Danika Bannasch, DVM, PhD is the owner of Pint, the famous UC Davis football tee retrieving dog. She also happens to run a genetics lab, also at UC Davis, where she studies the genetics of inherited diseases in dogs and other animals. She is known for her work associating genetic variants with a variety of traits including coat color and skull shape. On this episode we're talking about a genetic mutation that she discovered - known to genetic testing companies as CDDY - for a trait she feels passionately about, chondrodystrophy. Most of the dog world knows this mutation as "that risk gene that makes your dog more likely to get IVDD," but in this episode, Danika talks us through the difference between IVDD (intervertebral disc disease), actual disc herniation, and the back pain that all dogs with this mutation suffer. I hope you learn as much from this discussion as I did.