Spaying

The risk of malignant mammary tumors in dogs spayed prior to their first heat is 0.05%.
It is 8% for dog spayed after one heat...
and 26% in dogs spayed after their second heat.
Source: http://www.peteducation.com/article.cfm ... icleid=926

Kristine, when you have time could you post the info/source about increased risk of bone cancer and other cancers so I can take it to my vet? Thanks! It's always best to know what we're up against..

Urinary incontinence
Boxer, Doberman Pinscher, Giant Schnauzer, Irish Setter, Old English Sheepdog, Rottweiler, Springer Spaniel, Weimeraner

Oh Oh,
I was always old after their last puppy shot.
That's when I got Maisey and Kuzco done.
I hate it when you feel like you did the right then find out maybe not...
Oiy!!!

There is a new one coming out this year (or at least that is the goal - I'm on that sub-committee). If all the technical bugs get worked out, the aim is that it will be open to all OES owners. Unless there are any dramatic unanticipated problems, it is supposed to be an online survey and will be announced on this forum, fear not

It would be easy for Jaci to second guess herself on the hypothyroidism issue. But what if (we don't know this, but it is conceivable) it turns out that s/n merely hastens the onset of idiopathic hypothyroidism in an already predisposed dog?

That would be great if this registry was open to all OESs and all owners. Over the next several years it seems some interesting data could be gathered that might eventually help the breed as a whole.

Just to clarify, though I think we're talking about the same thing: OESCA's Open Health Registry is already open to all OES, though it's generally only useful for OES who have some kind of known pedigree from some breed registry (there are OES in there from all over the world). Which makes sense - it tracks inherited diseases.

There are at least a couple of non-registered dogs in there - they came, as it happens, from AKC registered parents, so their pedigree is known and verifiable - though they were never registered individually. In fact, they are in there because they were CA afflicted.

There are also some BYB OES in there, even the occasional rescue OES who came in with a pedigree (so more BYBs as it happens). As long as they have a verifiable pedigree of some sort and someone took the time to share the pedigree with the people who contributed to or currently maintain the database.

http://www.oescahealthregistry.org/

The health survey on the other hand does nothing to contribute to the registry. (Except perhaps in that the results may one day prompt the club to include diseases not previously considered or something like that.) It cannot, in fact - it is set up to be annonymous. I.e. we don't need to know who among your girls are hypothyroid - what's important is how many of them are. And how many of mine and how many of....everybody's

What you're looking for is the aggregate for the population (which, for this disease, we do already have some indication of from labs like MSU where they track their submissions data), and from there, if you're careful, you may be able to catch other trends like average age of diagnosis, is there a gender predilection, a greater or lesser tendancy for this particular disease among intact dogs etc etc etc.

For lots and lots of different diseases and conditions, and some temperament issues as well. And then you track trends. Are we seeing an increase in something? A decrease in something else? Are we able to determine why, or...?

You're so into the health issues, I know you get what I'm getting at.

Unlike the Open Registry and the other health registries that OES participate in (OFA, CHIC) - and these aren't just for "show lines" btw; anyone who has an OES and submits data to these registries is included - the purpose of the health survey is not to tell us which dogs have what disease, rather, it is to look at the breed as a whole over a set period of time, and then compare that data to the results from the previous survey to help track trends. Based on the results, OESCA may also make decisions on how to spend our research dollars (OESCA does fundraising for health and research), what studies to pursue and support and so on.

It has never been about segregating OESCA member owned and bred OES from the rest and spending OESCA's research $$$s to their benefit only. Think about it. All OES go back to the same foundation dogs. We have the diseases we have in the breed (there are BYB dogs who go back to known CA carriers, make no mistake), and research into these various diseases has the potential to benefit all OES, whether they are part of a health survey or not. Nonetheless, I think there are some very interesting things to be learned by reaching out to the broader OES ownership base, if we're able to do so and maintain the integrity of the data (you need a control group of some sort for starters, ways to track response rates, etc). Fingers crossed.

And, as an aside, the forum contributed in its own way to the survey. As I was reading through I'd come across issues I'd never heard of occuring in OES and I'd go back to the person I was working directly with and ask her (OES breeder and a vet) and there were times even she would say: "nope, never heard of that, but let's include it and see if it's an issue in the breed we just aren't aware of". So, thanks guys!



A few years back I had wondered if all this hypothyroidism might have had something to do with the annual vaccination ritual. Maybe 3 years ago we went with annual titers instead. But two of the girls were not over-vaccinated so it seems it might exclude this as a cause for them.

To my way of thinking, you're doing the right thing, either way. Some would say you're paying the price for the parents and grandparents etc being overvaccinated. There may be some truth to that, but that does nothing to explain the fact that some breeds have much higher predispositions for certain things than others, and hypothyroidism is a major one in our breed, and probably under-diagnosed at that.

I.e. you can't make it go away by feeding raw (I'm not opposed, mind you) or not vaccinating and so on. Only careful breeding can do that - or at least decrease the frequency in the breed. But you can try to less the likelihood of triggering various immune-mediated issues in your own dogs by knowing the predispositions in the breed and by taking certain kinds of precautions.

We do a full blood panel including thyroid screen on each dog in March of every year... we don't simply wait for symptoms to appear but take more of a proactive approach. Maybe this is one reason for the high incidence of low thyroid too. Just no easy or definitive answers.

I specifically test mine just for the sake of testing them as well. And you're exactly right: many times the symptoms are so diffuse that if you don't test, you don't know. I don't think most people test routinely. Hopefully most breeders do. But most vets probably wouldn't even recommend it unless they were somehow familar with the breed.

I don't know of any long term effects of low thyroid if it's treated and proper levels are maintained. If spay/neuter is said to increase the risk of one autoimmune condition- low thyroid- I would be interested in learning if it also had anything to do with environmental allergies which are another autoimmune condition. It would also be interesting to see the demographics of where these dogs currently are and where they originated from... whether spayed/neutered dogs had any higher incidence of allergies.

Unfortunately I don't think this particular health survey has the capacity to be that specific. That's more of a research issue - very interesting questions, though.

We were told that if allergies are in a breeding line it's just about impossible to breed them out. Any opinion/documentation on this?

Told by...?

I suspect, that if we eliminated from the breeding pool every OES who had an ancestor somewhere in their pedigree (we talk about lines, but really we cross them all the time - the populations are not that neatly distinct) who had some kind of allergy, I think the breed would be pretty much extinct in no time at all. As would most. And mixes too, if we actually knew what genetic problems lurked there. I presume that allergies, providing they have an inherited component (and I strongly believe they do) are not immune to the general laws of genetics and that by selecting against allergies (and other immune mediated issues) you will over time see a decrease of these problems in that population.

Wouldn't that make sense?

Kristine

Doesn't that assume there is no environmental factors at work? I would assume that between over-immunization, poor air and water quality and bad feeding habits many more dogs exhibit allergic tendancies than would in a perfect world. Not all of it can be genetic. I mean studies with people have theorized that kids that aren't sick when they are young grow into allergic and asthmatic adults - that's not genetic.

I'm sorry, Kerry. Did I not mention that you're not permitted to come up with such hard-hitting questions this late in the afternoon when my caffeine levels have dropped?

The difficulties in determining the degree of inheritability. Hm.

Without a nice clean survey, think back to the medical section here on the forum and try to do a rough mental estimate of what % of questions involve: my dog doesn't tolerate his food, he itches himself to bits, every time I twitch he gets diarrhea, he doesn't tolerate this, he doesn't tolerate that - that's even some of the raw fed dogs who can't seem to hold their stool together either if you know what I mean...

You get the picture.

Mean age of these posts? Pretty young, right? If it was purely/mainly environmental, all breeds should have roughly the same rate of these problems as we do. But they don't. Some are as bad if not worse; cockers for instance. Oh, but wait - what do they have in common with our breed? High rates of immune mediated issues ...back to square one.

Anyway, I've seen it run in OES families. I don't doubt the genetic component. Is that 100% the problem? Nope. But from what I've seen in our breed there's no getting around that a higher than average predisposition is a part of it.

anyway I also wanted to ask about blood work I was told yesterday that Michigan is tracking the thyroid issues (in Newfies). Do they actually track as part of the thyroid panel or is that a seperate registry? Because if they track and I paid an additional $100 over the Michigan price to a NYC lab that doesn't track I am having a longgggg talk with my vet.

I don't know about the NY lab - Cornell? - but Michigan tracks their own stats by breed, yes:

http://www.offa.org/msustats.html

I've never heard that they have their own registry (dog's names and status)?

Looks like OES rank 3rd among breeds with the highest rate of autoimmune thyroiditis at a rate of a little over 1 in 5 OES of the less than 1,000 samples submitted. Newfies were ranked 94th with a 4% rate and over twice as many submissions.

Are Newfs a rather popular breed? If not, that's pretty darn... embarrassing on our part

Are you saying you paid $100 more than what it would have cost to send it to MSU....? What was the justification?

Kristine

Also we have two intact boys next door, large mixed heinz 57 dogs, and only a 4ft fence that side (which we will be replacing soon) so in her case I think we did make the right decision.

Now this NYC lab is cutting edge. I don't know what lab it was or why I had to pay $100 more ($170 and MSU was $70 last month). Hopefully I can ask those questions when I get the results and we can determine what we will do going forward.

Also we have two intact boys next door, large mixed heinz 57 dogs, and only a 4ft fence that side (which we will be replacing soon) so in her case I think we did make the right decision.