When families call me about a puppy, they usually ask about colors and coats and go-home dates. The question they should ask first, and the one I wish more people knew to ask, is this: what health testing do you do on the parents? So today I want to open that door all the way and show you exactly what happens behind every Agape litter, and what you should expect from any breeder you talk to, whether it is us or someone else.
Why health testing matters more than anything else
A puppy’s healthy hips at age ten are decided before that puppy is ever born. Hip dysplasia, eye disease, and a number of inherited conditions travel quietly through bloodlines, and the only way to keep them out of a litter is to test the parents and breed only the dogs that pass. There is no shortcut. There is no way to look at a sweet eight week old puppy and see what its hips will be at eight years.
That is why the price of a puppy from a testing breeder and the price from a non-testing breeder are two different things wearing the same collar. One of them carries the results of real medical evaluation. The other carries hope.
What we test at Agape
Every mom and dad in our program is evaluated before they are ever bred. You can see our full standards on our health standards page, and here is the plain English version.
Hips: OFA and PennHIP
The Orthopedic Foundation for Animals reviews hip x-rays and grades them, and PennHIP goes a step further by measuring the actual laxity in the joint, which research has tied closely to future arthritis. These are the two most respected hip evaluations in the country, and they are the backbone of everything we do. A dog whose hips do not pass does not get bred at Agape, no matter how beautiful or sweet that dog is. It is the hardest rule we keep, and the most important one.
Eyes
Inherited eye disease can steal a dog’s sight in the middle of its life, long after the puppy has become the center of a family. Our breeding dogs have their eyes examined so those conditions stop before they start.
Genetic screening
DNA testing lets us look at the conditions known to appear in the breeds behind the Australian Labradoodle and make pairing decisions with our eyes open. Two carriers never get paired, which means the disease never gets expressed in a puppy.
What the ALAA Gold and Silver Paw awards mean
We are members of the Australian Labradoodle Association of America, and our program has earned the ALAA Gold and Silver Paw awards. Those awards are not participation trophies. They are given for health testing that goes beyond the association’s minimum requirements. When Sonny and I started this more than a decade ago, we decided that if we were going to do it at all, we were going to do it at that level, and we have never regretted it.
The questions to ask any breeder
If you take one thing from this article, take this list. Ask these questions of every breeder you talk to, including us. A good breeder will love that you asked.
Ask to see the parents’ hip results, not just hear about them. Ask which registry evaluated them. Ask about eye exams and genetic testing, and ask what happens to a dog in their program that fails a test. Ask whether there is a written health guarantee and what it actually covers. And ask where the puppies are raised, because a puppy that spends its first eight weeks in a home learns things a kennel can never teach.
If a breeder gets uncomfortable with those questions, that discomfort is your answer.
The written guarantee
Every Agape family goes home with our written health guarantee. I want the promises we make to be ones you can hold in your hand, not just words on a phone call. Testing the parents is how we make that guarantee with confidence rather than crossed fingers.
Meet the dogs behind the testing
All of this paperwork exists in service of some very real, very loved dogs. You can meet our girls and our boys on the website, and see which litters are coming on our available puppies page. If you are ready to start the conversation, our puppy application is the first step, and our adoption process page walks through everything else, including pricing.
And if you ever want to talk through any of this, call or text me at (303) 868-1083. Health testing is the least glamorous part of what we do and my favorite thing to talk about, because it is the part that protects your family for the next fifteen years.
With love from our home to yours,
Linda
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