You may have started to hear the phrase ‘IHA’ when people are talking about dog breeding, and certainly from the way some sections of the internet talk about it, you might have heard it’s a bad thing. Far from being a piece of regulation, the Innate Health Assessment tool is actually the culmination of nearly 20 years of dedicated research aimed to help improve welfare for all dog breeds. This article aims to give an overview of the IHA and address the misconceptions around it.
What is the Innate Health Assessment?
The Innate Health Assessment Tool is a 10 Point Visual Checklist of what physical characteristics show a dog is innately healthy. As the website for the tool says:
“Innate health describes a dog’s capacity to carry out the natural functions and behaviours that any normal canine should be able to do — run around, breathe freely, eat normally, blink their eyes, wag their tail and reproduce naturally. A dog with good innate health will be able to carry out all these functions without limitations caused by its physical conformation.”
The purpose of the tool is to help prospective dog owners know if they are buying a dog more likely to be healthy than not, and to help breeders to assess if their dogs are suitable to breed from. It is also designed to help members of the public and local council licensing officials when they are assessing breeding establishments.
It is free to access, and generates individual certificates for animals that have passed.
Since it’s launch in November 2025, more than 1500 assessments have been carried out, with a nearly 85% pass rate and average 75% user satisfaction score. These assessments represent dogs of all different types of breeds from all over the country.
The IHA is endorsed and supported by over 24 organisations involved in dog welfare and veterinary care, including the British Veterinary Association, the British Small Animal Veterinary Association, RSPCA, PDSA, Dogs Trust, Battersea Dogs Home and the Royal Kennel Club. It has also been recognised by an independent economics consultancy to be a ‘low cost high impact regulatory lever’ – in short, something that can effect real change for improving welfare but costs very little for owners and breeders.
Why is this even needed?
Over the last twenty years vets and allied professionals of all kinds have been increasingly concerned about the rise of extreme conformation, where physical characteristics become exaggerated with each generation. In 2009, the All Party Parliamentary Group for Animal Welfare (AGPAW) started to discuss the issue, and in 2022 recognised it as the most significant welfare problem for companion animals in the UK.
Physical traits like big eyes, short noses and legs, rolls of skin and short tails have become confused with being ‘cute’, but actually tell a tale of dogs who are not able to see, breathe, groom or move around normally, and who are at greatly increased risk of painful or distressing long term conditions (including eye ulcers, skin disease and joint pain). Caregivers may buy a dog for its personality, or because they believe a dog is ‘meant’ to look that way, but many are unaware of the poor quality of life that dog may have related to their physical looks (not to mention the frequent and expensive vet visits that result).
The French Bulldog is perhaps a typical example of this. A fun loving and friendly breed, these small dogs are very popular as family pets, and have been popularised further by celebrity owners. Considered a rare breed not so long ago, they are now one of the most popular breeds in the UK, and this rapid increase in population size has meant lots of inbreeding. As a brachycephalic (flat faced) breed, vets see these dogs frequently for breathing difficulties and eye ulcers, as well as for chronic allergic skin disease and spinal malformations that lead to disc disease and paralysis. In 2012 the PDSA had only 335 French Bulldogs registered, but in 2025 there were over 33,000 – a mind boggling increase of 9781%. Many of these dogs are registered with the PDSA because their owners are in financial difficulty paying for all the treatments their dogs need to keep them comfortable.
Who has developed the IHA and how did they do it?
The IHA has been developed by Professor Dan O’Neill and his team at the Royal Veterinary College over the last 15 years.
They used data collected from three main sources:
- Vet Compass, an initiative where anonymous data has been collected from 15 million dogs since 2010
- A Dogs Trust 2024 Study on the size, distribution and demographics of the UK dog population
- Royal Kennel Club registrations
This data has led to over 180 peer-reviewed scientific papers being published, and from these the 10 main criteria associated with ill health have been narrowed down to form the IHA. This data is being continually added to and modified, and with the idea that the list of criteria will change over time as the evidence does too.
It is interesting to note that over 25% of dogs in the Vet Compass data in 2019 showed at least 1 of the 3 most concerning traits for poor innate health (flat faces, short legs, deformed tails). At the same time, more than 10% of Royal Kennel Club registrations come from the 9 breeds they have listed as ‘Breed Watch 3 – severe health and welfare concerns’.
So what are the physical traits associated with innate health?
An innately healthy dog will have:
- No merle colouring
- Smooth skin with no folds
- A muzzle long enough to breathe
- Eyelids that don’t turn in or droop out
- Eyes that sit deeply in the socket without bulging
- Jaws that close correctly together
- A tail long enough to wag
- Straight legs that do not bow
- A natural leg length
- A spine that can bend and flex
The IHA takes you through pictures and measurements of each of these so that you can work out to what degree your dog is affected. This is not about saying ‘all dogs with a short tail are unhealthy’, but more that if your dog shows the characteristics above, the less likely they are to suffer health problems caused by the opposite of them.
What is the IHA designed to do?
The purpose of the IHA is to:
- Empower prospective dog owners in their choice of puppy purchase
- Guide breeders as to which dogs to breed from
- Help local council licensing officials know if breeders are considering the welfare of their dogs
- Help media outlets and advertising agencies know what images of dogs are appropriate to use
- Improve welfare for all breeds of dogs by encouraging a return to form fit for function and a healthy life
What is the IHA not designed to do?
The IHA is NOT designed to be a replacement for:
- Veterinary checks of individual dogs
- Clinical examinations
- Breed specific tests (especially genetic ones)
- Established breeding schemes (such as the BVA/RKC Hip Scoring Scheme)
- Legal standards for breeding establishments
I’ve heard some people say this means dog breeds are being banned? Is this true?
Unfortunately, there has been distrust and discontent between some breeders and some vets for many years, with vets seeing the effects of poor breeding in their consultation rooms, and breeders feeling misunderstood about what they are trying to do for ‘their breed’. This means that the announcement of the IHA came with some vocal criticism from breeders who felt that it was something designed to ‘get rid’ of an alleged 67 particular breeds. The developers of the IHA have addressed this head on:
Myth – the IHA is a tool for ‘banning all short-legged dog breeds’
The IHA is not based on leg length alone and considers leg length to body length ratio as more important. This means many shorter legged dogs are still considered healthy.
Myth – the IHA wants to ‘banish some breeds to the history books’
The IHA exists to protect the longevity of individual breeds by making them healthier. ‘Banning breeds’ has never been mentioned by the IHA developers or those who endorse it.
Myth – the IHA is based on ‘crude, visual, unscientific’ tests
The IHA is grounded in a substantial body of peer-reviewed scientific literature taken from large datasets over many years
Myth – the IHA ‘threatens breed diversity’
The IHA wants to promote breed diversity, just not the extremes of conformation that cause ill health and suffering.
There are of course legitimate concerns
These quite reasonably revolve around the consistency of application between users of the test, as well as how documents and personal details will be verified to avoid fraud. These are undergoing constant review as the tool is used and updated.
Many breeders are actively working with the IHA and engaging with it, with website My Licensed Breeder stating that “the genius about this is the simplicity”. They feel that the lack of veterinary knowledge in the wider breeding community is what has caused the current situation, and feels the IHA will go a long way to changing this.
“The gap in understanding is one of the reasons why extreme traits continue to appear in dogs even though many experienced breeders avoid them”.
Conclusion
The IHA tool is a really exciting new development in dog welfare, one that has the potential to help rare breeds survive, empower owners, breeders and the media, and to take complex veterinary knowledge and turn it into accessible reliable information. Ultimately it is all about dog welfare and reducing unnecessary suffering – how could we possibly argue with that?
References
Innate Health Assessment | Promote Healthy Breeding Now
The innate health assessment tool | APGAW (contains good images to use!)
PDSA position on the Innate Health Assessment (IHA) – PDSA
What is the Innate Health Assessment (IHA) Tool – My Licensed Breeder
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