Chlout Racing Siberian Huskies

April 12th, 2008
- Important Information -

We received some very unfortunate news two days ago. One of the dogs we sold, Tomahawk, came down with glaucoma. About a year ago, another one, Lingo, did too. Both were related through the sire and what was previously diagnosed as a result of injury in a prior main leader, Imp, out of the same sire we now believe was not due to trauma injury as diagnosed but was glaucoma as well. Unfortunately all these dogs were out of what were developing as the "leader side" of our gene pool. Those dogs were all out of Sonny. Now, there obviously were some genetics well behind this occurrence and would require some real in depth analysis but suffice to say that this particular side of the gene pool was unique in its isolation of how it was structured. With the current information, we will not be breeding Jude and the dogs out of Jarvi we would have their eyes tested before breeding. Jarvi's tested out okay but we also learned a pup from her had glaucoma. So, it is unfortunate that the effects of genetics sometimes does not reveal itself soon enough. None of the other littermates have indicated this problem but would advise their eyes be tested if they were to be considered for breeding. The gene pool being bred to should thoroughly be investigated and have no evidence of glaucoma in the recent past. I could throw out a figure for the number of generations to look back but I am not an expert and also have no way of identifying what went on in pedigrees we are not totally familiar with.

We are very, very disturbed by this occurrence. We are now more than ever glad that the primary area where we think we get our best dogs is hopefully free of this terrible condition. To date, we have no reason to believe it is affected. A word of caution, before anyone casts a rock at us, or isolates us into a corner, genetics is a crap shoot and there probably isn't a pedigree around where glaucoma or some other unwanted genetic happening hasn't occurred.

We are hoping that we can replace the two most recent losses to the kennel owners with dogs we believe are not afflicted with the genetics of this problem.