Posts by Laura Reeves
524 – Norrbottenspets: “Your GPS in the woods”
Norrbottenspets: “Your GPS in the woods”
Gabi Vannini, breeder and fancier of Norrbottenspets, joins host Laura Reeves for a Love the Breeds episode during Rare Breeds month at Pure Dog Talk. Currently judged in the Miscellaneous group with AKC, this ancient hunting dog is used to tree game for the hunter.
“They’ll be in the hound group,” Vannini said. “They’re hound spitz, so they don’t look like every other dog in the hound group necessarily and in Europe they are in the primitive group. They are tree barking hunting dogs, so they’re gonna be kind of like a coonhound as far as barking at things up the trees and then letting you shoot.
“Back before we had GPS collars and fancy things, they were kind of your GPS in the woods because they would go hunting on their own and find something for you and then bark their fool heads off until you found them.”
Related to the solid red Finnish Spitz, the Norrbottenspets were the parti colored members of the ancient breed. As breeders selected for the solid color dogs, the spotted dogs dwindled away, Vannini noted, “They actually got really close to being extinct before there was kind of a project made to go out and find some of them.”
More popular in their native Sweden and Finland, Vannini estimates there are only about 250 in the US.
“They are really, really nice dogs and honestly a really well-kept secret. I think a little bit of it is the barking stuff. If they’re hunting, they’re working but other than that they’re really not obnoxious or reactive barkers.
“(At 16-18 inches tall), they’re nice little go anywhere dogs. We’ve got a lot of dogs in and out and that’s been one of my big things is having dogs that are very tolerant of that. They’re just really good with other dogs and really sweet with people.
“It’s a double coated breed. Typically, they drop the coat every six months kind of thing, but it’s a nice shorter double coat. We’re actually explicitly not supposed to blow dry them for shows. They shouldn’t be back brushed and fluffed up. The coat should be a tight natural easy coat and that’s something that’s really nice about them and easy to live with.”
Long lived with few genetic health issues, Vannini noted, these hardy little dogs often live well into their teen years. Typical hounds, they require creative training but are not demanding or needing a job.
523 – Special Reproductive Considerations for Rare Breeds
Special Reproductive Considerations for Rare Breeds
Dr. Marty Greer, DVM joins host Laura Reeves to discuss some of the special reproductive considerations for rare breeds. Rare dog breeds offer specific challenges for their breeders including health concerns, limited gene pools, DNA testing mazes and infertility issues.
April is Rare Breeds month here at Pure Dog Talk! Watch for upcoming episodes with deep dives into Norrbottenspets, Chinooks and Nederlandse Kooikerhondje.
“Pick one thing a year that you’re going to try to work through in your breed,” Greer said, quoting from Dr. Ian Dunbar. “Pick what your priorities are. You have to pick. I can’t pick for you. You know your breed. You know your genes. At some point we have to really say this is what I’m going to focus on, this is what I’m going to try to breed for or away from, and try to take those incremental steps. You’re not gonna get it all in one generation.”
How do you eat an elephant…
“I think that’s so important in the rare breed community to emphasize the you eat the elephant one bite at a time,” Reeves added. “It’s really important to recognize that and not get discouraged because you’re trying to swallow a whole elephant. Be committed to that long term process. From a rare breed perspective, that’s one of the things I always emphasize, this is not a fly by night operation. It’s a process, something you’re going to dedicate your entire life to.”
“You work with other people and you’re honest with other people,” Greer emphasized. “So we need to stop hiding things. We need to stop backbiting. We need to stop saying bad things about other people and we need to be really honest with each other and with ourselves so that when you look in the mirror you can say ‘I’m breeding the best dog that I possibly can.’
Full disclosure
“Nobody goes out and deliberately breeds a bad dog but there’s so many aspects to how you have to make these decisions. Without full disclosure you really can’t get there. So we have to be honest with each other. No breeder deliberately produced a dog with a genetic problem, but you’ve got to tell people if you have it because if you double up on it you’re going to have surprises in your litter.
“Longevity, I think, is seriously under-appreciated. I love breeding females that can still have puppies when they’re older. I love breeding old males that still produce sperm. Now that doesn’t mean you can’t freeze semen when he’s young, and you should because then you’ll have access to him, but if he lives to be 16 years old and he was fertile till he was 14, you rock man! That means he didn’t die of orthopedic disease, he didn’t die of bad temperament, he didn’t die because he ran away from home and got hit by a car. He didn’t die from 1,000 things that he could have died from.
Longevity for the win
“Don’t forget about those old guys and their genetics. Go back to the old publications of your breed. Go back to the old pedigrees and take a look and where are those dogs and what are they doing and how long did they live and what was their lifestyle like and what did they die from.”
Greer also strongly recommends purchasing Dr. Jerold Bell, DVM’s book for learning more information on genetic diseases in specific breeds.
522 – EOAD Gene Identified in Rhodesian Ridgebacks
EOAD Gene Identified in Rhodesian Ridgebacks
Adam Boyko, co-founder of Embark, and Rhodesian Ridgeback breeder Denise Flaim join host Laura Reeves to discuss EOAD (Early Onset Adult Deafness) in Ridgebacks and Embark’s discovery of the genetic cause that can identify affected and carrier dogs before the condition develops.
“EOAD is early onset adult deafness,” Flaim said. “It’s a form of deafness that’s not related to color. Many breeds, like dalmatians, the way the white overlays the cochlea impacts deafness. This is just a simple autosomal recessive, inherited the same way brown nose color is. If you have two copies of this recessive gene, if you are a Ridgeback, you become deaf.
“The interesting thing in Ridgebacks is these puppies are born hearing. So if you are a breeder who wants to do your due diligence and BAER test your puppies at 8 weeks, they’ll all hear. What then begins to happen is they start to go progressively deaf. The males quickly, usually by six months are completely deaf and the bitches can take from 12 to 18 plus months.
“(This test) identifies if your dog is a carrier or not. If your dog is a carrier, you simply don’t breed it to another carrier and you’re free and clear. This is a really important point because the tendency among dog breeders, especially those who want to be really, really virtuous and really, really ethical, is to say, ‘oh, I’m going to identify all these carriers and get them out of my breeding program.’ Which is, of course, what you don’t wanna do.
“You certainly don’t want to increase the frequency of this gene in the population, but what you want to do is manage it. The thing is it’s never what you know, it’s always what you don’t know. It’s never what you worry about, it’s always what you don’t worry about. So yes, we’ve got this marker for deafness, but that deafness carrier you’re throwing out of your breeding program may not carry for a really devastating disease for which we don’t have a test. So, like anything, moderation and taking the bigger view is really important.”
Teamwork for the win…
“Project Dog started working with breeders like Denise,” Boyko said, “and recruited a whole bunch of samples and was able to find an associated region. But sequencing of a deaf dog didn’t yield any candidate variants that were causing the mutation. So, you’re sort of stuck in this world, do we want to offer a linkage-based test, which we know probably isn’t going to be 100% accurate, or do we wait until we can find a mutation test. For a while, there was just a linkage test was all that could be offered.
“So, Embark came onto the scene. We, of course, have a large database of dogs, of Ridgebacks and others, and so we were able to recruit more cases, more controls. We were able to verify the association Project Dog found. It’s like ‘yeah, this is definitely on chromosome 18, right here. There had been advances in the genomics. We put some scientists on it …. and sure enough a mutation did find itself. It was in gene EPS 8L2, which was a fantastic gene because it’s also associated with early onset deafness in humans, in recessive forms.”
Hear the REST of the story on today’s episode. Just click play on the bar above.
Adam Boyko
Adam is an associate professor in Biomedical Sciences at the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine, focused on the genomic investigation of dogs. Adam’s research has addressed fundamental questions of dog evolution and history, disease and trait mapping, and advancing genomic tools for canine research. Adam has coauthored over 40 peer-reviewed scientific papers, including research in Nature, Science, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science and is a member of the Board of Trustees for the Morris Animal Foundation. He is a graduate of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and received an MS in Computer Science and a PhD in Biology from Purdue University before his postdoctoral work at Cornell and Stanford.
Denise Flaim
Denise is a professional journalist, author and former Newsday staff writer and columnist who is lucky enough to write about the thing that she loves — dogs!
In 2015, Denise founded Revodana Publishing, which focuses on dog books written by experts and fanciers with a deep and time-forged understanding of their subject matter.
Denise is a member in good standing of the Rhodesian Ridgeback Club of the United States (www.RRCUS.org) and the Western Hound Association of Southern California, and is a board member of the Morris & Essex Kennel Club (www.morrisandessexkennelclub.org).
The long-time Ridgeback breed columnist for the AKC Gazette, she is the past chair and historian of the RRCUS Health & Genetics Committee, and now serves as a member of the Rhodesian Ridgeback World Congress Health Committee (www.worldridgebackhealth.org).
521 – Competing in Subjective Sports: Dog Shows vs the Olympics
Competing in Subjective Sports: Dog Shows vs the Olympics
Amanda Kelly is back with host Laura Reeves to look at dog shows, which as we all know are an incredibly subjective sport, through the eyes and the lens of the subjective sports that we watch in the Olympics. This first of a two-part conversation examines the topics of “substances” and “subjectivity.”
Substances
“I think of substances from a dog show point of view, I think it’s maybe not a whole lot different than from an Olympic point of view,” Amanda said. “Maybe the type of substances differs, but the underlying issue is the same. So we talk a lot in the dog show world about foreign substances and in the sports world in general cheating and drug use always comes up. It doesn’t matter what sport it is, there is always some way to cheat.”
“There’s some shading, right?” Laura asked. “There’s the cheating (that ranges) from ‘I put in an extra nuticle in my dog’s scrotum because he only had one, to I put some white chalk in my dog after it was muddy.’ So there’s a range here.”
“So, it’s always an interesting thing when you kind of take yourself out of something,” Amanda noted. “We take ourselves away from the dog show world and we look at an example in another context and then come back and reapply it, what a different perspective that you can get.
“What I think of when I look at this whole idea of substances and cheating at the Olympics and then I turn from that and I look at the dog world, I think I see maybe from a more Bird’s Eye view the scale and how we’ve normalized things that are on one end of the scale. So, for example, I don’t think any of us would blink at chalking a dog, putting hairspray in its hair, any one of a number of things. A little bit of chalk to cover up that scar or the white bit on its nail or a nose kit to darken in a nose. What about a hair switch in a poodle? So, these are things that I think that we have normalized.
“I think that all of us will, in a conversation, say there are things that are absolutely wrong and lines that we absolutely will not cross. Having that conversation with yourself early on and then sticking with it is important. It can be very difficult. I think what we can do here, in this conversation, is just put it in front of people that everybody is going to have their own line.”
Subjectivity
“One of the things that I read was that in the aftermath of having changed their judging system (for Olympic Figure Skating in 2002), what they observed was that in the elements of scoring that had a subjective element, so a more subjective element say the artistic aspect, there was an observer bias that they noted. They could replicate it across many competitions and it indicated that that observer bias determines about 20% of the mark given by a judge.
“This isn’t my bias that I like such and such a person or I like such and such a dog. It might be a bias like an unconscious bias that I like black poodles more than I like white poodles, or I like this trim more than that trim, or I like a dog presented in a certain way or I prefer this particular head style or those sorts of things.
“When we ask a (dog show) judge to interpret words like ‘slightly’ or ‘moderately,’ where is the clarity as a reference for them? To me it’s a compounding issue because we’re asking them to interpret things that we don’t always equip them to do and on top of that they also have their own personal bias that comes into play.”
Listen in for more of this absolutely fascinating and enlightening conversation. And check back for the “rest of the story” when we talk about sportsmanship and courage.
520 – Talking Toplines with Stephanie Seabrook Hedgepath
Talking Toplines with Stephanie Seabrook Hedgepath
AKC judge and Pembroke Welsh Corgi breeder Stephanie Seabrook Hedgepath is back talking toplines with host Laura Reeves. The topline, specifically, is the entire spinal column, from the tip of the occiput to the tip of the tail.
“A lot of people confuse the term back line with the term topline,” Hedgepath noted. “The back line is basically what you may consider to be the back of the dog, like the withers to the set on of the tail. But the topline starts behind the ears, right at that bump, which is called the occiput, on the skull and then it just goes all the way down. It’s like a suspension bridge. It goes all the way down, all the way back and all the way down the tail. It’s like the links in a chain and it’s not a rigid thing.
Neck
“In mammals there are seven cervical vertebrae. The interesting thing is that one way dogs can differ from dog to dog is in length of neck. When you stop and think about it, they all have the same length of neck, it’s cervical vertebrae, there are seven of them. Even a giraffe has seven cervical vertebrae.
“The difference is the size of the vertebrae. A lot of us look at a dog and you see his profile and you think ‘gosh he’s got a short, stuffy neck.’ No, he’s got the same seven vertebrae as all the other dogs in his class, but because of the positioning of the scapula, if a dog has an upright scapula, it’ll cover that up. So yes, they’ve all got the same length of neck, but it is manifested in different ways because of the rest of the structure of the dog.
Back
“There are many different functions of the spinal column. One of the most important, in the thoracic, is the ribs fit in the spine, go down and join the sternum at the bottom and make a solid piece. So then we have all these thoracic vertebrae and the ribs fit into those vertebrae and that requires a lot of muscling. The only way that front assembly is held onto the dog at all is through muscles and ligaments.
Loin
“The loin area (lumbar vertebrae) is the only part of the dog where the internal organs are not protected by this outer armor of the ribbing. A dog is very vulnerable in that area. The dog with a really long loin is one who’s more prone to injury.
Croup
“One of my favorite connections in the dog, when we’re talking about hold everything together, is what they call that lumbosacral arch. Where the lumbar vertebrae come into the sacrum, which is the bones there in the pelvis. The last three vertebrae before you hit the caudal, in other words the tail, they’re fused. It’s the only three and they’re fused. That’s because a whole lot of energy is going to be pushed all the way through up to the front of the dog when he’s running.”
Listen above to the entire episode for more fabulous insights about our dogs’ structure and how it impacts their performance.
519 – Spinal Cord Injuries and Diseases on Veterinary Voice
Spinal Cord Injuries and Diseases on Veterinary Voice
Dr. Dan Griffiths, DVM, joins his wife Dr. Marty Greer, DVM to discuss trauma and diseases of the spine in this month’s Veterinary Voice.
“As far as spinal injuries or spinal conditions go in dogs,” Griffiths said, “I kind of look at it as there’s about three or four things that can cause it. One is trauma, as you’ve been saying. It can be from hit by car, can come from a dog-on-dog type thing where they run into each other, it can be a running dog falling into a hole. Those are all trauma incidences.
“Dogs with spinal injuries and/or conditions can also come from a congenital situation. The poster child for those is dachshunds, where they have disc compressions that just happen spontaneously, usually not related to trauma but are prone to it due to their genetics. And then we also get into other things that can be in the spinal cord such as tumors of the spinal cord. You can look at degenerative spinal diseases such as degenerative myelopathy, which we’re very familiar with in our corgis and German Shepherds and Chesapeake Bay Retrievers. So there’s a number of things that all fit into spinal cord mishaps. Surprisingly enough there is a condition called FCE which is … actually a blood clot that causes paralysis because of getting caught in the spinal cord. We call it a stroke of the spinal cord.
“Trauma is probably second (most common) on the list as far as spinal cord problems. The number one cause is the achondroplastic breeds like Dachshunds, where they have a congenital propensity to hardened disks and the disks exploding up and expanding up into the spinal cord causing partial paralysis or full paralysis.
Discussing the use of DNA testing for IVDD, Greer offered a note of caution about how we use those results in a breeding program.
“Like all DNA tests, I tend to be a little skeptical of the accuracy the application, how we use that information, but it’s out there. It’s something worth discussing, but be careful what you use it for,” Greer said.
Treatment
“Treatments can go anywhere from strict cage rest,” Griffiths said “and using a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug or a steroid drug to takedown inflammation of the disks to laser therapy. We use a lot of cold laser therapy on those situations. We use some other drugs such as gabapentin to decrease nerve pain. If it’s severe enough where the patient is actually paralyzed or has no use of its rear limbs, surgery is indicated.
“Most general practitioners aren’t doing back surgery, you’re looking at a neurologist to do back surgery or a very competent general surgeon, and also they have the capability of having MRI’s or CAT scans available to diagnose and locate the bad disks. A flat film or a plain X-ray may give you some indication of a collapsed disk space where the vertebrae are closer together than what they should be. But the gold standard for these is MRI’s or CAT scans where you can actually see compression of the spinal cord with the disc material at that time. That’s what the surgeons are requiring now is to identify where the lesion is.
Spinal joints
“Between each vertebra there’s about 8 joints. They’re called facets. That’s where they articulate between the two vertebrae. We do see a lot of damage to those in trauma. We also see arthritis in those due to aging. We see a condition called Spondylosis, where we have calcium bridging of those joints. So, arthritis in the spine is pretty devastating in older patients. They can have arthritis in their spine and do pretty well with it but if they have any type of trauma like falling down the stairs, being rolled by another dog those type of thing, it upsets all that arthritis in there and then you can see some pretty acute pain.
“The whole goal of our crate rest and our anti inflammatories is to have that joint somewhat back to normal. Now most of these joints, if they are injured, our best case scenario is that they stabilize. But now that they’ve been injured, they also lend themselves very easily to arthritis in the coming months and or years after an injury.”
Listen in for more insight from two great veterinarians on degenerative myelopathy, Wobbler’s Disease and much more.
518 – Ante Lucin on How to Help Dog Breeders in War Torn Ukraine
Ante Lucin on How to Help Dog Breeders in War Torn Ukraine
Ante Lucin, host of Talking Dogs With Ante, joins forces with Pure Dog Talk host Laura Reeves to share information supporting the dog people in Ukraine.
“What we have actually tried to do,” Ante said, “is that we have tried to place as much as possible information on our Facebook group. We try to connect directly with the people who are still in Ukraine. Try to find out what is that they need. Ukraine is a huge country, of course. There are still places which are not affected by the war, but there are places which are heavily affected by the war. One of them is obviously the capital city Kyiv. There is a lot of lot of dog people in Kyiv. For your viewers who maybe don’t know it, Ukraine is quite famous in Europe as a very professional organizer of dog shows. They are supposed to have the FCI world dog show in 2023. I mean their country has a lot of experience and a lot of good dog people.
“Unfortunately, at this point, things are quite difficult because in the places which are affected by the war at the moment it’s impossible to move. This is the biggest problem. There are still a lot of dog people, and there are still a lot of people in general, who would like maybe to go away from the war, at least children and women, because obviously for the men it’s not allowed to leave the country. But unfortunately when this all started, even though everybody newspapers, media, they were talking a lot about this, but actually it happened like a surprise to everybody.
“People who really managed to escape in the first 48 hours, they have managed. But the rest of the people are now very limited with the options which they can do. I’m really trying to connect all the people because I think that’s the most important thing at the moment. We are trying to see who needs help, where they need help and what kind of help they need. What has been happening in the last 48 hours, I know a lot of dog people from the neighboring countries like Hungary, Romania, Moldova they were driving till the border with Ukraine and the people from Ukraine where finding some kind of ways you know to send their own dogs.
“The thing is that there are unfortunately now a lot of people who cannot come to the border or who cannot organize the transport for their dogs to the border. I have read a lot of posts today where people are begging to find any kind of transportation, if not for human at least for the dogs.
“I’m going to repeat it 100 million times, people are amazing when it comes to these kind of situations and in any country, in any border that people are being able to send their dogs, we find people who will go there and who will catch the dogs and who will put them in the nice homes and everything. And the same for the people. In my group there are hundreds and hundreds of messages from people from all around the world who say we can take dogs, we can take people, we will help as much as we can.
“I go back to the fact that unfortunately now the people who are there mostly will have to stay there for some more time. What is now (an) emergency is the dog food. This is what I was talking with a lot of breeders in Ukraine I was talking with Helen who is the vice president of the Kennel Club, the dog food is a big problem. So what we are trying to see at the moment is we will try to connect with the Red Cross to see if there is a possibility to send some amounts of dog food with them.
“(We are trying) to connect with with any people who will possibly go till the border and take (dog food) from there, because there are obviously still some men who are driving women children and dogs till the border. So, whenever we find somebody like that, when we manage to organize that, somebody takes the dogs, we try to send back some dog food with them. So, it’s a lot of organization it’s not easy but it’s amazing how much that people want to help.
“The only thing what I can say from the other side of the border, that anyone in Ukraine wants to find a home for their own dogs or for them or for their children, as soon as they arrive to the border to any country Poland, Moldova, Romania, Hungary, there are dog people waiting for them with open hearts. All we can do is to pray that most of them will manage to save their lives and the lives of their children and their dogs.”
Since my conversation with Ante Sunday night, 2/27/2022, FCI has released the following information:
The FCI and its General Committee officially condemn the invasion of Ukraine by the armed forces of the Russian Federation. This conflict and aggression cannot leave anybody indifferent and we all feel concerned, sad and angry.
The invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Army has also put entire families of our dog community in complete distress. This war has placed our breeders and their dogs at great risk, directly threatening their welfare and their lives. Many had to flee, others are surviving in precarious conditions, hiding in shelters where food and basic commodities are becoming very scarce. Yet, in these terrible and trying times, they did not abandon their dogs!
These horrifying circumstances contradict the written priorities and welfare recommendations of the FCI, as well as our policy and aims.
The situation has led the FCI General Committee to hold an extraordinary meeting on Sunday, 27 February 2022. Important decisions were made, within the legal limits of the FCI and its General Committee, based on the FCI Statutes and Standing Orders.
From the 1st March 2022, and until further notice, the Russian Kynological Federation (RKF) will not be allowed to conduct – on the Russian Territory – any event wherein FCI titles or prizes are awarded (CACIB shows, CACIT trials, CACIAG competitions, etc.)
In order to give the opportunity to our Members/Contract Partners and any other persons to express their solidarity and help towards the Ukrainian people, their dog lovers/breeders/keepers, the FCI will open a bank account, specially for this purpose, where all donations are welcome and will be forwarded, with full transparency, to help the Ukrainian Kennel Union (UKU) and the Ukrainian breeders badly affected by the war and in serious need, living either in Ukraine or having fled to neighbouring countries.
The FCI will contribute to this fund in a substantial manner. Further details will be communicated in the following days.
The FCI is a huge community, a united and strong family so let us all stand up and show our solidarity for Ukraine!
517 — Veterinarian: Brachycephalic Does NOT Equal Unhealthy
Veterinary Insight on Why Brachycephalic Does NOT Equal Unhealthy
Dr. Maryanne Mack, DVM, breeder of top winning Boston Terriers, joins host Laura Reeves to discuss recent developments in Europe in regards to legislating the breeding of specific breeds.
“I went to vet school because I love purebred dogs,” Mack said. “I love their role as companions and I wanted to go to vet school really to focus on that role of the dog in our life… Just really wanting to work with people and their pets and breeders as well to just make healthier companions for all of us.
Photo of host Laura Reeves’ champion pug who likes to catch mice in her spare time.
“I think that the fact that a lot of groups have started to associate having a short face with being unhealthy is a really slippery slope that we don’t wanna go down. There’s a couple components of brachycephalic airway syndrome. Those are stenotic nares, or really tight nostrils, an elongated soft palate and a hypoplastic trachea. Those are sort of the three main issues that you see with brachycephalic airway syndrome.
“We don’t have any studies showing those are directly related to the length of the nose.
“The component that we really have to look for, that we know make the biggest difference in these dogs, is the elongated soft palate…
“That’s not related to how long the nose is, that’s related to different genes that are writing for the length of the soft palate. We see long soft palates in dogs with long noses. We see this in Labradors, we see this in mixed breed dogs. So, it’s not only a brachycephalic issue.
“I think it’s really important to note that these things can occur in any breed of dog. They do happen to occur more in brachycephalic dogs, but we don’t have concrete evidence that it’s directly related to the length of the nose.
“Most brachycephalic breeds, with the exception of some of the more mastiff types, these dogs were bred to be companions. That’s their job and they do that very, very, very well. Part of the reason we love them so much is that these brachycephalic facial features elicit almost an infantile like response to people. I think that focusing on the fact that these are companion dogs.
“These dogs are not out flushing birds, they’re not working dogs, they are meant to make people happy, sit on your lap. I absolutely believe that they should be able to do things like go on a little hike …. they should absolutely be able to do that and be able to breathe while they do that. But this is not a dog that’s out herding sheep in the summer. I think keeping that in perspective is really important.
“I think we need to focus, as preservation breeders, on doing a little bit of a better job on selecting breeding stock and producing healthier versions of every breed. But for brachycephalic, specifically, we all know that there are some dogs out there that are not good breathers and that happens.
“I think the hard part as a breeder is to say ‘OK this dog might be beautiful, this dog might have a great top line and this has great movement but he cannot breathe and I should probably put him in a companion home where he won’t be bred.’ That’s a really, really hard decision to make, but I think as we move forward, especially in this new culture and climate, we have to make more of those decisions.
Preservation Breeders are the Solution
“We as preservation breeders are actually the solution. We are the solution to this problem. If we work together to breed healthier dogs and if we work together to breed more of these dogs… I can’t tell you how many of my clients come in with a puppy mill puppy and they say ‘Well Dr. Mack, you told us some great breeders but we didn’t wanna wait for three years, so we ordered this one online and picked it up at the airport and here he is.’
“It breaks my heart because we as preservation breeders, if we had more available dogs that were well bred, people would buy them and they would love them. Vilifying people that breed more than one to two liters a year or whatever number you’ve decided is too many I think is detrimental to all of us.
“I first posted a statement in the beginning of 2020 basically saying I’m a veterinarian, I breed these dogs and it can be done right. These dogs are not inherently unhealthy. I received enormous backlash basically saying this veterinarian shouldn’t be a veterinarian, how can any veterinarian promote the breeding of brachycephalic dogs. It went so far as to contact my place of work, contacting me personally. I had to take my website down. I had to make everything private. I had to tell people who had wanted me to be an advocate for this I can’t do it right now because they’re coming for me.
“In the veterinary community I get backlash like ‘how can you breed these dogs.’ Oftentimes these people, once they meet my dogs and realize they can breathe and they’re healthy and they look great, they realize that we see a disproportionate number of unhealthy dogs just by the nature being veterinarians.
“I’ve actually done a little self-study where a dog comes to see me and I always find out where the dog came from. Then I make a note what issues does this dog have. About 95% of brachycephalic dogs I see that are bad breathers are from a pet store, a puppy mill or rescue. That is just the fact that I’ve gotten over six years of being a veterinarian, that these dogs are often the ones that they ordered online.”
Listen to this fabulous interview with Bulldog specialist Jay Serion to learn more about the Bulldog Club of America’s work on breeding healthy dogs. And this outstanding Love the Breeds episode with more information about Pugs from three nationally renowned breeders.
516 — Singleton Puppies: Whelping and Raising Strategies
Singleton Puppies: Whelping and Raising Strategies
For Valentine’s Day, Susan Patterson, moderator of the fabulous Canine, Fertility, Reproduction and Neonatal Issues Facebook group (invite required) and host Laura Reeves team up to talk about the dreaded Singleton… puppy that is. Susan and Laura discuss proper progesterone timing to help avoid a singleton litter in the first place, planning and managing a c-section if needed.
One is the Lonliest Number…
Singleton puppies present unique challenges for whelping and raising successfully. In large breed dogs, frequently the single puppy in utero does not release sufficient hormones to trigger the dam to start labor.
“This is again where progesterone timing, knowing your ovulation date, is important,” Susan said. “What most people fail to account for is placentas have an expiration date. You can’t go past that date or you will lose your puppy, there’s just no ifs, ands, or buts, and possibly your bitch. So knowing when the bitch is due is critical.
“Once you know when she’s due, you can be watching for labor to commence. I would strongly suggest you plan a C-section as a back-up, knowing you’re probably going to use it, but plan it as a backup. Give your bitch the chance to whelp naturally and then pull the trigger.
“The other thing, especially a day before you think you’re gonna have to pull the trigger, you’re gonna wanna be monitoring heartbeats. You don’t want your Singleton puppy to go into distress. If (the heartbeat) drops below 180 or 170 (bpm) I start getting really concerned.”
Management is job #1
Without the interaction of littermates, the singleton can overeat, under-exercise and may well need additional guidance to understand proper dog interactions.
Susan and Laura discuss monitoring the bitch for mastitis and the puppy to avoid gaining too much weight too quickly.
“The first thing I would do, is the minute she comes out of anesthesia is I would put her on sunflower lecithin,” Susan noted. “What the sunflower lecithin does, is it makes the milk less sticky, thins it down slightly, so that it passes through the memory glands much easier … it’s basically one teaspoon of sunflower lecithin for every 20 pounds of dog.
“A swimmer puppy is, it’s not just a condition of obesity, but that is definitely a contributing factor. So what you wanna do is you wanna have in your whelping box lots of hills and valleys. You wanna use pool noodles, rolled up bathroom rugs, anything to make that puppy work for dinner.”
Socializing singletons in other litters if possible and absolutely with safe adult dogs enables them to learn the critical life skill of appropriate interaction with other dogs as well as people.
Tune in for more of this great conversation.
514 – Chesapeake Bay Retrievers: An American Success Story
Chesapeake Bay Retrievers: An American Success Story
Betsy Horn Humer has spent a lifetime with Chesapeake Bay Retrievers. Her parents acquired their first dog in 1947 and Betsy has been deeply involved in the breed since childhood. A conformation and obedience/rally judge, Betsy brings tremendous depth and width of experience to her understanding of the sport.
“They’re very different from the other retrievers,” Betsy said. “They’re not like Goldens and Labs who love everybody and wanna be your friend. They’re much more reserved. They’re much more like some of the working breeds — German Shepherds and Dobermans, Rottweilers.
“They have a real work ethic and they’re serious. They’re much more serious than your average Golden and Labrador. They’re not the dog for everyone, especially a first dog.
“They’re very protective and that’s really because of their heritage and why they were originally developed.
“They were originally developed on Chesapeake Bay, of course. The story is that there was a shipwreck. There were a couple of dogs on the ship and they swam to the shores. One was named Sailor and one was named Canton. They were not Chesapeakes but they were more like the Saint John’s dog. The Labrador also goes back to that particular breed.
“They were bred with a couple of the other local hunting dogs and some of the background includes setters and bloodhounds and other retrievers. It’s an interesting mix and it does explain why we do have different types of coats and different kinds of hound markings because of the genetics that’s actually behind the breed.
2021 National Specialty show- Award of Merit. GCHB Eastern Waters’ Pink Power O’MesaRidge, BN RI. Owners/ Breeders – Betsy Horn Humer & Rupert J. Humer
“The breed was really developed and records were kept by the wealthy land owners who owned property on the Chesapeake Bay and had huge hunting clubs. It was the local marketers, the duck hunters and the water fowlers that used them for hunting back in the late 1800s.
“There were no limits on how many ducks you could take and these hunters would take several hundred a day. The Chesapeake would just go out in the Bay and retrieve them all, that was his job. When he wasn’t actually swimming and retrieving, his job was to guard the pile of ducks so that nobody else would take them. These ducks were sold to expensive restaurants in Baltimore. They were considered a real treat.
“Winters were much colder then. There was ice to be broken. The Chesapeake Bay is huge. I mean you’re not talking just like a little lake it is huge. You get tremendous amounts of tides, wind. It can be a very unpleasant place during hunting season. But these hunters, that was how they made their living and that was what they did.
“(Chesapeakes) are very strong. They’re much stronger than they look. They’ve got very strong bone. Their coat was developed in order to keep them warm. They have what’s referred to as a double coat. There’s a very soft undercoat and it’s interesting because it’s all one hair. The tops of the hair are very coarse and wiry but as you get closer to the skin, the coat is actually very soft and the outside harshness keeps the inside, the other part of it, dry.”
Be sure to listen in to this wide ranging conversation for more insights on the Chesapeake, judging in the show ring and the obedience ring, dog breeding and more.