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As many of you know, Early Onset Deafness (also referred to as EAOD or Early Adult Onset Deafness) is an issue in Border Collies. The ABCA, through the ABCA Health and Education Foundation, as well as other entities, has been actively pursuing research to understand the genetics and, hopefully, devise a test for this disheartening problem that manifests itself at the peak of a dog's useful and active life. Carol Campion has created a page on Facebook called "EOD Awareness Group". Here is her description of the focus and content of this group - "The main focus of this new group is to post pedigrees in a non-judgemental forum. You are invited and urged to post pedigrees of dogs that YOU have owned or bred that have gone deaf from what is thought to be EOD. Please do NOT post pedigrees from any dogs other than your own or ones you have bred. I would like to not have any comments on any pedigrees aside from information as to when the dog was discovered to be deaf, when it was Baer tested and if it was tested as a younger dog. If you are uncomfortable posting a pedigree, you can send it to my email and I can Photoshop out any names of people, leaving just the dogs and registration numbers. If you are posting a pedigree please have the courtesy to let people such as the breeder or buyer know you are making it public. If anyone is upset with their name being out there, it can be removed. great care must be taken to prevent this from being a witch hunt. Many of the dogs that have produced deaf dogs were sucessfull breeders and trial dogs, many are dead and gone. They command due respect. The intention is to help anyone breeding to reference and see what crosses might have produced EOD and be able to choose more wisely what lines to breed to. I would also like to invite anyone hosting a BAER clinic to please post it here." This is one more effort on the part of the Border Collie community to share information, to bring this topic out into the public forum (in the best way possible - please read Carol's comments to understand that this is to help, and not to attack anyone), and to provide a way for people to be able to look at pedigrees, draw conclusions, and make decisions for themselves. Of course, if you have a dog that you feel has gone deaf and the deafness can be attributed to EOD, in addition to sharing the pedigree on this Facebook page, please contact Eileen Stein at eileen@bordercollie.org or one of the other members of the ABCA Health & Education Foundation to see about submitting DNA samples and BAER test results to their database.

Thanks to a generous subsidy by ABCA, we are able to offer FREE BAER (Brainstem Auditory Evoked Response) hearing tests to ABCA-registered Border Collies at the National Sheepdog Finals in Carbondale, Colorado. The clinic will be EITHER Wednesday-Thursday Sept 10-11, or Thursday-Friday Sept 11-12. We will publish the exact dates as soon as we confirm the veterinarian’s availability. The test is painless and takes less than 15 minutes to perform. There are about 56 spots available over the two days of testing. Dogs will be prioritized as follows: 1. ABCA-registered dogs of breeding age (2-8 years) from lines having produced deafness, or in whom problems are suspected. 2. ABCA-registered dogs of breeding age (2-8 years) with no known problems or genetic history of deafness. 3. ABCA-registered dogs outside the above-listed age criteria. 4. Non-ABCA registered dogs, at a cost of $50 per test. ABCA Director Elizabeth Baker will be coordinating the clinic on-site. We ask that owners bring a copy of ABCA registration to prove eligibility for the free testing. We would hope that owners who discover deafness in their ABCA-registered dog would voluntarily disclose the pedigree data to the ABCA Health & Genetics Committee. The Committee would like to be able to offer breeding advice for dogs with hereditary deafness, and the only way to date that we are able to identify genetic links is through hearing testing and pedigree research. All results are confidential unless disclosed by the owner. We will have printed information about hereditary and acquired deafness in Border Collies, and the current state of the ongoing DNA research on Early Onset Deafness. Please contact me if you have dogs you would like to have tested. I will keep a list and prioritize it according to the guidelines above, so please also tell me the dog(s) age, if problems are suspected or not, and whether you’re competing at the Finals. We’ll publish a final schedule once the running order is drawn and we know which days the clinic will be. You can reach me directly at acoapman at gmail dot com. Amy