Mudi Epilepsy Update September 1, 2020

In preparation for an important post on epilepsy that will come out in the near future on this blog, I want to explain how the epilepsy risk scoring system now works, as well as include the chart which interprets the given number scores to a word description.

Prior to 2019, I gave only one score for epilepsy risk.  It was based on only those Mudis which had connections to confirmed epileptic Mudis.  These connections would be the epileptic Mudi themselves, any offspring (puppies) they had, their parents and grandparents.  And yes, there have been incidences of epileptic Mudis being bred over the decades.  Remember epilepsy has been in the Mudi since the 1980’s and in the ‘old days’ it was not given the respect it should have been by quickly removing the epileptic and their nearest kin from breeding.  If only they had known then what we know now, this post and the ones to come would probably not be necessary.

Currently the number of confirmed epileptics outweighs the not confirmed epileptics by 2.8 to 1. However there is always the possibility that I can confirm one of the suspected epileptics which occurred this week and last year.

As the incident with epilepsy that occurred in January 2019 has taught me, the possible epileptics cannot be ignored.  After a long thought process about how to make the scoring system reflect a more clear picture of the risk, I decided to give two scores, it would double the work, but it might equally reduce the chances of producing another epileptic.

I now give two scores.  The first score is the KNOWN risk score which includes all the relatives on a pedigree that are known to be connected to a confirmed epileptic.  The second score is called the PAIR score which stands for Possible All Inclusive Risk. The PAIR score includes the known confirmed relatives and the not yet confirmed relatives.  These two scores encompass the whole picture of the risk on a pedigree into a two score risk zone.

This is the word chart that indicates how high of a risk is the score. The given two scores can and often do, fall into different categories of risk:

 

Ideally we would want to only breed litters that fell into the Very Low category, but that is practically impossible today as every Mudi on the planet has some risk on their pedigree.  Except for those empty pedigree wonders that some breeders still find hanging around the recycling bin.

About 2-3 years ago most Mudi litters fell into the Low range, today most fall into the Moderate range, with more than a few also being in the High range.

If we continue to breed the way it is now being done, the most common risk range will graduate to High and from that I am not sure how we could return to a lower range.

Again ideally, we would breed only low risk dogs to other low risk dogs, but what to do with those in the moderate to high category?  I don’t have the answer, but it would not seem wise to exclude a rather significant segment of the population from breeding.  The best solution is to breed them less and only to low risk dogs to make a medium risk litter and then breed those resulting pups to low risk and so on.  But as most Mudi breeders still do not know what the actual epi risk is in their litters, this will be a difficult goal to achieve. It is for those breeders that do want to know the epi risk in their litters and the ones that will come along that also want to know, that I keep doing what I do.