Health Tested, Not Just Healthy Looking: What Hip Scores and DNA Results Really Mean for an Epagneul Breton

When you are looking at a litter of Epagneul Breton puppies, or deciding whether your own dog should ever be bred, health testing paperwork can feel like a foreign language. Excellent, Good, Fair, distraction index, clear, carrier, at risk. The words sound reassuring or worrying, but they only help if you know what each result actually measured.

This article explains the two kinds of testing you will hear about most often in the Epagneul Breton world: hip screening and DNA testing. Neither one is a guarantee. Used well, together, they are how responsible breeders lower risk over generations and how buyers can ask better questions.

What Health Testing Is, and What It Is Not

Health testing is not a vet saying a dog looks fine on the day of a visit. It is a specific test, done at a specific age, with a result recorded under that dog's registered name. That record matters because it can be checked. The Orthopedic Foundation for Animals, usually called OFA, keeps a public database where you can look up a dog's results by registered name or OFA number.

Testing also does not promise that a puppy will never develop a problem. Hip dysplasia in particular is influenced by more than one gene, and by growth, nutrition, body condition, and exercise while a dog is developing. A dog with passing parents can still be affected, and a dog with a less than perfect score is not automatically in pain. Testing shifts the odds. It does not remove risk entirely, and anyone who claims otherwise is overselling it.

Hip Dysplasia in Plain Language

In a healthy hip, the ball at the top of the thigh bone fits snugly into a deep socket in the pelvis. In hip dysplasia, that fit is poor. The ball may sit partly out of the socket, the socket may be shallow, and the joint may be loose. Over time that poor fit can lead to wear, arthritis, stiffness, and lameness, especially in an active dog that hunts, runs, and jumps.

The Epagneul Breton is generally a healthy and athletic breed, and hip dysplasia is the joint concern most often discussed for Brittanys. That is why hip screening, rather than a general impression of soundness, has become a normal part of breeding decisions. A dog can move beautifully at a year old and still carry a hip problem that only imaging reveals.

How OFA Hip Evaluation Works

OFA hip evaluation is based on a radiograph of the pelvis taken with the dog on its back and the rear legs extended. Positioning matters a great deal, which is why many vets use sedation for the image. The radiograph is then sent to OFA, where three independent board certified veterinary radiologists each grade it. The final grade is the consensus of those three evaluations.

For official certification, a dog must be at least two years of age. Younger dogs can receive a preliminary evaluation, but that is not the same as a final certification.

OFA hip grades fall into seven categories. Excellent, Good, and Fair are within normal limits and receive an OFA number. That point surprises many buyers: Fair is a passing grade. It means minor irregularities were seen, but the joint is still considered normal. Excellent means superior conformation for the dog's age and breed, with a deep seated ball fitting tightly into a well formed socket and almost complete socket coverage of the ball. Good is a well formed, congruent joint with good coverage, slightly less than superior. Fair shows a wider joint space and a ball that slips slightly out of the socket, with a socket that may be slightly shallow.

Borderline means the findings are not clear enough to call the joint normal or dysplastic. Mild, Moderate, and Severe are dysplastic grades, with increasing looseness, shallow sockets, and arthritic change. A Borderline result is often rechecked later, since a young dog's hips can change as the dog matures.

The strength of OFA is that it documents the shape of the joint as it appears at that age, graded by reviewers who do not know the dog, and the result is public. Its limit is that a single extended view shows conformation more directly than it measures looseness. A joint can look acceptable on that view and still be looser than it appears.

How PennHIP Is Different

PennHIP, developed at the University of Pennsylvania, approaches the same joint from a different angle. Instead of grading how the hip looks on one extended view, it measures how loose the joint is. With the dog sedated, a series of radiographs is taken using a distraction device that applies a controlled force to the hip. The result is a distraction index, a number from 0 to 1 for each hip. Lower numbers mean tighter hips. Higher numbers mean looser hips.

PennHIP can be done as early as 16 weeks of age, which is one reason breeders value it for early information. It does not give a word grade like Excellent or Good. A PennHIP number is most useful when compared with other dogs of the same breed, because what counts as tight varies by breed and by body type. Your vet can help you understand where a dog sits relative to the breed median, rather than treating any single number as a pass or a fail on its own.

OFA and PennHIP are not rivals, even though breeders sometimes debate which one they prefer. OFA tells you how the joint is formed and whether it passes a recognized standard at maturity. PennHIP tells you, measurably, how much laxity is present and how early that information can be gathered. A breeding program that uses both gets a fuller picture than a program that relies on either one alone.

What DNA Results Mean

DNA testing answers a different question from hip imaging. A DNA test looks for a specific known variant in the dog's genome, usually from a cheek swab or blood sample. It does not test for every inherited condition, and it does not diagnose disease on its own. It reports on the variant named in the report, and only that variant.

For many recessive conditions, results are reported as clear, carrier, or at risk. Clear means the tested variant was not detected. The dog has two normal copies for that variant. Carrier means one copy of the variant was detected and one normal copy was detected. For a recessive condition, a carrier is generally not affected by that condition, but can pass the variant to about half of its puppies. At risk, sometimes called affected, means the dog inherited the number of variant copies associated with that condition under its inheritance model, often two copies for a recessive condition.

That distinction matters for breeding decisions. A carrier bred to a clear dog will not produce puppies affected by that recessive condition, though some puppies may be carriers. A carrier bred to another carrier can produce affected puppies, with each puppy having roughly a one in four chance of inheriting two variant copies, a two in four chance of being a carrier, and a one in four chance of being clear. This is why testing both parents, not just one, is what makes a mating decision responsible.

It is also why a long DNA panel is not automatically better than a focused one. A test only helps if the variant is relevant to the breed and supported by good evidence. A clear result for a variant that does not occur in Epagneul Bretons tells you very little about that dog. Ask which conditions were tested, why those conditions were chosen for this breed, and whether the laboratory is one whose results can be recorded with OFA. And remember that a clear panel is not a certificate of overall genetic health. It means clear for the variants tested, nothing more.

What a CHIC Number Does and Does Not Prove

You may see a CHIC number listed for a breeding dog. CHIC, the Canine Health Information Center, is an OFA program run with participating parent clubs. A CHIC number means the dog completed the screening tests recommended for its breed and the results were made public. It does not automatically mean every result was normal. That is an important detail. A CHIC number proves the testing was done and shared. You still need to read the individual results to know what they were.

For the Epagneul Breton, hip certification is the centerpiece of that conversation, and the breed's parent club in the United States, CEB US, notes on its health page that hip dysplasia is the genetic issue for which testing has been available, while work continues to identify other testable concerns. Broader screening programs may also include elbow, eye, cardiac, and thyroid evaluations, depending on the club recommendations and the breeder's program. The point is not to collect the longest list of tests. The point is to test for the concerns that matter for this breed, and to share the results openly.

Questions Worth Asking Any Breeder

If you are buying a puppy, these questions will tell you more than a general assurance that the parents are health tested.

Ask for the registered names of both parents, and look them up in the OFA public database yourself. Ask which hip method was used, OFA or PennHIP or both, and at what age the testing was done. Ask what the actual grades or distraction index values were, not just whether the dog passed. Ask which DNA tests were run and why those tests were chosen for the Epagneul Breton. Ask whether results were shared publicly, including results that were less than ideal.

A breeder who answers those questions plainly, and who can show you the records, is giving you something far more useful than a promise. A breeder who cannot name the test, the age, or the result is asking you to trust a label instead of evidence.

A Final Word on Breeding Choices

Health testing can tempt people toward a simple rule: only breed clear dogs with Excellent hips. That rule sounds safe, but taken too far it can narrow a breed's gene pool and create new problems. A carrier of a recessive variant bred thoughtfully to a clear dog produces no affected puppies for that condition. A Fair hip is a passing hip, and a dog with a Fair grade may bring temperament, hunting ability, and structure that the breed needs. Good breeding weighs test results alongside temperament, working ability, conformation, and pedigree, rather than letting a single score make the whole decision.

That balance is the real lesson of hip scores and DNA results. They are tools for honest decisions, not badges to display and forget. Used openly, checked independently, and understood for what they do and do not measure, they help keep the Epagneul Breton the sound, athletic, cooperative hunting partner it was bred to be.

If you are considering an Epagneul Breton puppy and want to talk through what health testing should look like for a litter, reach out to California Gun Dogs. We are glad to walk through the records, explain what each result means, and answer the questions that matter before you bring a puppy home.