Akita - Japanese dogs akita inu breeding - from Wielkopolska

Dysplasia and eye diseases with akitas

About this has been written a lot recently. I decided to find out how it really is with these diseases, so I read many articles and even talked to different experts in this subject to get some specialist information.

What's with eye diseases with akitas?

Akita's eye retina evolves till the fourth month of life. After this time the eye retina is completely developed and our puppy can have the examination made. If the puppy is younger and you can already notice some symptoms of this disease (the puppy hits often many things, e.g. a wall, with his head) or with his parents has has been an eye disease discovered, you should go and make this examination earlier.

akita inu puppy, that is older than 4 moths had this examination made, and it showed, that it's healthy. Does it guarantee, that it won't have this disease in the future? Unfortunately, not. It's a clinical examination, that should be repeated every year. This disease might be discovered a year or 6 months before blindness. In case the disease is discovered you should leave,as fast as possible, for a vet clinic, that makes such an examination. If the dog has the examinations every year, it should have a special document, that proves it. What's more, each dog, that has been examinated, must have files, that we can see every time we want. There we can find all the information connected with our dog's disease.
And what's if the puppy's parents have been examineted and the disease hasn't been detected - May I be sure that my puppy will be healthy and this disease won't appear?
Unfortunately, not. Eye disease is genetic. In many cases is that so, that parents, grandparents and even their parents are healthy. There might be 30 healthy puppies in the generation and the 31-th can be sick.
How can that be, the ancestors are healthy!?
There are many very different answers. I understand it this way: The mother has some gene of this disease, but it's so "hidden", that you can't detect it and the mother is healthy all her life. The same might happen to the puppy's father. The gene must join somehow, it's a very complicated genetic process, but if it does - it activates and the puppy is sick.

Dysplasia with akitas

Just like the eye disease, dysplasia is a genetic disease. In this case we can't be sure either, that a puppy we buy will be healthy.Even if all the ancestors have been examinated and the disease wasn't detected. Often it's so, that parents have different documents, that prove their health, but the examination might have been made when the parents were very young and they don't really prove anything. That's not a guarantee our puppy won't have dysplasia. If this disease is "strong", it's easier to detect it. If it's "weak" it's hard to know wether and when it might appear. If we buy a puppy and see that it limps and doesn't move freely, naturally, we can presume it's a dysplasia.

So how to handle this disease if there are no examinations that will make us sure our puppy will be healthy?
In my opinion the breeding that breeds dogs profesionally and has already a recognition and all dogs in breeding are well-kept, it's hard to believe such a breeding will be intentionally sell sick dogs. Otherwise it can't last long. Most of our clients ate the people, who now our dogs, friends of our "older" clients etc. We just like other profesional breeders take care of the quality . Our job is to breed a healthy, smart, beautiful and happy puppy.

Of course it's not a guarantee our puppy won't have this genetic disease. we have to be also aware of it, that a puppy might have another genetic disease. And also diseases like cancer etc. We have to understand a dog is a living creature and we have to be ready to care for it even if it gets sick.

If you have some other information connected with eye diseases, send me an E-mail , I'll check it and publish.