As long as you are not planning on breeding, it is totally okay to get a dog that is a carrier. Carriers will never actually GET the disease. For pet purposes there is no difference between Clear and Carrier. Concentrate on finding a responsible breeder with total transparency about testing. Ask for the full names of the sire and dam so you can look them up on the ofa site. If they have been tested, the results HAVE to be there.
Good for you for doing all your homework. It will save you much heartache.
Since all we have right now is a linkage test, nothing is totally for sure regarding IND or Carriers. Most of us will agree that a Carrier is safe and they will not get Fanconi, but again until we have a direct test, it can not be a blanket statement.
That said, I would not worry about getting a IND or Carrier, regardless if I was breeding or not. If breeding, the certainly would be bred to a Clear only. (meaning that if I had a Carrier or IND or maybe even an affected, those would only be bred to a clear)
And as already stated, since ALL Fanconi testing is made public with the results on the OFA site, you just need to search the records at www.offa.org
Health testing, and how to breed appropriately using said results has its own set of complexities and breed responsibilities. Creating and/or maintaining sufficient genetic diversity is impossible if breeders focus solely on "clear or normal" breeding prospects. If breeders only bred "normal" dogs, and culled the rest, a breeds usable gene pool could decrease by half with each generation! While this alone would be detrimental to a breed under ideal circumstances, it could be catastrophic to a breed should another disease become known. Carriers, and even affecteds, of certain anomalies, when bred (without risk to the breeding animal) to clear or normal of said anomaly, can and do help a breed to maintain genetic vigor for future generations; the old "don't throw the baby out with the bath water" school of thought. Any breeder who insists on breeding clears to clears not only lacks their breeds genetic future as a primary goal, they are quite possibly breeding towards some unknown, but equally deadly disease to which all clear/normal genes might be associated. In truth, breedings limited to 'clear or normal' status create similar genetic bottlenecks as seen in the popular sire syndrome effect, and do nothing for long-term breed viability - a goal all responsible breeders should be striving for.
Pat, I have heard breeders say they are open to breeding a clear with an affected so they can "save" the line..once the pups are tested, they will breed the carriers with a clear. What isn't said, is what will happen to the pups testing affected.
This is just fyi.
I appreciate you sending this out. Its helpful to us all.
Pat, I have heard breeders say they are open to breeding a clear with an affected so they can "save" the line..once the pups are tested, they will breed the carriers with a clear. What isn't said, is what will happen to the pups testing affected.
This is just fyi.
I appreciate you sending this out. Its helpful to us all.
If you breed a clear to an affected you should not get anything but Carriers.. and by all rights they should never develop Fanconi, so there should be no pups that test Affected.
And I was going to breed a Clear to an Affected, it just didn't work out the way we hoped and the breeding didn't happen.
My point was about the test, that it is still a linkage test and everyone needs to keep that in mind. It was not meant to say that breeders should not be breeding Carriers to Clears or even in some cases Clears to Affected.
I fully agree with Sinbaje and have said so many times. Sorry if I was not perfectly clear on my comments in the prior posting on breeding
Ok, Pat, thank you for the clarification. I am the one who is "fuzzy" today.
Technically it's not an "average" it is a probability that one will get that combination of genes (or more correctly the markers the test looks for). Even if you bred the same carrier x clear pair several times, you could get all carriers one time, and all clears the next and any combination of the two depending on the number of pups in the litter.
I agree totally with the comments here about genetic diversity with respect to breeding. I also find the perspective interesting in "The Rest of The Story" article in the most recent issue of the Bulletin. I don't agree with the author's comments around use of carriers (basically she is saying we shouldn't be using carriers and we don't need to) but I do appreciate being able to hear different viewpoints.
Thanks to all who have provided me with food for thought. Linda, good points regarding only clear to clear breeding not providing enough variety in the genetic pool. That makes sense to me.
Fran, I wish you were going to be down here tomorrow to see the africans. But you will see most of them in Auburn.
Oh Sharron, don't tempt me!
I am really looking forward to Auburn and am now really excited because the 'africans' will be there. How the heck am I going to kill time between now and August? 
Oh to be a lover of basenjis. And I am this bad now, without an actual basenji of my own??
My sweet friend.. I have to tell you..I am sorry, but your TOTALLY hooked on b's.
Sorry, no intervention here…just a group who will share your joy.
I wish you could could come down tomorrow. I couldn't get off work, so will be driving over, probably be late, and hopefully not get a ticket...to see them.
Its such an exciting time for all of us.
Hugs.
I found this info. I defer to the breeding experts to confirm the combinations. My understanding is that once you have anything but a clear x clear, you have some or total risk of Fanconi.
Parents and Offspring Fanconi Results
1. Clear x Clear = 100% Clear puppies
2. Clear x Carrier = 50% Clear, 50% Carrier (average) each pup has a 50% chance of being a clear and a 50% chance of being a carrier
3. Clear x Affected = 100% Carrier
4. Carrier x Carrier = 25% Clear, 50% Carrier, 25% Affected (average) each pup has a 25% chance of being clear, 25% chance of being affected and a 50% chance of being a carrier
5. Carrier x Affected = 50% Carrier, 50% Affected (average) each pup has a 50% chance of being a affected and a 50% chance of being a carrier
6. Affected x Affected = 100% Affected
I am not sure WHERE you got this information, but it is WRONG.
These percentages are the odds of what EACH puppy could test.
You may want to send this person a link to my page so they can correct theirs… it is misleading to the unknowing.
It LOOKS like they know what they are talking about...
but they have the information incorrect.
http://khanisbasenjis.com/fanconi.html
As long as your pup isn't AFS, there is NO reason [just as others have said] not to take a Carrier or IND puppy, as well as a clear.
Thanks Kathy - I bookmark all the basenji pages I look at that have info on them that I feel I'll need in the future. My list is rather large, but I will go through it and see where that info was. I know it also appeared as a visual chart, so there is more than one site out there with the info.
Thanks for clarifying for me. Things like this are why I am finding this forum so beneficial.
Just as a note, we had a Carrier bred to a Clear which produced 8 puppies. The testing on the puppies found 1 Carrier, 1 Clear, and 6 Indeterminate. According to Jon Curby, the rate up til now has been about 5% Indeterminates - but this breeding produced 75%!
As Kathy said, the statistics are for individual puppies, not for entire litters…
Terry
