No Mr Jimmy, he is the first I've seen with it. I read where a lot of dogs carry that gene but it can be unknown. Rednose, I couldn't tell until the last few days, she sure looks like she is getting swell bellied.
Like Jimmy said...a cause due to the environment or illness...or if genetic...I have never owned or produced a pup with this disease but have seen a couple with it...
the theory is that it is a recessive trait because none of the parents have to display the trait to pass it on...but both parents will have to carry the bad gene or genes to produce a pup that will have it...and those genes have to match up so the chances are not that high to produce that trait...it is best not to breed a dog that displays that trait but since she is already bred it is not that bad of a deal...just cull them if one or 2 displays the trait...below I pasted where I got my info...off the net of course...
there currently are no conclusive findings on the mode of inheritance for canine idiopathic epilepsy. However, there are some general theories. Some investigators have theorized that, at least in the breeds they studied, the disorder is likely to be recessive because often two parents that are free of epilepsy produce offspring with epilepsy. Another theory concerns whether the defective gene or genes are carried on the sex chromosomes. (Each dog has 39 pairs of chromosomes which carry all of his or her genes. One member of each pair is inherited from each of the parents. Thirty-eight of these pairs are autosomes and one pair is the sex chromosomes.) Often, when there are sex differences in a trait, the gene for that trait is carried on the sex chromosomes. However, despite the fact that many breeds (though not all) show a higher rate of epilepsy in males than females, the pattern of inheritance across generations suggests that the genes responsible for epilepsy are probably carried on one or more of the autosome pairs. While these two theoretical notions (recessive and autosomal) may indeed prove to be true for many breeds, at the present time, there still is not enough data to draw any firm conclusions, even on the specific breeds for which pedigree analyses have been conducted.
