Quote:
Originally Posted by Woogie Man  As you can see, the piebald gene MAY cause deafness. Your response to my post tries to lump all spotted dogs together, which just isn't the case. |
At this time, there has been no incidence that the parti gene causes deafness in our yorkies (though there are reported cases of inherited deafness in traditional colored yorkies). Parti yorkies have been breeding for over 10 years and some breeders have 5+ generations of parti lines. There are many nearly white and some completely white parti yorkies and we've still heard of no deafness in those dogs. There are numerous breeds of parti parti colored and solid white dogs that do not have high instances of hearing loss due to their coloring and at this point we don't see a problem in our parti yorkies.
As a responsible breeder, if we do find that deafness is a result of the parti coloring in our yorkies (which at this point it is not a problem), than we would/should do as any other responsible breeder would do if there were any other congenital/inherited problems showing up in lines. At this point, since there is no issues with coat color and deafness, I am more concerned about avoiding the health issues that are already in the yorkie makeup - Liver Shunt, Legg-Calve-Perthes Disease, Patellar Luxation, Tracheal & Retinal Dysplasia among other things.
When I was younger, I worried about everything (to the point of ulcers) and my mother use to tell me, "Don't play the 'What If' game." If we all played that game, there wouldn't even be a yorkie breed because we would have stopped breeding them at the first signs of liver shunt or any of the other various health problems that we are seeing in our dogs today.