[Analysis of the prevalence of distichiasis in the dog breed Elo]

The Elo is a recently established dog breed in which the eye anomaly distichiasis has been frequently observed. Out of a total of 234 Elo dogs ophthalmologically examined over four years, 27.8% of the dogs showed between 1 and 31 distichia. There were twice as many distichia in the upper than in the lower eyelid. Litter size, the number of examinations of Elo dogs per ophthalmologist and the proportion of genes of the Eurasian dog had a significant influence on the prevalence of distichiasis. The error probability for the inbreeding coefficient and the proportion of genes of the Old English Sheepdog were just above the significance limit of p = 0.05. No significance was found for the remaining effects. Heritability for distichiasis was estimated using a linear animal model. After transformation of the linear observed estimate onto the underlying liability scale the heritability estimate was h2 = 0.43.