About LIDA

While acknowledging the major contribution made by dog breeders and dog-breeding organisations in fulfilling the important need of humans for animal companions, breeders and scientists have long been aware that all is not well in the world of companion-animal breeding. Welfare concerns associated with modern dog breeding have been discussed in the veterinary literature and the popular press.

Most breeds have their characteristic list of inherited defects. Some of these defects occur at an unacceptably high frequency. Based on the premise that there is a dearth of feedback to breeders and current prevalence data for the profession, LIDA is designed to gather, collate and disseminate data on the prevalence of inherited disorders among Australian dogs.

The results of our research will allow:
• Potential purchasers to make informed decisions when buying puppies
• Veterinarians to benefit by being able to provide clients with local current data and by being able to learn from the profession's pooled data
• Breeders to recognise which unwelcome traits are increasing and which are being successfully reduced.

This facility will provide breed societies and funding bodies with information that will allow them to generate a prioritised list of behavioural and inherited disorders and to focus their attempts to reduce the incidence of unwelcome traits. Additionally, we anticipate this project will facilitate the production of similar sites for other species.