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If your dog has had any illnesses or ailments, you can tell us about them at any time without having to complete the rest of the questionnaire. Simply login at www.dogslife.ac.uk and click the link underneath the graph.
Diet and the domestication of dogs
What's going on Ear?
GOdogs - Investigating the Genetics of Obesity in Dogs
Amendments to the questionnaire
Diet and the domestication of dogs
The domestication of dogs is believed to have occurred tens of thousands of years ago, although nobody quite knows how or why. Theories about the basis of domestication of dogs have been suggested, such as that it may have occurred because humans captured wolf pups for use in guarding or hunting, or that wolves may have been attracted to living near human settlements because of the greater availability of food. One of the most important aspects of the domestication process was that a number of characteristics were changed in domesticated dogs (compared to wolves), such as a reduction in their aggressiveness and an alteration in their body shape. However, the DNA of wolves and dogs is still very similar.
Scientists have now sequenced DNA samples from wolves and dogs to try and identify the genes which were "selected" in the domestication process. They found that the domestication was associated with the selection of three genes with key roles in starch digestion. Domesticated dogs have more copies of genes which encode enzymes needed to break down starch. These alterations would have been advantageous to dogs scavenging the crop products of early farmers, and probably allowed the early ancestors of modern dogs to live on a diet rich in starch (compared to the carnivorous diet of wolves), as they would have found living near or with humans. Indeed the authors suggest that scavenging in waste dumps near human settlements during the dawn of the agricultural revolution may have driven this genetic selection process. Interestingly, humans also show similar genetic adaptions which were to cope with an increasingly starch rich diet during the agricultural revolution. In spite of these exciting results and scientific theories, these findings don't excuse your dog from raiding your dustbin!
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What's going on Ear?
 Ear disease (also called otitis externa) is usually used to describe an inflammation of the ear and ear canal. It is one of the most commonly reported illnesses in the Dogslife database, and covers a spectrum of different conditions affecting the ear. A number of factors predispose dogs to ear disease, such as the conformation of their ear, excessive moisture in their ear, irritants placed in the ear (for example, cleaning with cotton buds), and other problems with the dog’s general health.
Similarly, there are a wide variety of potential causes of ear disease, such as mites, foreign bodies (e.g. grass seeds), allergic skin disease, tumours, and disorders which affect the general health of the skin (for example, hormonal disorders). Bacterial and yeast infections can perpetuate the initial inflammation of the ear, and if left untreated, long term structural changes in the ear (such as narrowing and scarring of the ear canal) can make it very difficult to resolve.
Otitis externa is diagnosed by veterinarians by direct visualisation of the ear canal using a special instrument called an otoscope. Sometimes the ear will be too painful to permit this visualisation properly without sedating or anaesthetising the dog, and if there is a lot of discharge in the ear it may be necessary to clean it before the ear canal can be fully inspected. Vets may take samples from the ear to look for the nature of the infection(s) present, which will guide the treatments used for the disease.
There is no single treatment for ear disease- the selection of the appropriate treatment really depends on what the underlying cause of the condition is. Treatments vary from simple ear cleaning, to ear drops, oral antibiotics and/or anti-inflammatory drugs or immunosuppressant's, and in rare cases surgery. Occasionally is may be necessary to surgically remove part or all of the diseased ear canal. Amazingly dogs can usually still hear even if their ear canal is removed (albeit not very well), because the inner ear is usually unaffected by the disease and left alone. One thing is for sure, and that is that it will not alter your dog's selective hearing!
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Go Dogs
Labrador Retrievers have a reputation for being greedy and this is reflected by the breed having a higher risk for developing obesity - but why? A new study is trying to answer that question and they would like your help!
The GOdogs is a project being run by Eleanor Raffan, a vet and geneticist working at the University of Cambridge’s Institute of Metabolic Science. Eleanor says: “Canine obesity is emerging as a significant threat to dogs’ health and welfare, with obesity being associated with the development of all manner of diseases from breathing problems to arthritis, and diabetes to cancer.”
It is obvious that obesity develops when animals (and people!) eat more calories than they burn up each day. However, it is not known why some individuals eat to the point of obesity whilst others remain lean. The fact that some dog breeds, such as Labrador Retrievers and Golden Retrievers, are predisposed to obesity makes us believe their genes are to blame.
Research in humans suggests that genes governing appetite are important but there is much to learn and little work has been carried out in dogs. If we can find a genetic reason why some Labrador Retrievers are greedy, it will offer benefits to them, other breeds and human medical science too.
The GOdogs project will study Labrador Retreivers (pictured in the middle) and Golden Retrievers (pictured right); both breeds are predisposed to obesity and both are descended from a single breed, the St John’s water dog (pictured left) (you can see the similarity between them in the images below). St John’s water dogs were used by fishermen to retrieve the nets in the icy waters of Newfoundland, and one may speculate that this could have contributed to the good appetites shown by their descendants, as perhaps eating well helped them stay warm.
GOdogs needs your help! The project is aiming to recruit 100 lean and 100 obese Labrador Retrievers and the same number of Golden Retrievers. Participating is very simple – GOdogs require a saliva sample from dogs which have been ‘condition scored’ (a body condition score is a visual assessment of “thinness” or “fatness”) and weighed by a vet or nurse, and the dog's owners will be asked to fill out a questionnaire detailing their dog's diet and appetite. Because the dogs included in the study must be older than four years old, the Labrador Retrievers participating in Dogslife will be too young (although we hope that in the future Dogslife can replicate and substantiate any findings from GOdogs using the data we continuously collect). However, if you or your friends have other dogs that could take part and would be interested in helping the project, you can find out more about the project and how to get involved by visiting the website (www.GOdogs.org.uk), following GOdogs on Twitter (@GOdogsProject) or emailing Eleanor directly (er311@cam.ac.uk). Thank you in advance!
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Amendments to the questionnaire
As part of our on-going work to improve the questions we ask (and make sure that as much information about dogs’ health is obtained, without making data entry too onerous), Dogslife has made some amendments to the questionnaire.
It has been brought to our attention that some dogs may have a different height measurement at 15 or 18 months of age than they do when they are one year of age (previously we asked members to record their dog’s height up to one year of age, but not afterwards as it was thought that dogs are skeletally mature at one year of age). To make sure we are acquiring dogs’ full adult height (and to find out when dogs really stop growing!), we are now asking members to measure their dog’s height at 15 and 18 months of age.
We have also added the facility to enter more information on dogs’ illnesses. If dogs have had an illness, but not been taken to the vet, there is now the option to detail any further information on why members think their dog may have developed the illness. This is so that any information owners feel is important and relevant to their dog’s illness can now be captured.
Thanks to all our members for their important feedback and helping us with our research in to finding out what keeps dogs healthy!
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Don't forget to come back to Dogslife to update your dog's record www.dogslife.ac.uk
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