Toy Poodle
The most carried tested variant is Chondrodystrophy and Intervertebral Disc Disease Risk, in 82% of 94 Toy Poodles tested (Donner 2023), then Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (6.3%) and Osteochondrodysplasia (2.1%). 26 dogs stand behind the atlas figures here, so treat this page as an early sketch.
What genetic diseases do Toy Poodles carry?
From a panel of 250 Mendelian-disease variants screened in 1,054,293 dogs (Donner et al. 2023), Toy Poodles carry 5 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.
FGF4what this gene does
FGF4 influences leg length by affecting bone growth, leading to shorter legs in certain breeds.
For your dog: If your dog is from a breed known to carry this gene, it's worth discussing spinal health with your vet, but being a carrier doesn’t guarantee problems.
TNXBwhat this gene does
TNXB is a gene that helps produce a protein important for connective tissue, which supports skin, joints, and other structures in the body.
For your dog: If your dog is from a breed known to carry TNXB variants, it's worth discussing with your vet, especially if you notice unusual joint flexibility or skin issues.
SLC13A1what this gene does
SLC13A1 is a gene that helps transport important molecules involved in bone and cartilage health. It plays a role in maintaining the structure and function of these tissues.
For your dog: If your dog is one of the breeds known to carry this gene variant, it’s worth discussing with your vet to understand what it means for their bone health and care.
PRCDwhat this gene does
PRCD is a gene involved in the health of a dog's retina, the part of the eye that detects light and helps with vision.
For your dog: If your dog belongs to a breed known to carry PRCD changes, it's worth discussing eye health and potential genetic testing with your vet.
SOD1what this gene does
SOD1 is a gene that helps protect cells from damage caused by harmful molecules called free radicals.
For your dog: If your dog is a carrier of SOD1 variants, it's worth discussing with your vet, but remember carrier status doesn't mean your dog will get the disease.
What these results mean for a Toy Poodle
81.9% of Toy Poodles in the Donner 2023 cohort carried it (n=94).
- Two extra copies of a growth gene, FGF4, shape dog legs and spines. The one on chromosome 12 is the one tied to disc disease; the one on chromosome 18 shortens legs.
OMIA 000157-9615
“Two FGF4 retrogenes (FGF4L1 on chromosome 18 and FGF4L2 on chromosome 12) have been identified to cause dwarfism across many dog breeds.” OMIA 000157-9615
“Brown et al. (2017) reported that an FGF4 retrogene insertion in chromosome CFA12” OMIA 000157-9615
- Carrying it raises risk. It does not say which dog will have a disc problem. In Dachshunds researchers found the test is not a valid risk indicator on its own.
OMIA 000157-9615
“the FGF4 retrogene insertion on CFA12 is not a valid risk indicator on its own” OMIA 000157-9615
What to do
Ask your veterinarian what a carrier result changes for your dog. What lowers risk in a carrier is not established in the sources this page draws on.
No test, or a mix
Without a test nobody can say whether a dog carries it. Leg length alone does not tell you: the disc-disease copy and the short-leg copy are different insertions.
What Toy Poodles tend toward
Tendencies from owner surveys of purebred Toy Poodles — a leaning across the breed, not a prediction for any one dog. A bar’s strength shows how much of that behavior breed actually explains: for most it’s faint, because the rest is your dog, their training, and the life you give them.
Identified as Toy Poodle (VBO:0201061) in the Vertebrate Breed Ontology (Mullen et al. 2025, CC-BY 4.0) · registry IDs FCI 172 · iDog 270 · VeNom 14595.
For researchers Population genetics, disease models and every recorded condition Open the research detail for the Toy Poodle
In the atlas, the Toy Poodle clusters consistently as Toy Poodle (100% of the 26 dogs here). Genetic diversity is high (mean heterozygosity 0.373), reflecting either a mixed-breed cluster or breeds with broad genetic backgrounds.
Ranks 101 of 107 on the bottleneck severity scale, among the most genetically diverse breeds in the atlas. Mean heterozygosity is 0.373, notably high, indicates broad genetic background. Low breed predictability score (0.25), individual dogs of this breed vary widely in genetics, suggesting active substructure or sub-population diversity. Only 26 dogs of this breed in the atlas, modestly sampled.
Median lifespan is 15.0 years, about 1.5 years longer than a typical dog of 4.0 kg, an unusually positive longevity for this size.
What the atlas genotypes say about Toy Poodle
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.
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.
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.
Toy Poodles are a natural model for human disease
Because the same genes cause the same conditions across species, the inherited conditions documented in Toy Poodles 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.
- amyotrophic lateral sclerosis type 1, modeled by the breed's Degenerative myelopathy via SOD1, the same underlying biology.
- Alexander disease, modeled by the breed's Alexander disease , the same underlying biology.
- Sandhoff disease, modeled by the breed's Gangliosidosis, GM2, type II (Sandhoff or variant 0) , the same underlying biology.
- mucopolysaccharidosis type 6, modeled by the breed's Mucopolysaccharidosis VI , the same underlying biology.
- retinitis pigmentosa 36, modeled by the breed's Progressive rod-cone degeneration, PRCD-related , the same underlying biology.
- OMIM:603245, modeled by the breed's Spinal dysraphism , the same underlying biology.
Every condition recorded in the Toy Poodle
Beyond the testable carriers above, OMIA's literature catalogue records 7 genetic conditions in the Toy Poodle, 6 of which have a known human equivalent. This is the documented landscape across all Toy Poodles ever studied, not a prediction for any one dog.
- Degenerative myelopathy Autosomal recessiveHuman equivalent: amyotrophic lateral sclerosis type 1
- Alexander disease Autosomal dominantHuman equivalent: Alexander disease
- Gangliosidosis, GM2, type II (Sandhoff or variant 0) Autosomal recessiveHuman equivalent: Sandhoff disease
- Mucopolysaccharidosis VI Autosomal recessiveHuman equivalent: mucopolysaccharidosis type 6
- Progressive rod-cone degeneration, PRCD-related Autosomal recessiveHuman equivalent: retinitis pigmentosa 36
- Spinal dysraphism Autosomal recessiveHuman equivalent: OMIM:603245
- Intervertebral disc disease Autosomal dominant
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 toy poodle never make it into a database. Add what you know as a Keeper, in your words →
Lived experience, kept beside the science.We have 26 toy poodles. We do not have yours.
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- 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).