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Canine health testing: the latest results
Canine Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
Urinary Calculi
PhD Success for Dogslife
Canine health testing: the latest results
Recently released statistics from the Canine Health Schemes have shown that health testing dogs has helped improve the health of UK dog breeds. Health testing involves screening dogs for hereditary conditions before breeding them, helping breeders to make informed and responsible decisions before mating, and therefore reducing the risk of their puppies having the diseases which were screened for.
The Hip and Elbow Schemes (run by the British Veterinary Association and the Kennel Club) have noticed a reduction in how many cases of diseases (and how severe the cases have been) from looking at their latest data. Analysis of the Elbow Dysplasia Scheme has found that overall more dogs have been graded with normal elbows (as opposed to affected elbows at different grades) since annual data began being collected in 1998. Over the last fifteen years, the Hip Dysplasia Scheme has also recorded improvements in the average hip scores of twenty out of the twenty-one most commonly scored dog breeds.
The statistics suggest that health testing and responsible breeding is making a difference to the health of dogs. As testing is not mandatory, it is impossible to accurately calculate how much of the improvement is due to improvements in selective breeding alone. However, the fact that both conditions are at least partly inherited in dogs through the genes they get from their parents, suggests that they are likely to be having a positive affect on reducing the prevalence of these diseases. It is well recognised that the complex genetic basis to both conditions means that good hip and elbow scores do not guarantee that the subsequent litters will be free of them, but they do appear to reduce the likelihood of puppies developing these diseases, as well as improving the health of breeds as a whole.
If you would like to find out more about health testing, please visit http://www.bva.co.uk/Canine-Health-Schemes/.
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Canine Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
Between 5 and 10% of military working dogs deployed by the US in 2014 showed signs of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). PTSD is a mental health condition which is set off by stressful and traumatic experiences. PTSD is usually associated with humans, but it is now recognised in dogs.
US military working dogs (of which there are around 1,700 in service) are used to detect arms and explosives, make sure certain areas are safe and passable, and track enemy fighters. The dogs’ time in service can result in them becoming mentally traumatised by events they have experienced, in the same way it can for humans that have been in combat situations.
Canine PTSD can include some of the following signs: dogs becoming scared, nervous, clingy, timid, unable to sleep, aggressive, and unable to carry out their usual tasks. Some dogs also react to things that remind them of what has traumatised them, for example, loud noises, flashing lights, and certain people (e.g. in a particular uniform).
Cases of canine PTSD have been seen for many years, but the US military officially recognised this condition in January 2010. Other working dogs such as police dogs, which have also experienced a traumatic event, can suffer from canine PTSD too.
In the short term, treatment for canine PTSD can include dogs being prescribed antianxiety medication, and antidepressants in more long-term cases. They may also be re-trained so that they become de-sensitised to situations. Each case is different and dogs take varying lengths of time to recover, although it has been suggested that they can never be fully cured of PTSD (since a memory cannot be erased) even if their behaviour improves.
Military working dogs that have suffered from PTSD and are not able to go back into combat, may be redeployed to a non-combat role, or adopted. For more information on US military working dogs which have suffered from canine PTSD, please click here.
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Urinary Calculi
Urinary calculi is the scientific name given to solid deposits of minerals and/or salts which sometimes form in the urinary tract, or to use their less technical nomenclature, “stones”. Urinary calculi can form anywhere in the urinary tract, from the kidneys all the way down to the urethra. There are many different types of calculi, which are differentiated by their composition, and which in turn can affect their size and shape, and thus the clinical problem that they can cause.
Urinary calculi typically form when there is an imbalance in the salts and/or minerals which are being excreted in the urinary tract (which can be down to genetic factors, an imbalanced diet or a combination of the two). Urinary tract infections and abnormalities in the morphology of the urinary tract can also predispose to urinary calculi forming, and urinary calculi themselves can in turn predispose dogs to developing urinary tract infections.
Whether the urinary calculi cause any problems in the affected dog depends on multiple factors, such as their location, size, number, shape and the presences or absence of infection. Urinary calculi which are in the kidneys or bladder may cause little or no clinical signs at all, but affected dogs may be predisposed to recurrent urinary tract infections. Such dogs may have recurrent fevers, blood in their urine, or frequent and painful episodes trying to urinate. Urinary calculi which lodge in and obstruct the ureters or urethra can be life threatening as they will obstruct the outflow of urine, which in turn cause the affected dog to become unwell very quickly as a result. Affected dogs may show systemic signs such as vomiting, collapse, and straining to urinate with the inability to produce normal volumes of urine.
The treatment of urinary calculi depends on their composition, where they are located, and whether they are causing obstruction to the flow of urine and/or predisposing to bacterial infections. Some calculi can be dissolved by simply changing the dog’s diet to one which contains a different balance of minerals and salts, or by using an ultrasound machine to break them up into small pieces in situ so that they can pass out of the urinary tract. If the urinary calculi are obstructing the flow of urine they will require urgent removal; this can be achieved with open surgery or with a small camera (a cystoscope) with a laser attachment to break up the calculus. In the long term, prevention is achieved by avoiding the factor(s) which predisposed the calculus to forming in the first place. Urinary calculi are quite common in dogs, although we have had only a few reports of them to the Dogslife project, which is good news for Labrador Retrievers!
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PhD Success for Dogslife
A huge congratulations to Carys Pugh, formerly a student at The Roslin Institute for completing her PhD on the Dogslife project. Carys successfully defended her thesis, entitled “Dogslife, an epidemiological study of canine health”, in December and so is being awarded a Doctorate in Philosophy from The University of Edinburgh for her work.
Many of you have met or spoken to Carys during the course of her studies, and indeed the Newsletter has been underpinned by many of Carys’s findings. Over the last four years Carys has published a number of important scientific manuscripts documenting different aspects of the project. For example, Carys reported how the Dogslife study was set up, and she described how she confirmed that the data collected by the project was valid and true. Carys has also reported how Labrador Retrievers in the United Kingdom are being looked after and identified important risk factors which contribute to them gaining weight once they are mature, and she reviewed the importance of studies like Dogslife in finding out more about canine health. Such is the interest in Carys’s work (and the Dogslife project) that each of her research papers have been read thousands of times and many of her findings have also been reported in the national press. Indeed there are more scientific manuscripts to come in the near future from Carys’s work, including the results of her studies of limber tail and gastrointestinal disease.
On behalf of all of the Dogslife Team we would like to thank Carys for all the hard work she has put into the project over the last four years; she has been pivotal to making the Dogslife project a success. Finally on behalf of Carys we would like to thank all the dog owners who have taken part in Dogslife for providing the information which she has analysed; she literally could not have done it without you.
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