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Hey Kay!
I have been involved in raising and showing purebred dogs for over 20 years. Like you, I wanted a healthy dog so sought to find a healthy breed. I looked at registries such as AKC and UKC and studied the breeders. Bottom line: there is no one overall healthiest breed of dog. Like humans, all dogs are individuals. What matters most in obtaining a healthy dog is the breeder. In this day and age we have technology to help breeders make the best pairings they can so as to stack the deck for a healthy litter. And since there is no perfect dog, breeders must make mating decisions based on test results that are less than stellar. In some cases test results will indicate that based on the disease conditions found, a particular animal should never be bred from, should never be mated to make puppies as those puppies will have serious health defects. In most cases the test results that are less than stellar indicate the best path forward in mating that animal so as to avoid reproducing those less than stellar results. So its not a matter of issue that a breeder tests and finds out they have less than perfects animals - rather, its what the breeder chooses to do with that knowledge they gain from the test results that is most important.
To stack the deck for a healthy animal, first find out what the common diseases are for that particular breed. Then armed with that knowledge, begin interviewing breeders of that breed to find out what they are doing to avoid producing those disease traits in their puppies.
So for instance your last GSD had DM; other common disorders in GSD's are Exocrine pancreatic insufficiency, Hemophilia, Hip dysplasia, Renal cystadenocarcinoma and nodular dermatofibrosis, Pannus - chronic superficial keratitis, Panosteitis and Perianal fistula - this just to name the most common - there is a whole list of secondary disorders that do appear in the breed but less commonly than the list above. Check it out here: http://ic.upei.ca/cidd/
So you arm yourself with knowledge of the common disease disorders in whichever breed you are interested in and then ask questions of your potential breeder. Since you are in the USA you can further check out the level of integrity of the testing your prospective breeder does by searching the Canine Health Information Center which lists the critical disorders the breed club for each breed deems most important or most commonly seen in their breed: http://www.caninehealthinfo.org/
You can search within the CHIC site to see which breeders take health testing seriously in their breeding programs. Additionally you can search by breed and locate breeders by searching the Orthopedic Foundation for Animals website : http://www.offa.org/
These search tools allow you to research specific dogs for the specific health testing they have had. So if your perspective breeder says the health test for the good of the breed, you should be able to find the parents of your prospective puppy on the CHIC or OFA website and see the exact tests that were done on the parents of your potential puppy to see that - as best they could - your breeder stacked the deck for the health of the litter.
Some of the tests are expensive and some are very cheap; it costs a breeder maybe $30.00 to have a dog's knees or heart certified as normal and healthy, and the same for the eyes. Hip, elbow, spine or tracheal xrays run $150.00 and up. For some breeds certain tests are more important than others, so a breeder with a Chihuahua may not do the testing you would see for a GSD, but the end result is the same: if your breeder wants to charge you 1K or more for a healthy and well bred puppy, they should have the bare bones minimal investment in testing done [$500.00] to ensure they are indeed making healthy puppies. If the breeder you are looking at is too cheap to invest in certifying the health of their breeding stock, then that breeder is looking at $$ as their bottom line and NOT looking at your feelings as an owner of the puppy they made for the next 15 years: look elsewhere as that is not the breeder for you.
There is a lot of talk and interest nowadays in F1 crossbreds - golden-doodles and other such sporting dog x poodle crosses. I've met a few doodles - sweet dogs! And breeders of these crosses [they are not a 'breed' as they do not breed true] tout they are healthy due to 'hybrid vigor' - a phenomenon that occurs when two totally unrelated bloodlines are bred together, ie Schnauzer and Poodle = schnoodle. While hybrid vigor may occur in nature, in dealing with the carefully controlled bloodlines of dogs the health of the dog or its bloodline is only as strong as the integrity of the breeder behind that bloodline. This is to say that your cross bred golden doodle is only as healthy as the purebred golden retriever and purebred standard poodle used to make the litter, and if you start with a poor quality golden and dysplastic standard poodle, you cannot help but get poor quality and lame cross bred puppies from such a pairing. So don't believe the excuse of 'hybrid vigor' as a reason to not certify the health of the parents of a litter. A breeder must look for problems to rout them out of their bloodlines and fix them, and breeders who never look, who keep their heads' in the sand, will always have 'healthy' animals - so be aware of the hybrid vigor façade.
Lastly, after over 20 years of being a dog mom, I will say that you find your dog where you *do*; I have bred my own dogs, have bought my own dogs reputable breeders, rescued my own dogs and got my last big pet dog off Craig's List despite my insisting I wasn't going to get a puppy from a back yard bred litter. Big dog probably has hip dysplasia - I'll cross that expensive bridge in time. But despite bad hips I would not trade my girl for the world. Sometimes you find your dog where you do - and sometimes your dog finds you.
Sorry about your GSD, and good luck in your puppy quest!
