Manni: What would YOU like Hilltop to do???
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To me (in other words, this is my opinion) posts like Manni’s sound exactly like the posts of the people who are against the whole idea of getting rid of HYPP.
How dare we tell someone with a stallion that they can’t breed it anymore, etc.
I am proud of this facility for being so responsible. Hopefully this opens a door to more stallion and mare owners testing.
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You do it but you don’t know it. If you publicly assume that there might be more negative things associated with a horse being a carrier then just being a carrier you throw something out which will scare people away from carriers… They might not even want to buy them… “Because you don’t know there might be something wrong with them…” The result might be that carriers go to slaughter because nobody wants to touch them and people will not test because they are scared that nobody will touch carriers…
And I am interested to find out how you will limit expansion of the disorder if you proclaim culling and possible other negative things which will keep people from testing…
As I said before, I have been through it with my dogs…
BTW I did test my dog and I never made the result public… Because OMG she was affected!!!
I did look for a studdog which was clear, because that way I would only produce carriers and then in the new generation I could look for clears… Believe me it was tough to find a studdog. In our population more then 50% were either affected or carriers. Because most of the dogs are closely related.
But I found a clear studdog and a couple of weeks ago her Grandgranddaughter got Best Bitch and the CC certificate at Crufts…
IMO thats the way to deal with it… Oh and there were people like you in my breed who proclaimed that EIC carrier and affected were also carrying a gene for seizuring… That is a witchhunt. Up till today there is no proof for that. Oh and my affected bitches are doing extremely well for her age…So far no other problems…
So until proven otherwise for me a carrier for a disease is exactly a carrier for a disease and not having different issues as well. Its a bit like saying somebody with red hair has a bad character… ( I don’t say this, this is just an example)
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I think Hilltop did everything right (of course with the help of the responsible mare owner who wanted them to test).
Now other people need to do things.
I think because of all the points stated above, we need more information about how widely its spread in the population already (and ok only for JB if there are other things connected with it which I don’t believe but be it)
And the only way to get this information is to get people to test. So I would promote the test and I would actually praise it… I mean its something amazing, You can prevent dead foals!!! And if the registries want to enforce something they can proclaim a rule that in a breeding at least one partner has to be tested clear, because then there are no affected (which means dead) foals anymore. I am sure everybody will support that…
And you will see breeders will try like crazy to promote clear breedings… Its a nice marketing tool. And over the time it will go down in the population. Thats exactly what happened with the Labradors and EIC. You probably can’t eliminate it anyhow but you can control it!!
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This is why I like the rules of the verbands/registries in Germany that do not approve horses that have things wrong with them. Thanks to this stud’s owner who is doing what is best for horses. Hilltop is helping warmbloods and not harming warmbloods.
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Interesting comment all things considered. I take it you are not familiar with this stallion and his approvals? Or the mare for that matter.
Awesome move by Hilltop. I wondered over to the for sale page and drooled over some of those babies
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I hope you are kidding… I am pretty sure that this test is available since 2015 or 16 or something (2013, I looked it up) and so far I don’t know of any rules about it in German registries… And if you think a witch hunt will help Congratulations…
I think it will keep people from testing, which means less information about how far the disease is spread… And I would think after I looked at the lineage of the carrier stallion that its probably spread further then people think right now… And if you don’t encourage people to test ( und you will not once they find out that then their breeding stock is culled from breeding) you will never be able to control it…
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If you can not register with out a negative test then people will test.
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no registry will kick out perfectly healthy animals with owners paying fees to them. I think you don’t really know how these registries work. And who are the registries… And I really wonder how supportive stallion owners (who are a huge force and well represented in the registries) will be about something like that.
I think this discussion is full of personal assumptions and very unrealistic views…
Lets wait a little and see what happens 
As I said before, the test has been available for a couple of years and I wonder who of those people discussing here ever heard of the test before…
I think Hilltop did an outstanding job when they made the results public (and maybe there was a little political thinking behind it too…) and now I think it is necessary to empower this little movement towards genetic testing.
And I think there is a law in Germany that it is not allowed to breed unhealthy animals. So its totally sufficient to prohibit to breed affected horses… Everything else is unrealistic…
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Manni: You will be testing your mares before breeding, if breeding is in your future plans? or be sure the stallion you select is negative?
For sure I will test my mares if I plan to breed in the future!! I would be a fool not to… if you look at the lines of Sternlicht you will see that SH is his Grandfather. Three of my mares are descendants of SH. So I have to make sure I know their status. And then I go from there. If the mare I want to breed is clear I can use any stallion I like. If a clear stallion is my first choice even better. If she is a carrier I will only use a clear stallion… the test is $55 so pretty affordable if I can avoid a dead foal. And either Szenario will produce a clear foal with 50% probability. Except if I do clear/clear breeding. And this way you will hopefully slowly increase the clear population…
and I know every responsible breeder will think like that!! I am sure thanks to Hilltop they are already starting to test!!
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It should be pointed out that most forms of EDS are inherited dominantly. Meaning that someone (and I personally am speaking from experience here) can be heterozygous for the mutation and still suffer absolutely debilitating health issues.
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Why can’t the stud books require proof that the horse applying for admittance to the respective studbooks is free of hereditary diseases? I asked this same question about DSLD, and I am sure there are other diseases that should go on the list.
Don’t the European stud books do this with one or more diseases which have been eradicated over there?
Of course there will still be owners who don’t care about being entered into a stud book, but if those breeders ever want to sell offspring, or breed them, then responsible breeders will not buy unregistered horses.
I am curious (I truly do not know) how big a problem HYPP still is in the QH world?
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Ask the studbooks… I would assume it has to do with money and influence
Please explain how I am unknowingly witch-hunting? Is it a witch hunt to want to know which lines carry this? If so, there are an awful lot of witch hunters out there.
If you publicly assume that there might be more negative things associated with a horse being a carrier then just being a carrier you throw something out which will scare people away from carriers…
Everyone SHOULD assume there is the potential until proven otherwise. Clearly it is not something that has any known impact on reasonably aged horses. Sternlicht is 8 and I assume the picture of health. I also assume there are carriers older than he is without any known health issues.
Why is it such a bad thing to want to know more about this mutation before wholeheartedly declaring it benign in the hetero form? If nobody ask the questions for fear or offending someone, it will be the elephant in the room and nobody will talk about it and that’s not how to get a handle on a disease such as this
They might not even want to buy them… “Because you don’t know there might be something wrong with them…” The result might be that carriers go to slaughter because nobody wants to touch them and people will not test because they are scared that nobody will touch carriers…
That is certainly possible. You can’t control how people respond to little to know information. I find it disappointing that anyone could automatically assume there is no possible health risk to a carrier.
2 horses equal in every way, you bet I’m going to buy the negative one. But I also wouldn’t not buy a carrier if he was the better horse and doing what I wanted to do with him.
And I am interested to find out how you will limit expansion of the disorder if you proclaim culling and possible other negative things which will keep people from testing…
Backyard breeders will continue to breed known diseases, there is no getting around that. They either won’t know about, or care about, or bother to test for anything. There is certainly no shortage of unregistered WB and WB crosses out there. Expansion gets limited, not halted, when testing is required and people are educated and make responsible breeding decisions. That will never, ever apply to 100% of breeding decisions.
I did look for a studdog which was clear, because that way I would only produce carriers and then in the new generation I could look for clears… Believe me it was tough to find a studdog. In our population more then 50% were either affected or carriers. Because most of the dogs are closely related.
But I found a clear studdog and a couple of weeks ago her Grandgranddaughter got Best Bitch and the CC certificate at Crufts…
Because you KNEW that the disease was a total non-issue for a carrier. I’ve said many times I have no problem with that. We have Frame Overo as the exact same example of that. Zero concern for a carrier, just don’t breed 2 carriers together, ever, and everyone will be happy.
IMO thats the way to deal with it… Oh and there were people like you in my breed who proclaimed that EIC carrier and affected were also carrying a gene for seizuring… That is a witchhunt. Up till today there is no proof for that. Oh and my affected bitches are doing extremely well for her age…So far no other problems…
Like me? I have never EVER proclaimed anything.
So until proven otherwise for me a carrier for a disease is exactly a carrier for a disease and not having different issues as well. Its a bit like saying somebody with red hair has a bad character… ( I don’t say this, this is just an example)
People like you proclaimed (and still do) that nH horses are not a problem, then it was proven that they often are, just no guarantee.
I’d rather assume there IS a problem (notice I did not state there is) until we know otherwise, or at least have a lot more information which strongly points to there not being any health risks for a carrier of this defect.
That is where we will apparently continue to differ
Exactly. One cannot assume that the hetero form of something like a connective tissue disease is benign. Frame Overo affects a very specific development of a very specific internal structure, and it takes 2 copies of that mutation to do it. 1 copy might as well be 0.
HERDA is also a connective tissue disease, “better” than WFFS for sure. It’s only relatively recently started to be studied how hetero HERDA horses might have a competitive advantage based on more elastic tendons. It’s sitting around 30% of the cutting-bred horses - do we really want WFFS to become that popular?
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Big enough, because AQHA has not yet disallowed nH horses. APHA has not even disallowed HH horses yet 
It was only in 2007 that AQH refused registration of HH horses. So 11 years later, and nH horses are still allowed.The last number I saw, the number of ?H horses was a bit over 30%.
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I am interested in reliable sources that HERDA carriers have clinical signs of any kind. You are talking a lot about it so please prove it.
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wow strong word based on what??? I never even talked about nH horses (only have a slight idea what it is) and you accuse me of doing something which I obviously never did… You don’t like my opinion and now you associate me with people I have nothing to do with. Please stop this.
My pleasure:
"Bowser noted that these findings could explain why HERDA carriers are overrepresented among elite performing cutting horses: Subtle versions of the biomechanical differences identified in the recent study between tissues from HERDA-affected and healthy horses could give HERDA carriers an advantage in cutting and other disciplines requiring movements that strain the limits of athletic flexibility, she said.
Altering tendon strength and elasticity could do several things: “An increase in elasticity could make it easier for these horses to comfortably perform the positions and rigorous movements that characterize cutting,” she said. "
https://thehorse.com/149059/herdas-impact-on-tendons-blood-vessels-studied/
You missed my point on this. You are accusing me of doing things based on what other people are (in your opinion) doing. I don’t have anything to do with the people you accuse me of being like either. The point is you can’t have it both ways, and I used HYPP as an example of how people did what you are doing, which is assuming carriers are not a problem, and it’s bitten the breed in the butt. I don’t want to see that happen with WFFS, that is all I have ever been commenting about.
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