What is Health Testing?
Health testing is
OFA:
OFA stands for Orthopedic Foundation for Animals. They are a nonprofit organization that publicly tracks genetic and orthopedic conditions in dogs. They are important because having public records on animal helps to keep breeders honest about their breeding stock and allows the public to be able to look into a breeder’s program for healthy animals. OFA works with parent clubs for each breed to come up with basic health tests and screenings for each individually breed depending on what that breed is prone to.
CHIC Numbers:
These numbers are given out by OFA to be able to easily track a particular dog. These numbers do not necessarily mean that the results were normal, just that the dog was tested and uploaded to OFA. If you are looking for the result, you will have to look it up on the OFA website. These can be go indicators of an ethical breeder!
DNA Testing:
DNA testing is different from OFA testing because this is looking at the genes of the dog. There are a few reputable companies that genetically test dogs including Embark, Wisdom Panel and AKC DNA, while those seem to be the leading brands there are a few others.