Health
Our health program
We test every breeding dog for everything the Labrador Retriever Club requires for a CHIC number — OFA hips and elbows, an annual CAER eye exam, EIC and the D-locus — and for the optional tests the LRC recommends: CNM, prcd-PRA and an advanced cardiac exam by a cardiologist. We add HNPK, SD2 and DM, which matter in field lines.
A CHIC number means a dog's results are public, not that they're perfect. You can look up every OFA number on this site on the OFA website (ofa.org) yourself; that's the point of publishing them. Carriers are listed as carriers, and we never breed two carriers of the same thing.
No dog is bred before 24 months and its OFA finals. Every result on our dog pages has a date, the lab or registry, and its number.
Our breeding dogs, side by side
Every dog's page has each result's date, lab and OFA number. This is the summary.
| Test | Hazel | Rye | Juniper | Tucker | Bodie (outside) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hips (OFA) | Good | Excellent | Good (prelim) | Excellent | Good |
| Elbows (OFA) | Normal | Normal | Normal (prelim) | Normal | Normal |
| Eyes (CAER) | Normal, Feb 2026 | Normal, Mar 2026 | Normal, Mar 2026 | Normal, Feb 2026 | Normal, Jun 2026 |
| Heart (cardiologist) | Normal | Normal | Not yet | Normal, 2025 | Normal, 2025 |
| EIC | Clear | Carrier | Clear by parentage | Clear | Clear |
| D-locus | D/D | D/D | D/D by parentage | D/D | D/D |
| CNM | Clear | Clear | Clear by parentage | Clear | Clear |
| prcd-PRA | Clear | Clear | Clear by parentage | Clear | Clear |
| HNPK | Clear | Clear | Clear by parentage | Clear | Clear |
| SD2 | Clear | Clear | Clear by parentage | Clear | Clear |
| DM | Carrier | Clear | Clear (tested) | Clear | Clear |
| Color genotype | E/e b/b | E/e B/B | E/e B/b | E/e B/b | e/e B/B |
| CHIC | #172915 | #183340 | Pending finals | #157402 | #149233 |
Carriers are healthy and are only ever bred to dogs clear of the same thing. 'Clear by parentage' means both parents tested clear.
What each test is, in plain words
OFA hips
An x-ray at 24 months or older, read by three radiologists. Excellent, Good and Fair pass; Borderline, Mild, Moderate and Severe don't. We breed Good and Excellent only.
OFA elbows
Same x-ray session. Normal, or Grade I–III dysplasia. We breed Normal only.
Eyes (CAER)
An exam by a board-certified veterinary ophthalmologist, every year a dog is bred, registered with OFA. Looks for cataracts, retinal dysplasia and PRA signs.
Heart (advanced)
Auscultation by a board-certified cardiologist. Every breeding dog once; our stud dog every two years.
EIC
Exercise-induced collapse: a DNM1 mutation that can make an affected dog collapse after a few minutes of hard, exciting work. Carriers are healthy and common in field lines.
D-locus
The dilute gene behind 'silver', 'charcoal' and 'champagne' Labs. All our dogs are D/D. We don't breed or sell dilutes.
CNM
Centronuclear myopathy: muscle weakness from a few months old. Recessive. All our dogs are clear.
prcd-PRA
Progressive retinal atrophy: inherited blindness in middle age. Recessive. All our dogs are clear.
HNPK and SD2
Nasal parakeratosis (a crusty, cracked nose) and a form of dwarfism with short front legs. Both recessive, both clear in our dogs.
DM
Degenerative myelopathy: a late-onset spinal disease. A DNA 'at risk' result does not mean a dog will get it. Hazel is a carrier and is bred only to DM-clear males.
EIC, honestly
EIC is the test field Labrador buyers should ask about first. An affected dog can be perfectly normal on a walk and collapse — back legs first — after five to fifteen minutes of intense, exciting work like repeated retrieves. Most recover within half an hour; a few have died. Roughly a third of field-bred Labradors carry the mutation.
Carriers never collapse and are good dogs to breed — removing every carrier from field lines would throw away a lot of good dogs. What matters is never pairing two carriers. Rye is a carrier; Tucker, her planned mate, is clear. Every puppy's papers say which of its parents carry what.
How our puppies' hips and elbows turned out
112 hip finals on file
Of 149 puppies born 2009–2025, 112 have OFA final hip ratings: 19 Excellent, 74 Good, 12 Fair, 6 Mild, 1 Moderate. 105 pass — 93.8%.
110 elbow finals
105 Normal, 4 Grade I, 1 Grade II.
Guarantee claims
9 paid since 2009, all for hip or elbow dysplasia — the most recent in May 2025 (Moose, 2023 litter). Three other failing results came after the guarantee period, which was 24 months until 2018.
Why you can trust the count
We pay $100 toward every puppy's OFA finals, so the dogs who aren't hunt-tested get x-rayed too. The 37 missing are mostly puppies too young for finals, and a few whose owners declined.
What testing can't tell you
No DNA test covers cancer, which is what most Labradors eventually die of; we lost Boone and Ruby to hemangiosarcoma fourteen months apart. Laryngeal paralysis and ACL tears are common in older Labs and have no reliable screening test either. Keeping a Labrador lean is the single best thing you can do for its joints and its lifespan; we'll nag you about it.
Our dogs see the same small-animal practice in Hamilton for routine care, an ophthalmologist who comes to Missoula twice a year for CAER clinics, and a cardiologist in Spokane.
