Why did some Zoners decline to participate in ISSR Health Surveys?
Simply stated, because they did not trust how the data would be used or how it would be analyzed. Rather than do a health survey where only a handful of people have access to the data, the Zone promotes an open database strategy encouraging the sharing of good, bad and ugly to promote improvement. Statistics are important in terms of telling us the health of the breed in general which is what the ISSR shared. However, they do not help breeders or buyers make intelligent decisions regarding putting a pair together or purchasing a puppy. In other words, statistics are based on populationswe also need to know data about individual dogs, lines, progeny, and siblings.
