Eye Committee Reports
(As submitted to the PWDCA Board)

Eye Committee Report First Quarter 2007

CERF has recently upgraded its information processing systems. During the upgrade they were unable to process requests for CERF registrations. Please anticipate a 3 to 4 week delay in the processing of new registration requests. We apologize for this inconvenience but are confident that our new systems will greatly improve our efficiencies and reduce errors.

Optigen results are only given out to the owner of an individual dog and not to anyone that has offspring from a particular dog so please do not ask OptiGen or the PWDCA to give you results in writing. All breeding stock should be OptiGen tested and CERF’d before breeding.

Reminder that CERF no longer certifiies Portuguese Water Dogs with Iris to Lens PPM. WE would like to remind ALL breeders to have ALL puppies CERF examined BEFORE they are placed. Some breeders are only taking puppies to be examined by an ophthalmologist after a general practice veterinarian finds an eye problem.

The CERF scientific report for 2006 will not be available until after the end of the first quarter.

We receive reports from both OptiGen and CERF at the end of each quarter so as of now there are no reports available for 2007.

PWDCA Eye Committee
Joan C Bendure, Chair
Mimi Johnson

Eye Committee Report – submitted by Joan Bendure

Eye Policy

It is recommended that all Portuguese Water Dogs have an annual CERF exam including non-breeding dogs.

The PWDCA requires breeding or breed-able dogs to have annual CERF exams until they are ten years old; i.e. the last CERF exam at or after the dog is 120 months old. Breeding or breed able dog is defined as any dog not neutered; any dog that is capable of producing offspring; any dog that has ever produced offspring; any dog that has produced offspring and is now sterile, either by being neutered or spayed or naturally sterile; any dog that has frozen semen or eggs stored. All breeding dogs must register their eye exam results with CERF to meet PWDCA requirements for the breeders list and advertising in the Courier.

Non-breeding dogs are defined as dogs that are neutered or spayed; have never been used for breeding and do not have frozen semen or eggs available for future breeding. Non-breeding dogs may but are not required to register their eye exam results with CERF but owners do need to supply a legible copy of their CERF examination paper to the PWDCA Health Registry. (Please check with the Health Registry to see if they would be agreeable with this.)

I checked the PWDCA web site and for some reason the recommendation that all puppies be CERF’d before being sold is no longer on the website? Recommendation: The PWDCA strongly recommends that all puppies receive a CERF examination before being sold or placed in their new home; the recommended age is at least after seven and a half weeks of age, the older the better; all new owners should receive the original CERF examination paper and the breeder should retain a copy for their records.

OptiGen

June 1, 2005 it was announced that the mutant prcd PRA gene has been identified. This means that all OptiGen tested Portuguese Water Dogs are either: Normal (formerly reported as A or A1); Carrier (formerly reported as B or B1); or Affected (formerly reported as C or C1). The PWDCA should inform OptiGen that the club wishes to change to an open registry for OptiGen results. This would mean that OptiGen will release to the PWDCA the results of all PWDs tested, regardless of results. This should start with the next quarterly OptiGen report which will be sent to the club on or shortly after July 1, 2005. Owners of OptiGen tested prcd carrier and affected dogs that were not reported to the PWDCA should report their results to the Health Registry to have them officially listed in the clubs data base.

The PWDCA requires that all breeding dogs be OptiGen tested for prcd PRA before breeding.

7/13/07: per Joan Bendure – "Also I think it would be good for the PWDCA to state that although they are not required to CERF their dog after 120 months of age that it would be good health care to continue to do so. Two things that immediately come to mind in an older dog are cancer or glaucoma."