it did with the PRA scares of the 1980s. Thankfully we got a test for that and hopefully we'll get a test for TVD and epilepsy in the near future.
They always said the longer you've been in the breed you will eventually produce nearly everything. I've been lucky to not have produced PRA and won't now that we have a test, but I have pretty much produced just about everything else that afflicts Labradors over the years. And that's just dog breeding.
