When families research Goldendoodle breeders, they often see terms such as GANA Gold Level, OFA tested, DNA tested, and CHIC certified.
These are useful terms, but they do not all mean the same thing.
GANA Gold Level represents a strong health testing standard for Goldendoodle breeding programs. At Safari Doodles, however, we believe that a minimum testing standard should be a starting point rather than the maximum amount of information we can collect about our breeding dogs.
In several important areas, Safari Doodles performs testing that goes beyond what is required for GANA Gold Level status.
What does GANA Gold Level require?
The Goldendoodle Association of North America, commonly called GANA, has several levels of health testing for breeding dogs. Gold is its highest health testing level.
Current GANA Gold testing includes physical health screening for:
- Hips
- Elbows
- Heart
- Patellas
- Eyes, with CAER eye examinations repeated every two years
GANA also includes DNA screening for important inherited disease variants including:
- PRCD PRA
- Von Willebrand Disease Type 1
- Neonatal Encephalopathy with Seizures, or NEWS
- GR PRA1
- GR PRA2
- Ichthyosis, ICH1
- Degenerative Myelopathy, DM
GANA additionally lists CDDY/CDPA and IVDD Type 1 testing as optional genetic testing rather than part of the required Gold Level disease testing. We test all our Poodles (the carriers) for this inherited condition. In addition, we specifically bred our youngest poodle stud, Chente, so he is free / clear of CDDY / CDPA / IVDD. Going forward we will have all our poodles clear of the CDDY / IVDD gene/
We consider GANA Gold a meaningful health testing benchmark. The important question for puppy families, however, is:
Does the breeder stop at the minimum requirement, or do they gather additional health information when better testing is available?
At Safari Doodles, we often go farther.
Not all OFA heart testing is the same
Seeing the words “OFA Heart Normal” does not automatically mean that a dog has been examined by a veterinary cardiologist or that an echocardiogram was performed.
OFA actually maintains two different cardiac testing programs:
OFA Basic Cardiac
An OFA Basic Cardiac examination can be performed by any licensed veterinarian, including a regular general practice veterinarian. The Basic Cardiac examination is an auscultation only examination.
In simple terms, the veterinarian listens to the dog's heart with a stethoscope and evaluates it for abnormalities such as a heart murmur.
That is useful screening.
But it is still fundamentally a veterinarian listening to the heart.
OFA even identifies who performed a Basic Cardiac examination in its certification numbers:
- P = Practitioner
- S = Specialist
- C = Cardiologist
GANA Gold requires only the OFA Basic Cardiac clearance by a practitioner for applicable Golden Retrievers and Goldendoodles.
It does not require every heart examination to be performed by a board certified veterinary cardiologist. It also does not require an echocardiogram.
A veterinary cardiologist is different from a general veterinarian
A board certified veterinary cardiologist is a veterinarian who has completed extensive additional specialty training specifically in diseases of the heart and cardiovascular system. After veterinary school, veterinary cardiologists complete advanced clinical training and must meet the requirements for board certification in veterinary cardiology. OFA itself describes board certification in veterinary cardiology as the benchmark for clinical proficiency in this field. That additional expertise matters when evaluating breeding dogs for inherited and acquired heart disease.
Why an echocardiogram tells us much more
Listening to a heart with a stethoscope primarily tells the veterinarian what the heart sounds like. An echocardiogram allows the cardiologist to actually see the heart working.
An echocardiogram is an ultrasound examination of the heart. It allows the cardiologist to examine:
- The heart chambers
- The heart valves
- The thickness of the heart walls
- The size of different areas of the heart
- Movement of the heart muscle
- Blood flow through the valves
- Abnormal blood flow
- Structural abnormalities
- Changes associated with some forms of heart disease
Doppler ultrasound can also measure the direction and velocity of blood moving through the heart. That provides substantially more information than simply listening for a murmur.
This difference is significant enough that OFA's Advanced Cardiac Database requires an echocardiogram for every dog receiving Advanced Cardiac certification. This examination must also be performed by a board certified veterinary cardiologist. OFA specifically explains that this requirement helps prevent forms of heart disease that may be difficult or impossible to detect through auscultation alone from going unnoticed.
Golden Retrievers are a high risk breed for heart conditions. This is why we take the heart testing as highly important. That is why Safari Doodles considers cardiologist examinations and echocardiograms an important additional level of screening.
Safari Doodles' Golden Retrievers receive more extensive cardiac screening
Safari Doodles' Golden Retrievers are tested to their OFA CHIC breed health standards. Our Golden Retriever parents receive heart testing through a veterinary cardiologist, rather than relying solely on a routine practitioner examination. Many of our Golden Retrievers also receive an echocardiogram.
This goes considerably beyond the GANA Gold requirement of an OFA Basic Cardiac clearance. This additional testing is important to us because Golden Retrievers have recognized inherited cardiac concerns. These can include subaortic stenosis, cardiomyopathy, heart murmurs and cardiac arrhythmias. GRCA health data have documented each of these in Golden Retrievers. The Golden Retriever Club of America specifically recommends that breeding Goldens over 12 months of age be examined by a board certified veterinary cardiologist because of hereditary SAS. Health information collected from those Golden Retriever ancestors becomes part of the health history we use when selecting future generations.
We also use cardiologists for some Goldendoodles and Poodles
The additional cardiac testing is not limited to our purebred Golden Retrievers. Some Safari Doodles Goldendoodles and Poodles have also been examined by veterinary cardiologists. Some receive additional cardiac diagnostic testing when we believe obtaining more information is valuable. We do not believe every health test needs to stop at the minimum required for a certification level. If more detailed information is available and useful for making breeding decisions, we want that information.
Safari Doodles often performs much broader DNA testing
Another major difference is DNA testing. GANA Gold requires testing for a defined group of inherited diseases relevant to Goldendoodles and their parent breeds. Those tests are important. However, modern canine DNA laboratories can screen dogs for many more inherited disease variants.
Many Safari Doodles breeding dogs, including Goldendoodles, have received large DNA panels through laboratories such as Embark and other canine genetic testing companies. Instead of looking at only the small group of DNA variants required to qualify for a particular breeder level, these panels can examine dozens or even hundreds of genetic variants.
Not every genetic variant on a large panel is relevant to every breed, and finding a genetic variant does not automatically mean that a dog will develop a disease. The value is in having more genetic information available. We can examine the results, determine which variants are relevant to the breeds behind a dog, study inheritance, and use that information when choosing breeding pairs.
GANA Gold versus Safari Doodles
GANA Gold provides an excellent baseline for responsible Goldendoodle health testing.
GANA Gold includes:
Physical testing
- Hips
- Elbows
- Patellas
- Eyes
- OFA Basic Cardiac
Required genetic disease screening
- PRCD PRA
- vWD1
- NEWS
- GR PRA1
- GR PRA2
- ICH1
- DM
Safari Doodles goes beyond this in several ways
Depending on the individual dog and its ancestry, our testing may include:
- Broader DNA panels covering many more genetic variants
- OFA CHIC testing of our Golden Retriever breeding dogs
- OFA CHIC equivalent of our Goldendoodle breeding dogs
- OFA CHIC testing of our Poodle breeding dogs
- Cardiac examinations performed by veterinary cardiologists
- Echocardiograms on many Golden Retrievers
- Cardiologist examinations on selected Goldendoodles and Poodles
- Additional OFA and breed specific testing when appropriate
- Public OFA records that families can independently verify
- Multiple generations of health tested relatives within our breeding families
Testing one dog is useful. Knowing generations is even better.
Health testing becomes even more valuable when it is combined with knowledge of the dog's family. Safari Doodles has worked with health tested breeding dogs for more than 20 years and has produced Doodles since 2009.
Today, more than 100 Doodles carrying the Safari kennel name can be found in the OFA database, in addition to the Golden Retrievers, Poodles, Cavaliers and other parent dogs behind our breeding program. That allows us to look beyond a single dog's test results. We can also consider parents, grandparents, siblings, previous offspring and multiple generations within families we have known personally.
A DNA panel or OFA certificate provides valuable information about an individual dog. A long documented family history provides another layer of information. We believe responsible breeding should use both.
Our goal is information, not simply checking boxes
No amount of health testing can guarantee that a dog will never develop a medical condition. That is not what health testing does.The purpose of health testing is to give breeders better information so that they can make better breeding decisions and reduce avoidable inherited risk.
GANA Gold provides an important standard for Goldendoodle breeders. At Safari Doodles, we believe that when more comprehensive testing is available and relevant, there is value in going beyond that standard.
That is why our program uses extensive OFA testing, broad DNA screening, veterinary specialists, cardiologist examinations, echocardiograms and generations of documented family health information when selecting the dogs that produce our puppies. For us, health testing is not about earning a badge. It is about learning as much as we reasonably can about the dogs behind each generation before we breed the next one.
Examples of Safari Doodles parent dogs with health testing beyond GANA Gold
Romeo - Golden Retriever stud
Brady- Golden Retriever stud
Cher- half Golden Retriever mom
Ruben - Poodle stud
Chente - Poodle stud
Camilla - Poodle mom
Scrappy - Poodle dad
Roux - Poodle mom
Marcel - stud
Peter - stud
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