Animal Rights versus Animal Welfare: The BIG Difference!

I belong to an online canine genetics discussion group whose purpose is to acquaint dog breeders with the dangers of inbreeding and the overuse of popular sires (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Canine-Genetics). Many of the list members hail from the UK and Continental Europe, where in a number of countries, exhibitors can no longer show cropped and docked dogs; and where in one country, the UK, the BOB winners in several breeds were disqualified from Group competition at Crufts, THE prestigious championship show of the year, because they were deemed in a Kennel Club mandated inspection by a GP vet to have visible “health” issues such as ectropion.     

After the Crufts disqualifications took place there was a lot of discussion on the genetics list about breeds that have become so “extreme” that their exaggerated features have literally become health defects: e.g., super short noses in bulldogs and pugs that result in breathing difficulties; excessive skin folds in Shar-pei that contribute to chronic skin problems; grossly over-angulated rears in GSD’s, etc. A number of posters applauded the efforts of the UK KC to “regulate” UK breeders and breed standards, in order to eliminate what those list members considered harmful and cruel exaggerations.

Ironically, at the same time on the same list, other list members were urging us to post comments on the USDA (US Department of Agriculture) website in opposition to a proposed USDA/APHIS (Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service) rule whose unintended consequences would be to literally criminalize many small hobby and show breeders, despite that it was supposedly aimed at regulating large-scale, commercial “internet” breeders.  

  

The juxtaposition of these two issues on the list – both of which centered around regulating breeders in the name of animal welfare – made me wonder if animal welfare advocates in other countries realized just how dangerous to our way of life the animal rights movement was here in the United States. Surely no one is in favor of creating dogs whose extreme features cause them physical distress; and perhaps AR activists in other countries are only concerned with animal cruelty (?); but in the US, they truly want to stop all breeding and ownership of domestic animals, which they consider tantamount to human slavery. That's why I get my back up when well-meaning people who want to eliminate extreme breed characteristics suggest that we identify and inspect certain breeds at shows to prevent any deviation from a norm established by “breed experts” and vets; and police breeders to make sure they're adhering to regulations established by some central authority – the UK Kennel Club, the AKC, the FCI, the USDA.

In this blog, two noted US hobby breeders – Sharyn Hutchens of Timbreblue Whippets in Virginia and Judy Voran of Strawberry Boxers in Arizona, explain how the AR movement works to achieve its aims in the US and Canada:

The Effect of the USDA/APHIS Proposal on Small Hobby & Show Breeders

Sharyn Hutchens, Timbreblue Whippets, Virginia

This APHIS proposal would apply to anyone who owns or co-owns four (4) intact bitches, regardless of age, and requires that the buyer personally go to the “premises” where the puppy was whelped and raised to make the purchase.

For every "large internet breeder" who will fall under this rule, the sacrifice will be dozens if not hundreds of hobby breeders who are working very hard to keep our breeds healthy. Furthermore, it will limit people's choices to 1) common breeds they can find locally and breeders they can visit personally; or 2) large USDA inspected breeders who will be able to ship the less common breeds.

We don't ship our puppies, but I have occasionally met someone halfway -- usually someone who has bought a puppy from us before. The owners from New York, Texas, Nevada, Wisconsin, and Florida who have flown in to buy puppies from us and take them home in carriers (several of them more than once) would now have to fly in, rent a car and drive 50 miles to our home – our town does not have an airport – and possibly spend an overnight before being able to get a flight back out. Or they could buy a whippet from a pet store, I suppose. This would be better, how? The elderly couple from Maryland who have bought two adult whippets from us would not have them today – they are not able to drive the six hours to our home, so I took the dogs to them.

My second breed is the Cirneco dell’ Etna, a rare sighthound. There are only about 800 of them, I am told, in the country. After much research, I recently bought my first one from a breeder who met me at a show. The dog is simply delightful and the breeder and I have become close friends. But if these regulations had been in place, I wouldn't own this dog. First, the woman I bought her from is the co-breeder. The puppies were whelped and raised to eight weeks at the home of the other co-breeder. So the woman who sold me the puppy was technically selling me a puppy that was not "born and raised on her premises." And of course, she could certainly not have turned over the puppy to me at a dog show. The whole experience of buying this puppy and learning to love a new breed has been the highlight of my year. But it would be totally illegal if the regulations go into effect. How would this have been better for anyone at all? Certainly it would not have been better for me or my puppy.

Before my husband and I will give up our privacy and allow federal inspectors into our home, we will quit breeding. It has been my life for 30 years or more and I'm proud to say we have been strong advocates of genetic diversity for years. But my freedom and privacy are worth more to me even than dog breeding. As another list member pointed out, we do not allow the federal government to come into our homes to inspect how our children are raised – why on earth would we allow it simply because we breed a litter of dogs every now and then? And before you say it, no, of course we have nothing to hide. People come to our home frequently to meet our dogs, learn about whippets, and occasionally to buy puppies. The point is that we are Americans, and this country is based on freedom. How easily some of us would give that away!

There will always be bad breeders, just as there will always be child abusers, murderers, and rapists. We live in an imperfect world. But bad breeders are the responsibility of animal control, just as abusers, murderers and rapists are the responsibility of the police. We do not allow the government to "inspect" innocent people just in case something bad might be going on.

What bothers me most about the people who believe these new regulations are a good idea is that they apparently believe trading our constitutional rights for some minimal reduction in bad pet breeding practices is okay. And the ironic part is that in the end, it is the animals who will suffer. Typical animal rights.

And the other irony in this is that there have been NO studies to discover whether "sight unseen internet sales" are a serious problem, much less a large enough problem to justify this kind of invasion of privacy. NONE. The USDA has some anecdotal evidence provided by HSUS. Period. And we make regulations for thousands of breeders based on that?

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On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 10:44 AM, Judy Voran posted the following to the Showboxer-L email list:

I am posting this link to a court ruling in California involving the Humane Society of the United States because I think that members of this list [Cangen] whose experiences are with their residence in other countries do not understand the threat to animal ownership in the United States.  The threat is real and it is serious.  Well-funded organizations here in the US are focused on outlawing any kind of animal ownership or sport.

http://www.sbsun.com/sports/ci_21169780/tables-turned-humane-society?source=rss

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Tables turned on Humane Society

LOS ANGELES DAILY TIMES

Jim Matthews, Outdoors

Posted:   07/26/2012 08:32:04 PM PDT

Updated:   07/27/2012 03:06:28 PM PDT

http://www.dailybulletin.com/ci_21169780

The Humane Society of the United States, an organization that does next to nothing for animal shelters but sues, badgers and lobbies politicians and businesses into adopting its radical animals rights agenda, is getting a taste of its own medicine.

In a little-reported ruling by a judge in the District of Columbia earlier this month, the HSUS is going to court to face charges under RICO statues on racketeering, obstruction of justice, malicious prosecution and other charges for a lawsuit it brought and lost against Ringling Brothers Circus' parent company Feld Entertainment, Inc.

After winning the case alleging mistreatment of elephants in its circuses brought by Friends of Animals (later merged into HSUS), the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) and the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI), lawyers at Feld filed a countersuit with a litany of charges ranging from bribery to money laundering to racketeering. The attorneys for the animal rights groups asked the judge to dismiss all 
charges, but most remained because the evidence was overwhelming. So in early August, HSUS will be facing the music in a case that should attract the attention of hunters, ranchers, farmers and anyone impacted by HSUS' radical animal rights agenda.

District judge Emmet G. Sullivan did dismiss allegations of mail and wire fraud, but he did so only because Feld didn't have standing to file this charge. His ruling all but set the stage for a class-action RICO lawsuit against HSUS for misrepresenting itself in its fundraising campaigns across the nation. This lawsuit easily could bankrupt HSUS, put it out of business and send some of its top executives to prison.

For the first time, a group has fought back against the animal rights and environmental extremists who have been setting policy in this country for the past 20 years or more. Now, instead of getting rich off their lawsuits and fundraising schemes that misrepresent their efforts and accomplishments, they could be driven out of business. These groups have cost the farming and ranching industry jobs and raised the price of products we buy every day. They are behind the efforts to ban sport hunting across the nation. They have forced state wildlife and fishery agencies to waste countless millions of dollars on lawsuits and have spearheaded policies and legislation like the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA), which has ruined livelihoods in recreational and commercial fishing without helping marine resources.

These groups operate with surly arrogance and believe they are above the law. Thankfully, that is not the case. Stay tuned. 

ABC CONTROVERSIES, PART II

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the 2012 ABC…

Until late last year, when most US airlines decided they would no longer carry “snub-nosed breeds” and the shipping charges of the few airlines that still accepted Boxers went through the roof, it was “merely” inconvenient for western ABC members and exhibitors to show their dogs at the ABC. Westerners had either to drive 3 or 4 days each way to get to the show site or take one or at most two dogs with them as excess baggage and fly. Even then, flying presented its own set of inconveniences, but it was doable.  Consequently, one ABC board of directors after another from 1998 to the present passed the buck on finding an equitable solution to what many saw as mostly a West Coast problem.

Today, passing the buck to the next board is no longer an option. Almost overnight, it’s gone from inconvenient to nearly impossible for would-be ABC exhibitors to get their dogs from the westernmost part of the US to Indianapolis – our host city through 2014.  That was brought home to the ABC president at the membership meeting in Kentucky this past May, when she asked the westerners present to be “patient,” and was greeted with a barrage of angry complaints from the meeting-goers.  It was also highlighted by the drop in entries between 2011 – 752 dogs entered – and 2012 – 619 dogs entered.

When Dr Paul Gerard made a motion to move the ABC to the center of the country at the membership meeting in 1998, everybody understood that he meant the geographic, not the demographic center of the country, and that’s exactly what the ABC membership voted for. When the site committee recommended Indianapolis over Topeka in 2011, many of the board assumed that we’d follow precedent and give the entire membership the opportunity to vote on the new location. But that didn't happen, and by 2014, the second year of the ABC contract with the Wyndham Hotel in Indianapolis, it will have been 16 years since ABC members voted two to one to move the ABC to the center of the country.

NO show site is going to be absolutely perfect in every respect, but the Topeka hotel has already been vetted by the site committee and hosted the 2010 Regional as well as a number of all-breed shows. The site committee's only criticism of the venue was the slightly more than an hour distance from the airport. As far as getting our dogs to the show is concerned, that’s not as important today as it was in 1998 or even 2011, considering that most airlines won’t fly our “snub-nosed” Boxers at all now. Topeka could provide an interim home for the ABC starting in 2015 while the board and membership decide whether we should consider a roving national instead of a permanent center-of-the-country site. But the ABC leadership needs to have a solution in place well before 2014, when the contract with the Wyndham Hotel will have to be renewed…or not.

As luck would have it, the Regional is going to be in California this year (Oct 30 – Nov 2, 2012). The Regional membership meeting will give western ABC members and their supporters the perfect opportunity to talk directly to the ABC president and board and ask how and when they plan to address the airlines’ new, game-changing policies. In view of that, I have a couple of suggestions:

First, if you’re an ABC member and are planning to attend the Regional, write to ABC Secretary Sandy Orr (abcsecretary@cox.net) and ask her to put “Topeka 2015 Or Bust” on the membership meeting agenda. Also, contact California handler/breeder Cheryl Cates and let her know how you feel about not being able to show your dogs in the ABC Futurity and Specialty. (Showcates@aol.com). Cheryl is the newest member of the ABC Site Committee – the only member from a western state – and hopefully will be able to offer input into any decision the committee makes on a 2015 show site.

Then, join forces with as many likeminded Regional-bound ABC members as possible and present a united front at the membership meeting, whether there’s a quorum or not. The unanimity of the members who spoke out at the May 2012 meeting was very effective in convincing a majority of the board to reconsider their vote on the selection of performance judges. United we stand; divided we’ll be sitting ringside in Indianapolis in 2015.

Finally, between now and the Regional, write to your board members and tell them you want them to take action on this issue before 2014. If you are personally acquainted with members of the current BOD, contact them directly and ask what they plan to do to secure a more accessible show site. I’ve listed the current directors below, but there’s no need for anyone to set up his or her own board email list. ABC Secretary Sandy Orr (abcsecretary@cox.net) will see that your comments are forwarded to the entire board.

ABC members have been patient for 14 years – now let’s go give ‘em hell Harry! 

Elected Directors:

Linda Abel

Stephanie Abraham

Bridget Brown

Salli Moore-Kottas

Wendy Morawski

Sandy Orr

Sharon Steckler

Korinne Vanderpool

Judy Voran

Barry Wyerman

Regional Zone Directors for 2012/2013:

Zone A

Boxer Club of Long Island

Jeannie Hoffman

Zone B

Central Indiana Boxer Club

Brenda Staley

Zone C

Blue Grass Boxer Club

Phillip Koenig

Zone D

Missouri Valley Boxer Club

Lee Mitchell

Zone E

Boxer Club of San Diego County

Lois Trist

ABC BOMBSHELLS – BIG & Small

PART I: Small Bombshell – BIG Noise!

The ABC membership meeting was much livelier than usual this year, with the introduction into the meeting shortly after it began of one brand new controversy and one longstanding one. I’m going to report on the new controversy in this issue of the BU Blog, and I’m also going to report – with great relief – that it’s already been resolved. Whew!

Here’s what happened:  with the exception of one board member who regularly participates in performance activities, it’s pretty fair to say that the rest of the board members, including yours truly, were completely clueless about what it takes to put on a successful obedience or agility trial.  Basically, we’ve all just trusted our obedience and agility chairpersons to do their thing, and the ABC performance events have continued to be a highlight of our national specialty show, year after year after year. This year, in addition to some spectacular performances by some fabulously talented and brilliantly trained Boxers, over $1100 was raised for the ABCF at the agility trials. But I diverge.

Toward the end of the board meeting on Tuesday afternoon, the ABC president mentioned that she had received a complaint from a conformation-only exhibitor about the fact that the performance people could nominate and elect the conformation judges, but the conformation people had no say in the selection of the obedience and agility judges; and that furthermore, the performance judges were allowed to charge the club a fee in addition to their travel expenses, while the conformation judges were not permitted to charge a fee, but were expected to come for the “honor” of judging our national specialty.

Unfortunately, the ABC performance chairpersons weren’t at the meeting to explain what this writer has come to think of as “the performance facts of life,” so after a brief discussion of the issue, the board voted to add the performance judges to the annual ABC Specialty judges’ ballot so that ALL ABC members could nominate and vote for them. Big mistake.

In defense of the board though, it did seem unfair at the time that the obedience and agility judges routinely charged the ABC what appeared to be a fairly large fee (it wasn’t) for their services, while the conformation judges came for only the “honor” of judging the ABC + their travel and motel expenses.

Come to find out when several of us discussed our vote with the obedience and agility chairpersons a short while after the meeting, almost all parent breed clubs and all-breed kennel clubs leave the selection of performance judges to their obedience and agility chairs, because, due to the special requirements of performance events and the special demands on performance judges, it would be virtually impossible for most large clubs to book good, qualified judges via a general election held only one year in advance of the show. And it would probably end up being much more expensive for the ABC, too. Oops!

So when the subject came up at the membership meeting on Wednesday night and the obedience and agility chairs explained the procedures they used to select the performance judges as well as all the pre-show preparation the judges had to do before they even left home, the meeting attendees, many of whom had exhibited in the ABC obedience, rally and agility trials earlier in the week, were aghast. Loudly aghast. At the end of the meeting during “new business,” a member rose and moved that the board delay implementation of the decision until the ABC obedience and agility chairs had had an opportunity to provide input and information to the BOD. The motion passed almost unanimously.

After the ABC, there was a lot of discussion on the various Boxer email lists about the ABC obedience and agility events and the proposed change in the judges’ selection procedures.  Ultimately, the ABC president sent an email to the Boxer lists, asking for suggestions on how this “problem” could be resolved in a way that was equitable to both conformation and performance exhibitors.

One of the kindest responses to the president’s message was, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”  Sadly, some of the other comments were sorely lacking in civility. Nonetheless, the individual board members listened to all the comments and digested the information we’d been given that explained the reasons behind the current judges’ selection procedures, and decided to reconsider our vote.

On Monday night, June 18, the ABC BOD held a conference call meeting and voted to rescind our original vote to change the performance judge selection process. The obedience and agility chairs will continue to select the judges for the ABC performance events as they always have, with an eye to hiring popular, qualified judges and keeping costs down for the club.  

During the meeting, two board members said they’d like to work on improved communication between conformation and performance people, so I think you’ll be hearing more about ABC performance events in the future, in a very good way.

You know, I enjoy reading stories with happy endings, and I enjoy writing them, too. If you’ll let me get up on my soapbox for a moment, I’ll let you in on an open secret:  the reason this story has a happy ending is that ABC and member club members elected some terrific Boxer people to this BOD – people who are really trying to do what’s best for the breed and the ABC membership. That’s why I’ve said again and again, let your board members know when you feel strongly about a certain issue. It works.

Please tune in next week for Part II - the BIG ABC bombshell. I think you all know what that is. J      

The Story of Miles: A Tragedy with a Happy Ending ~ by Beth Coviello-Davis, Belco Boxers

The conversation started innocently enough – discussing the upcoming dog show with a friend who was traveling here from another state. My friend casually mentioned that she’d have an “extra passenger” for the ride home and me, being nosey, asked who that could be.

 It seems there was a puppy in a bad situation down here in southern Massachusetts whose breeder put out a plea for help on the SBL. I admit I don’t really pay attention to a lot of the “stuff” on there, so I missed the original post, but my friend from NY did not. She offered to bring the puppy part of the way home from the show. His breeder would meet her on the NY/PA border. I offered to pick the little guy up on Saturday morning and transport him the 2 ½ hours to the dog show on Sunday. Next step put the breeder in touch with me…puppy rescue coming up!!

I received an urgent email the next morning, Wednesday, from the concerned breeder:  could I take the puppy ASAP??  She was worried he’d be dumped at a shelter, in a rescue or even on the side of the road!! Whoa!! This situation has now gone from bad to desperate!!  What happened that made it impossible for the new owner to keep the puppy a few more days???  The outrageous answer: the puppy, 15 weeks old, is not housebroken yet…L

I immediately agree to take him. The owner is given my work number (this is closer to his home) and he calls before I get there. Luckily my boss is also a Boxer breeder and she happily gives directions to the owner. It’s about an hour and a half drive to the grooming shop from the Cape Cod town where the puppy lives.

The puppy owner arrives at the shop. We are four Boxer breeders working there, all show people, all with twenty years experience in the breed, all rescuers of many boxers in bad situations. This man walked in with an emaciated, lame, but happy puppy. He looked me in the eye and told me the pup was playing with a dog that morning and hurt his leg. He told me the puppy’s name was Rocky. He handed me a bag of food (crappy food), his vet records and a slip lead with a puppy attached. I couldn’t get him out of there fast enough.  We all had tears in our eyes. Rocky hobbled happily into the grooming shop. 

After a quick evaluation we all agreed – the injury was NOT new, Rocky was in serious condition and he needed veterinary attention immediately. I called his breeder and told her he was going. The leg was hot, swollen and atrophied and Rocky was a walking skeleton. Hip bones, spine, ribs all showing but tail wagging – a true Boxer.

 My vet is a saint and said, “Bring him right down.” Rocky had a very high fever, was dehydrated and had a serious infection of his joint…bad stuff. It hit me hard, I lost my beautiful BISS girl to the same thing. I was scared to death for this puppy I barely knew. Some digging on his breeder’s part revealed the owner had brought him to the vet five days earlier, lame, and had declined treatment!! What?? How could this happen???

Rocky stayed with my vet until 7:00 that night, when I picked him up he was hydrated, happy and bouncing! A new dog. His joint had been flushed and injected with antibiotics, he’d had fluids and he’d had pain pills. His prognosis was guarded but good, very important to continue the antibiotics and a promise to return in the morning if he wasn’t remarkably better.

 I brought him home to my zoo, 8 dogs of many shapes and sizes, horses, chickens, a teenage daughter and an extremely loud husband. Rocky walked in, peed on my floor and introduced himself to all, just your average, happy Boxer puppy!! He ate a HUGE dinner and fell asleep in his crate.

Through this all, I stayed in touch with his breeder. She was very concerned about the puppy, his vet bill and the fact that his owner had lied. I seriously contemplated filing charges against the man.

 Rocky, now called Miles, improved by the hour. He never missed a meal or a treat. He played with all my dogs and ran around the grooming shop and greeted customers. We told his story to all! His friendliness and cheerful personality endeared him to everyone. He had two collar changes as he gained weight, his bones disappeared, and he barely limped anymore. He started to play with toys and bark!! This “not housebroken” puppy had one accident in my house.

I think Miles’ story needs to be told, because there are lessons to be learned from his sad experience. In the end, Miles had a soft landing and a place to go, thank God!! But how did such a nice puppy end up five states away from his breeder with such an uncaring owner?? 

Please breeders, there are Boxer people everywhere. Give your puppies a cushion, contact the local Boxer club and let them know one of yours is coming their way. Give the new owners the contacts. People will say what you want to hear over the phone, they’ll write what you want to see online. Boxer people help their own, take advantage of that!! Thank goodness for the SBL and Miles’ breeder’s plea for help, but how many more Miles’s are there?? How many slip through the cracks and wind up dead or in shelters? Please, please, breeders, take advantage of us, your fellow breeders, and contact us so puppies like Miles have a safe place to land and their new owners have people to contact in case of need.  Remember, this could have happened to any of us.  Miles is a well-bred puppy with a champion dam and a major pointed sire. Miles’ breeder did right by the puppy after he got into trouble, but the trouble might have been avoided in the first place if Miles’ new home had been checked out beforehand.

 We will all wonder about Miles until he completes his journey back to his breeder. The four of us were just one step, one leg on the journey of an incredibly tough and resilient puppy.  A journey that could have ended very differently…

Editor’s note:  Miles’ story is to be continued, because unfortunately, his breeder was in an auto accident on her way to pick Miles up. She was not injured, but her van was not drivable. We’ll keep you posted, but  in the meantime please keep both Miles and his breeder in your thoughts and prayers.

Boxer JKD from My Side ~ Dr Bruce M Cattanach, Steynmere Boxers, UK

Since the recent PDE TV programme (27th February), comments on the content have been presented from all sides in the UK dog press and online – all except mine that is – and as one of the participants in the Boxer Juvenile Kidney Disease section of the film, and as I have since been the subject of some outrageous charges, I think it appropriate that I give “my side” of Boxer JKD.

Unfortunately, because the shocking developments at Crufts have dominated the news reported by the UK dog press, I can't give my response in the same media this week and maybe not for several weeks, so here I offer my story as it actually happened: 

I have for years monitored cases of kidney failure in UK Boxers and have seen no indication of it being inherited.  Therefore, when the subject was raised at a Breed Council Health Committee meeting a few years ago, I expressed little interest, although another member of the committee was eager to investigate.  

However, in late September 2010, I received a call from a vet seeking help for a client, Ms Sharon McCurdy, who had a number of cases of JKD and had failed to get any help from her previous vet. I was initially rather skeptical and took the news rather lightly, but a subsequent letter threatening me with legal action, received after I responded to Ms McCurdy’s vet but before I had any idea what was going on, did get my attention.

Examination of Sharon McCurdy's and further cases that quickly came to light revealed an extraordinary picture of litters with one or more kidney deaths occurring with very close inbreeding (father x daughter, half-brother x half-sister, g’father x g'daughter, etc, focusing on one dog).  But as more cases were found, some revealed close inbreeding on dogs that were further back in the first pedigrees.  There was therefore clear evidence of an inheritance that nobody could miss.  The close inbreeding suggested a recessive gene inheritance.  But there were also a few cases that derived from total outcrosses.  This meant either that they had a different causal basis (poisons, etc) or that the gene responsible was more widely spread than yet recognized.

Professor Bell, a specialist in Internal Medicine at Glasgow University Veterinary School, agreed to help devise a questionnaire on which the vets could enter their diagnostic evidence.  Retrospectively this was achieved for almost all cases. The cause of these deaths can therefore be ascribed to a juvenile kidney disease (JKD).  One of these familial cases died in Sweden and went to a full post mortem to get the more specific diagnosis of familial renal dysplasia. 

I reported the findings in Boxer Breed Notes as the cases emerged and, on request, subsequently (February 2011) exhibited the pedigrees to the Breed Council Executive and a new Health Committee.  I presented only my general conclusions and left interpretation to those present to decide for themselves. There were no questions on the pedigrees as I recall, only questions on the diagnoses.  Because of the perceived magnitude of the problem, I offered only one recommendation for breeders – “to try and avoid inbreeding.”  Judging from a subsequent report in the dog press by the new Health Committee, everything appeared to be accepted, including my aim to initiate a study to find the responsible gene.

I was lucky enough to find an interested molecular geneticist, Michel Georges from Belgium, who was using a new gene scanning method that seemed appropriate for our situation.  Week after week thereafter, I therefore put requests in the dog press for blood samples.  I needed samples from both affected cases and parents, but the response for each was very poor.  People seemed frightened.  Two owners actually told me that the breeder had told them not to cooperate.  However, I managed with great difficulty to get 5 samples from affected cases and 6 from parents.  All offers of samples were accepted and in fact I am still looking for more.  I also needed unrelated controls and managed to get enough contributions from concerned breeders to be able to select ones I hoped would be suitable for the gene screen. The screen started but it was not successful. Other investigations elsewhere in the world with other Boxers have likewise failed.

 Coming now to the film, when Jemima Harrison informed me that she had been besieged by Boxer breeders to take up the JKD problem and asked me if I would contribute and explain the genetics, I of course agreed.  I could not possibly stand back and let other brave souls fight alone.  I therefore told her the story much as above, but eventually had to produce the evidence – the pedigrees – and I know these were then carefully analyzed by two other geneticists.  The film makers also sought out other factual information on events which made my own efforts on the genetics seem puny. Believe me, there is so much more information, but only a small part was given in the 10 minute slot in the 1 hour programme, and I know that every word was scrutinized by a team of lawyers.

I do want to make it clear that what I actually said can be literally “seen” on the film. The remainder came from the narrator, not me.  It was selective, excluding much, but still accurate in content.  I was saddened that my comment on the exceptional past record of UK Boxer breeders on health matters was not given.  And I was annoyed that the narrator made it seem that the evidence that JKD was inherited was not definitive just because the gene had not been found (a lawyer issue, I'm told).  But let's be clear.  One needs breeding evidence before one searches for a gene, not the other way around. The evidence that JKD is inherited is absolutely firm, and two other geneticists agree.

Where do we go from here?  Further research upon JKD is needed but I hope it can be seen that this would be impossible at present.  Instead we are left with the one option of separately trying again to find the gene.  Here, I thought we might still get stuck because what research group would be willing to invest much time and a huge funding to look for a gene when there is not total positive breeder support.  

However, I was delighted to receive a message after the film from Swedish canine geneticist, Ake Hedhammar, who works with American/Swedish molecular genetics guru, Kerstin Lindblad-Toh, on JKD in Continental and American Boxers.  He suggested we collaborate with him in his effort to find the gene for JKD in Boxers internationally. This could be the way to go, but would we get full support from owners of cases and parents a second time around?  I actually had 5 possible JKD cases reported in the three days following PDE2 with blood samples promised, which is quite a change. Maybe the film has actually rescued the breed.

Postscript:  I have just had another offer of help to find the gene, this time from Professor Harvey of University College London.  His interests are medical, but he has taken an interest in disease genes in dogs that may have relevance for human disease. This route seems a very promising one, as collaboration with human researchers has worked very well for me with Boxer Cardiomyopathy as I hope will soon be seen.  So, if the Boxer breed in the UK wants to get itself together, face the problem, and do something, there could be a way forward.  And please note, it to be expected that any further research will require blood samples from additional affected cases and also from their parents, so all of you out there, please help.

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NEWS FLASH!!!   Dr Kerstin Lindblad-Toh of the Broad Institute at MIT, who has been collecting DNA samples for JKD in both the US and Europe for some time, has now also  expressed an interest in the UK investigations and collaborating in an extended search for the gene responsible for this fatal Boxer kidney disease!

How Many VPCs Are Too Many VPCs?

In the last BU Blog, I related a conversation I’d had with my cardiologist in which we discussed how frustrating it was for Boxer breeders to have one board certified veterinary cardiologist clear a dog of SAS with a flow rate of 2.21 m/s…and another equally qualified cardiologist grade the same dog with exactly the same flow rate as “equivocal.”

Alas – the upshot of that conversation was that although cardiologists all agree about grading very low flow rates (e.g. 1.2 m/s) and very high flow rates (e.g. 3.0 m/s), none of them can say for sure what the ranges in the middle mean in terms of SAS, if the dog doesn’t have any other sign of the disease, such as a fibrous ridge in the aorta or a turbulent blood flow.  

So we concluded the blog by saying that diagnosing SAS seems to be another area in which there’s a lack of black and white guidelines on Boxer heart disease; and another reason for breeders to try to get comfortable with using our own best judgment along with the opinions of the professionals when making decisions about our own breeding programs.

More recently, Boxer breeders have been expressing their frustration at the lack of guidelines to help us navigate through an even murkier gray area of Boxer heart disease – ARVC and the VPCs (Ventricular Premature Contractions) that often indicate the presence of cardiomyopathy in an individual boxer. Those breeders are saying, some of them in so many words, that since the ABC website provides us with guidelines on a range of flow rates that clear our dogs of SAS, why doesn’t the ABC publish guidelines that tell us how many VPCs it’s acceptable for our dogs to have at different ages?

Well for one thing, the ABC is not a medical research institution and the SAS flow-rate guidelines that appear on the ABC website represent the opinion of only one cardiologist with whom the leaders of the ABC Health & Research Committee happen to agree. What’s more, there’s a difference of opinion among cardiologists on those “ABC guidelines,” because they do not conform to the standards set by the ACVIM (American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine) for American board-certified veterinary cardiologists.

But back to ARVC and VPCs:

At the present time, the only absolutely surefire way a cardiologist can tell whether a non-symptomatic dog has BCM/ARVC is by doing a necropsy. And unfortunately, at that point the dog is dead and the question is academic, except perhaps for the owners of the dog’s offspring.

Of course, a reliable DNA test would also tell us whether a dog had the mutant gene(s) that causes ARVC and was therefore likely to develop the disease and reproduce it. But the ARVC-1 test has not lived up to its initial promise, and so we’re back to where we were before Dr Meurs made her announcement in April 2009 – holtering our breeding stock regularly and trying to figure out how many VPCs are too many VPCs. And the sad fact is that we don’t have any better an understanding of exactly what that number is now than when the late Wendy Wallner, DVM, proposed a set of very broad guidelines for Boxer Cardiomyopathy in an article on Boxer heart disease she wrote for the April 1999 issue of The Boxer Underground.

As chair of the ABC Boxer Health & Research Committee and a member of the board of the American Boxer Charitable Foundation (ABCF), Wendy devoted her tragically brief life to the cause of Boxer health and led the fight against what we then knew as Boxer Cardiomyopathy (BCM).  A read of the entire article at http://www.boxerunderground.com/apr_bu_99/dr.htm will give newcomers to the breed a good idea of what we were up against in 1995 when the ABCF was founded and the ABC membership voted in a survey to make BCM research a priority for our new foundation. In the meantime, based on experience and observation, I firmly believe the fact that breeders have been following the guidelines in the excerpt printed below has led to our seeing fewer Boxers suddenly “just drop dead” at 3, 4, and 5 years of age. RIP Wendy – your work continues.

“A few years ago, upon my appointment to the ABC's Health and Research Committee, I came up with a protocol for heart testing for boxers. These guidelines were published in the ABC News Bulletin in December of 1996. The recommendations were as follows:

“Minimum Heart Screening for boxers involved in breeding programs and/or performance events:
Age 1 year: auscultation by a board certified veterinary cardiologist (If arrhythmia detected - Holter exam; if murmur detected - Echocardiogram) 
Rationale: One year is the accepted time for clearance of sub-aortic stenosis. This auscultation screening could be performed at the national specialty and at individual breed club's specialty shows for a nominal fee. Any dogs with murmurs would be referred to a cardiologist in their area for further workup.

“Age 2 years: Holter monitor, auscultation (Echo if murmur detected)
Rationale: The 2-year check would occur before the animal was used for breeding (at least extensively) and would be useful in detecting dogs with early arrhythmias before they are bred. In some dogs, arrhythmias have been detected as early as 12 weeks of age.

“Age 5 years: Holter monitor, auscultation (Echo if murmur detected)
Rationale: By 5 years, many animals would show signs of arrhythmia if they were going to develop CM, since the arrhythmia often precedes clinical disease by several years.

“The main purpose of these screens was to develop a database which could be analyzed and related to causes of death in dogs so that some sort of standardized system of interpreting the holter results could be determined. Not only would it help to identify and eliminate dogs with SAS from breeding programs, it would also help identify and eliminate those asymptomatic boxers with very large numbers of VPCs. It was never intended to eliminate any and all dogs with VPCs from breeding programs. There simply is not enough information available to use the results in this manner. If large numbers of boxers are not holtered and followed over time, there never will be a database large enough to provide meaningful holter results. If this is the case, we are at the mercy of the only other test that will identify boxer CM - a genetic marker for the disease. Unfortunately, this type of test can take decades to establish. Since we know that the hallmark of boxer CM is arrhythmia and that the Holter is the best tool to detect arrhythmia, it is the only method we currently have to try to evaluate our breeding stock before they have produced offspring. While there currently are no concrete numbers to identify normal vs. abnormal dogs, the Holter is still extremely important in identifying those grossly abnormal dogs with hundreds or thousands of VPCs who are asymptomatic and would otherwise be unknowingly reproduced. Until many Holtered dogs have been followed into old age and their medical histories analyzed and causes of death determined, we will not know the true significance of lower numbers of VPCs. We can, however, use all information obtained through Holter testing responsibly by slanting a breeding program toward those boxers that seem less affected.”

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NEWS FLASH!!!  The Drawbridge Inn in Ft Mitchell, KY – the site of the 2012 ABC National Specialty – was sold this morning (March 6) to the mortgage holder, who intends to keep the property open as a hotel and start making major improvements. Kudos to ABC President Salli Moore-Kottas, who stayed on top of this situation as it developed and was prepared to proceed with a "Plan B" if the sale had not ended favorably.  Now...on with the show!!! 

SAS: A CONVERSATION WITH A CARDIOLOGIST

There’s been a lot of controversy and confusion about SAS (sub-aortic stenosis) in the Boxer community lately, due to the fact that different cardiologists assign different ratings – Clear, Equivocal, Affected – to the same aortic velocity (the speed of blood flow across the aortic valve), depending on whether or not they agree with Dr Kate Meurs that Boxers are “different” from other breeds and therefore can be graded differently – less stringently – than other breeds.

In a summary of the 2003 ABC Health Seminar in the old Boxer Underground zine (http://www.boxerunderground.com/bu2000/abc2003/health_seminars.htm), we reported that on the basis of a study she did in 2002, Dr Meurs concluded that Boxers have narrower aortas than other dog breeds and that therefore a higher aortic velocity – up to 2.5 m/s – can be acceptable in the absence of any other sign of SAS, such as a fibrous ridge or turbulent blood flow. So 2.2 m/s can be one cardiologist’s Clear…and another’s Equivocal. That being the case, it’s only natural for the owner of a Boxer that was rated Equivocal with a 2.2 to want a redo with a cardiologist who has a more liberal interpretation of Clear.  

My own experience was a bit different. My dog was echoed at 14 mos at the 2011 ABC with an aortic velocity (flow rate) of 2.21 m/s, and was rated Clear by the cardiologist who did the heart clinic there. He told me that his “personal cutoff” between Clear and Equivocal was 2.25 m/s.  However, because the cardiologist who has seen my dogs for years grades murmurs and flow rates according to the standards set forth by the ACVIM (American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine), whose guideline for Equivocal is a flow rate of 1.9 to 2.4 m/s, even in the absence of any other sign of SAS, that 2.21 m/s did NOT make me a happy camper, regardless of the fact that the cardiologist wrote “Clear” on the OFA report.  My Boxer’s breeder, whose cardiologist grades pretty much as mine does, was worried, too.  So we decided to have the dog tested again at closer to two years of age.

As luck would have it, my cardiologist offered a low-cost echo clinic at a show we attended recently, shortly before my dog’s second birthday. Since I had once had another of my Boxers test with a higher flow rate every time she was echoed until at 2 ½ years old she was ultimately diagnosed with a turbulent flow of 2.45 m/s and mild SAS, I’m not exaggerating when I say my heart was in my mouth as we entered the motor home in which the echo clinic was held. So you can imagine my relief – nay, elation – when my boxer echoed with only a low grade murmur and a flow rate of 1.7 m/s!

Naturally, I asked Dr “C” (“Dr Cardiologist” J) what might have caused the earlier higher flow rate. He explained, as Dr Meurs has, that excitement and stress can have a big impact on flow rate in a young dog.  My dog had never seemed particularly excitable, but I can certainly see where being hooked up to a strange machine in unfamiliar surroundings might have been pretty stressful for any young dog on his/her first trip away from home. 

After the exam, as Dr C was filling out the paperwork needed to register my dog with the OFA, I took advantage of having him all to myself for a few moments to “interview” him on the subject of SAS in Boxers:

First, knowing that he had a great deal of admiration for Dr Meurs, I asked him why he chose to grade Boxers on the basis of the ACVIM guidelines, rather than the guidelines she had developed for Boxers based on her study. He replied that the ACVIM guidelines were the result of a consensus of a group of different cardiologists, not just the opinion of one person.

Next I asked what the difference was between, say, a flow rate of 1.7 m/s and 1.9. His response was that while everyone agreed that a 1.2 m/s flow rate was good and everyone agreed that a flow rate of 3.0 m/s was not, no one could tell you for sure the meaning of the middle range of velocities, even in the absence of any other sign of SAS. “No one,” he repeated, “we just don’t know.”

Next, I asked Dr C about SAS vis a vis the Boxer breed. His answer surprised me:  he said, “Virginia, you know I see a lot of Boxers in my practice and at these clinics; and I rarely see a Boxer with a flow rate above 2.0 m/s. Based on my experience with your breed, I believe there are plenty of Boxers with a lower aortic velocity, without your having to use the dogs with a higher velocity to avoid restricting your gene pool. No other breed of dog has high flow rates like that, including mixed breeds.  No other breed.”  

So after bending my cardiologist’s ear for nearly half an hour, what did I take away from our conversation? Just this: With 52 ABC members living within the borders of the state, Florida is second only to California (71 ABC members) in terms of ABC membership. There are also four active ABC member clubs in Florida. There are a lot of Boxers in Florida and my cardiologist does see a lot of those dogs. I’m still not sure what I believe about whether Boxers are “different” from all other breeds because they have narrower aortas, but I do believe my cardiologist when he tells me that he rarely sees a Boxer with a flow rate above 2.0 m/s. And I do believe the cardiologists (all of them?) who believe that the lower the flow rate, the better. So in my own breeding program, I’m going to strive to keep the flow rates of my Boxers below 2.0 m/s.

Unfortunately, this seems to be another example of the lack of black and white information about Boxer heart disease; and another reason for us to try to get comfortable with using our own best judgment along with the opinions of the professionals when making decisions about our own breeding programs.

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Next up on the BU Blog:  “How Many VPCs Are Too Many VPCs?”  Please tune in next week.

VZ