In the early 70’s, the geneticist Robert Schaible crossed a short haired Pointer into his established lines of Dalmatians. Why on earth did he do that? Remember under breed specific problems we talked about the different metabolism of a Dalmatian? It is this different metabolism that makes the Dalmatians urine display a higher than average acidity level which in turn means that the Dalmatian can form urate stones. Unfortunately, there are no pure-bred Dalmatians world-wide that do not have higher than average Uric Acid levels and therefore this recessive trait, that had become homozygous among Dalmatians, could only be eradicated over time by crossing in another breed of dog.

Since then over forty years have passed, but it was a long and lonely battle for the few breeders in the US that had devoted their breeding programs to fixing High Uric Acid levels in the Dalmatian breed. Since it was such a hot topic among breeders, the gene pool of the LUA (Low Uric Acid) Dalmatians could not spread as wide and far as it could have and therefore LUA breeding programs of today must move slowly to integrate the healthy gene into their existing lines to slowly increase the diversity of the LUA lines without losing the general good health of the Dalmatian breed through loss of diversity.

LUA and Caprilli Dalmatians

Here at Caprilli Dalmatians, we took the plunge with our J-Litter, bred in 2012. The J-Litter consisted of eight puppies in total of which four displayed the healthy Gene. The only LUA bitch puppy remains in our Co-ownership and will have her first litter in 2015. Two LUA boys have also remained in our Co-ownership to observe their development and possibly feature in our own or somebody else’s breeding programs. Last but not least the remaining LUA boy went to live in Germany where he belongs to the Geneticist Frank Pfannenschmid and where he will help to expand the LUA gene pool in Europe.

Since genetic diversity is a vital part of any breeding program, we will not breed Holly (Mum to our J-Litter) to another LUA stud dog as we do not believe that it will help future breeders if too many LUA’s are directly related to her. Instead we will carry on with the best puppies from the J-Litter, moving on through the generations and creating diversity within the line. So there we go, another thought process by Caprilli: We fully support the LUA project but we firmly believe that we must carry on breeding from established lines of Dalmatians, so we continue to have the possibility to increase the genetic diversity of our future LUA Dalmatians.

LUA Dalmatians World

Over the years many articles have been written on LUA Dalmatian breeding, and since the LUA population is slowly spreading across the world we took the opportunity, together with Denise Powell of the Dalmatian Heritage project and many other supporters, to gather the articles and use our world-wide connections to translate them into as many different languages as possible. A lot of time, money and effort have been put into this page which is connected to a Discussion Board solely designed to gather and update information and to supply as many Dalmatian enthusiast around the world with the information that has been collected for the past 40 + years.

LUA Dalmatians World is far from perfect but you can view the beginnings under the link and if you have something to contribute, please get in touch so we can add you to the board. LUA Dalmatians World also contains a list of LUA Dalmatian Breeders.

Pedigree dogs exposed and LUA Dalmatians

The video below shows the Dalmatian Sequence of the TV documentation “Pedigree Dogs Exposed”. Julie Evans who is showing off the LUA Dalmatian Ch. Fiacre’s First And Foremost – “Fiona”, was largely responsible for the first official registration of LUA Dalmatians in the UK. Whilst Fiona is a full sister to the sire of our LUA litter, we are proud to call Julie a friend. Please feel free to share the Video or this page to tell all your friends about LUA Dalmatians and the people behind the project, who have made it possible!