What does Health Tested mean?

people always say that you got a bad dog from a puppy mill what's a puppy mill or a backyard breeder? and then they go on saying their parents or the puppy might not even be health tested?what in the world do these words mean

Health Tested
Backyard Breeder
Puppy Mill

.....ppl saying Akiro's parents might not be even tested! I'm soooo concerned now.

You might find these interesting

http://www.chazhound.com/forums/showthread.php?t=787

http://www.chazhound.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2819&highlight=health+test

thanks alot saje! ill look into them

I still don't understand and know what Health Tested and Backyard Breeder is, plz reply and explain to me what it means, thanks

Don't quote me on this, as I'm still learning myself.

Health tested means the puppies are tested for health problems they might have. It also means the parents of the pup are tested for problems they might pass on to the pup. Like blindness for example.

I'm pretty sure a back yard breeder is someone who just breeds Dogs together and has no idea what he/she is doing.

Puppy mills are where puppies are bred in poor conditions. They do not get the socialization need, there for don't develop properly mentally. Bítches are bred too many times, and some bítches are at puppy mills their entire lives just to put out more puppies. A lot of the time this is done in poor conditions.

Health testing means that the female and male were tested BEFORE they were bred. They also should come from lines that don't have a lot of, if any, health problems. As Bubbatd or Love4Pits about specific tests. The puppy should be tested for certain things as well. I think it might vary by breed. I don't know

Backyard breeders are people who have a 'surprise' litter of puppies in their backyard or they breed only to make money or they breed without doing anything that makes a responsible breeder responsible.

Puppymills are the places that breed dogs for the purpose of selling them and nothing more. They have no training, poor health, no socialization and they usually live in a bad environment.

Basically when you are trying to keep breeding for purebred dogs you continually create new genetic diseases. Breeders try to do health tests on parents to try to weed out genetic diseases in a future breeding. This is by no means a gaurantee that the pups will not have a genetic disease of another sort pop up. I have known many breeders who have done all the genetic health tests still produce genetically unhealthy pups and have had to put down a whole litter...a person with little knowledge and does no health tests will create even more disasters than the so called reputable breeders.

It's a very difficult position kennel clubs have put breeders into, to keep a dog a purebred is to inbred...the gene pools are getting so small with our purebreed dogs that genetic diseases are created all the time by purebred breeding. There are over 300 genetic health defects found in dogs due to a limited and closed gene pool. Most of our current purebred dogs were built on relatively few founding dogs, so the same set of genes are used over and over again.
So, basically breeders use health tests to try and determine weather a dog is not a carrier of certain genetic diseases. In theory the future litters from these health cleared dogs should not suffer from genetic dissease. Of course this is impossible...if you are going to inbred you are going to create more genetic health problems. For example, in a line with my Newf's the breeders where able to successfully keep hip dyplasia out of the line...all the pups ended up with a new structure problem...elbow dysplasia. Since this is not a "known" genetic disease for Newfs my boy was still able to get his championship titles in 3 countries...scary huh. It's the law of genetics, if you continue to keep a dog in a purebreed and then you take out the genetically defective dogs from the gene pool....the gene pool gets smaller and smaller. It doesn't work.
Here is an article to read that explains the down side of purebred breeding and why genetic health testing doesn't work. If you read down the page they talk more about genetic health tests etc.
http://www.yourpurebredpuppy.com/tutorial1.html

Backyard breeders also refer to those people who do put a little thought, time and effort into the breeding, but it's limited towards maybe buying a better quality food while she's pregnant and making sure they liked the looks of the stud dog they picked. They wanted a litter of puppies so their kids could "experience the miracle of birth" and have some rowdy puppies to play with for awhile, and hopefully the parents would be able to make a buck or two in the selling. These are generally the puppies you see in the papers. "AKC yellow lab, big, friendly, 250." The AKC title doesn't mean much anymore in advertising, because just about anyone can claim an AKC and most of the general public doesn't know enough to demand papers from both parents, etc.

Puppy mills are purely profit driven. They pick out the top 5-20 most popular breeds of the time, find a handful of b*tches and at least one corresponding stud dog. Then they breed and breed and breed, generally selling the puppies at too early of an age, with no thought to puppy care, b*tch maintenence or even proper housing. The puppies are sold to either pet stores, who mark up the price of the puppy, or to on-line pet stores. These puppies are generally the ones that have a tremendous amount of health problems, many of which stem from being weaned too quickly because the owners of them mill felt the need to breed the b*tch again right away. Watch Animal Cops sometime, you'll see a full-fledged puppy mill sooner or later. Most of the breeding stock is in such terrible shape from being constantly keep pregnant or nursing.

Health testing generally covers OFA--I forget what the acronym stands for, but it's the hip dysplasia test; known genetic eye and back problems and full or partial dentition (do the parents have a full set of teeth or not) and certain cancers. Like Athe pointed out, usually careful screening will prevent an unhealthy litter, but not always. Good breeders will give a health guarantee on their pups until a specified date, sometimes anywhere from six months to over a year. The really good ones will offer a replacement pup should something like hip dysplasia crop up in your dog anyway. I know a guy in the exact situation: his dog got HD at a really young age so the breeder is sending him another pup for free. He can keep his first dog as well.

Isn't there anything they can do about this? Like try and produce more founding Dogs like they did at first, or isn't this possible?

As people say, backyard breeders are people who don't care about the quality of the dog they breed. They don't do any testing, so lots of puppies carry some or all the diseases and problem associated with the breed. You can see the difference between a backyard breeder and a good breeder in the price of the puppies, because the tests are expensive, and you won't find quality puppies for less than $700 usually (and not in petshops).

You often see backyard breeders sell dogs with a 'health certificate' and/or a 6 months guarantee. The health certificate means nothing, it just means the dog wasn't sick on appearance when they took it to the vet. The guarantee is often short for backyard breeders because they know that most diseases won't show before the dog is adult. Responsible breeders often have a 12-24+ months guarantee.

So basically, backyard breeders are just in for the money, and don't care about selling healthy and quality puppies, which is why they are cheaper.

All of the above posts are good.....Sometimes things can go wrong with even good health checks. I never had any problems with my own puppies, but even with fully checking their history, I bred Bubba to a female ( not mine) who had all good reports and yet one pup had the worst over bite I've ever seen in a golden.

Here are a few sites with pictures of puppy mills, but some are rather horrid...

http://filebox.vt.edu/users/kgaeding/puppy/picsmills.html
http://www.egressetch.com/WisconsinPFL/photos.html

Hopefully you will see what it is now.