Curly Coated Retriever
Curly Coated Retrievers have a cited life expectancy of 12.2 years (McMillan 2024 / VetCompass, n=152, 95% CI 11.2 to 12.8). The most carried tested variant is Exercise-Induced Collapse, in 43% of 63 Curly Coated Retrievers tested (Donner 2023), then Glycogen Storage Disease, Type IIIa (6.3%). Only 8 dogs stand behind the atlas figures here, so little is known yet.
Also known as CCR and Curly.
What genetic diseases do Curly Coated Retrievers carry?
From a panel of 250 Mendelian-disease variants screened in 1,054,293 dogs (Donner et al. 2023), Curly Coated Retrievers carry 4 of them at observable frequency. Carrier frequency is not clinical risk. Most recessive variants require two copies for disease expression; many dominant variants show incomplete penetrance. Read this as a population fingerprint of what's in the gene pool, not a per-dog prediction.
DNM1what this gene does
DNM1 is a gene that helps nerve cells communicate properly by managing how they send signals during muscle activity.
For your dog: If your dog belongs to one of the breeds known to carry this gene variant, it's worth discussing EIC with your vet, especially if your dog is very active or shows signs of weakness during exercise.
IGFBP5what this gene does
IGFBP5 is a gene that helps regulate growth factors involved in tissue development and repair.
For your dog: If you have a sighthound, it’s worth mentioning IGFBP5-related risks to your vet, but being a carrier doesn’t mean your dog will develop the syndrome.
RPGRIP1what this gene does
RPGRIP1 is a gene involved in the function of photoreceptor cells in the eye, which help dogs see in different light conditions.
For your dog: If your dog belongs to a breed known to carry RPGRIP1 mutations, it’s worth discussing with your vet to understand the risks and monitor eye health.
Other names
The Curly Coated Retriever is also recorded as CCR and Curly.
Identified as Curly Coated Retriever (VBO:0200397) in the Vertebrate Breed Ontology (Mullen et al. 2025, CC-BY 4.0) · registry IDs FCI 110 · iDog 81 · VeNom 14606.
For researchers Population genetics, disease models and every recorded condition Open the research detail for the Curly Coated Retriever
In the atlas, the Curly Coated Retriever clusters consistently as Curly Coated Retriever (100% of the 8 dogs here). Genetic diversity is high (mean heterozygosity 0.3568), reflecting either a mixed-breed cluster or breeds with broad genetic backgrounds.
Mean heterozygosity is 0.357, notably high, indicates broad genetic background. Low breed predictability score (0.18), individual dogs of this breed vary widely in genetics, suggesting active substructure or sub-population diversity. Only 8 dogs of this breed in the atlas, every individual contributes outsized weight to the breed's computed profile.
What the atlas genotypes say about Curly Coated Retriever
Computed from the 14,478 CanVAS dogs in the Atlas, on an imputed genotype backbone: 77,215 directly typed sites per dog, imputed to 9.67 million variants.
The confidence below counts dogs, not reads: it is the size of the sample, and it is separate from how the genotypes were measured.
Not enough dogs in the atlas yet (n=8) for a reliable diversity figure. It fills in as more are added.
What does genetic diversity mean?
How varied a breed's gene pool is — the share of gene spots where a typical dog of the breed carries two different versions rather than two identical ones.
How to read it: Higher = more diverse. Among well-sampled breeds it ranges roughly 0.22 (least diverse) to 0.33 (most diverse).
Diversity is a strength, not a verdict on any individual dog. Lower diversity means it's worth paying attention to recessive-risk testing — not that a dog is doomed.
Not enough dogs in the atlas yet (n=8) to resolve cluster structure. It fills in as more are added.
What does within-breed variation mean?
How much individual dogs within the breed differ from each other genetically.
How to read it: Higher = more internal variety among individuals of the breed.
Sensitive to how many dogs of the breed we've sampled.
What does typical lifespan mean?
The median age dogs of the breed tend to reach.
How to read it: Higher = longer-lived. Compare to longevity-for-size to see whether it's just a size effect.
Drawn from population lifespan records; individual dogs vary widely with care, genetics, and luck.
Curly Coated Retrievers are a natural model for human disease
Because the same genes cause the same conditions across species, the inherited conditions documented in Curly Coated Retrievers help researchers understand, and work toward treating, the human diseases they model. This is the dog advancing human medicine. The breed models the human disease; it does not have it, and this is not a prediction for your dog.
- Caffey disease, modeled by the breed's Craniomandibular osteopathy, generic , the same underlying biology.
- OMIM:608245, modeled by the breed's Curly coat , the same underlying biology.
- developmental and epileptic encephalopathy, 31A, modeled by the breed's Exercise-induced collapse , the same underlying biology.
- glycogen storage disease III, modeled by the breed's Glycogen storage disease IIIa , the same underlying biology.
Every condition recorded in the Curly Coated Retriever
Beyond the testable carriers above, OMIA's literature catalogue records 4 genetic conditions in the Curly Coated Retriever, 4 of which have a known human equivalent. This is the documented landscape across all Curly Coated Retrievers ever studied, not a prediction for any one dog.
- Craniomandibular osteopathy, generic MultifactorialHuman equivalent: Caffey disease
- Curly coat AutosomalHuman equivalent: OMIM:608245
- Exercise-induced collapse Autosomal recessiveHuman equivalent: developmental and epileptic encephalopathy, 31A
- Glycogen storage disease IIIa Autosomal recessiveHuman equivalent: glycogen storage disease III
Where every number on this page came from.
This page draws on three primary data sources. Carrier frequencies for the Mendelian section come from Donner et al. 2023 (CC-BY-4.0). We grade these data at evidence Limited because the cohort is a direct-to-consumer ascertainment, which biases toward owners who chose to test their dogs. The panel also uses tag-SNP proxies for some variants rather than direct causal-variant assays. Limited is a study-design grade, not a quality grade: the Donner cohort is the largest open canine-genotype dataset in existence and we are grateful for it. We rate the confounding MEDIUM.
Population-genetic dimensions (heterozygosity, intra-breed PCA distance, nearest neighbors, trait-locus frequencies) come from CanVAS (Brundage 2026), harmonized through the Sniff Atlas. The exact release date and verification commit are pinned at the bottom of the page so a researcher can trace a number back to a specific snapshot. The disease-gene-variant graph comes from OMIA (Online Mendelian Inheritance in Animals; Nicholas, Tammen, and the Sydney Informatics Hub at the Sydney School of Veterinary Science, The University of Sydney; retrieved April 2026, DOI 10.25910/2AMR-PV70).
What this page does not yet have. Inheritance modes and per-disease penetrance evidence from Donner 2023 are in the structured data for every variant the panel covers. Mondo, OMIM, Ensembl, and HGNC cross-references live on the gene and disease pages this page links to, rather than being repeated here. What is still absent from this breed page is anything not in the cited panel, and each such gap carries its cause where it appears.
How to cite this page. The computed dimensions on this page are derived from the open Sniff Atlas v1.0.1 (Gehring 2026, doi:10.5281/zenodo.20566358, CC-BY 4.0). Full citation formats including BibTeX, RIS, and CITATION.cff at sniff.world/cite.
Some things about living with a curly coated retriever never make it into a database. Add what you know as a Keeper, in your words →
Lived experience, kept beside the science.We have 8 curly coated retrievers. We do not have yours.
Every curly coated retriever added sharpens the breed's genetic neighborhood. Enrollment is free. The data stays open. The star is permanent.
- Donner J, Freyer J, Davison S, Anderson H, Blades M, Honkanen L, et al. (2023). Genetic prevalence and clinical relevance of canine Mendelian disease variants in over one million dogs. PLOS Genetics 19(2):e1010651. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1010651
- Brundage DM (2026). CanVAS: A Harmonized and Imputed Canine Variant Atlas. bioRxiv. doi:10.64898/2026.04.13.718238
- Nicholas, F.W., Tammen, I., & Sydney Informatics Hub. (2026). Online Mendelian Inheritance in Animals (OMIA) [dataset]. The University of Sydney. https://omia.org. doi:10.25910/2AMR-PV70 (retrieved April 2026).