Re: [pyrnet] Now dwarfism - (sorry long)

["Linda Weisser" <lmweisser@olywa.net>]

----- Original Message -----
From: <Steelmoment@aol.com>

I am replying to you because you have access to the past GPCA bulletins and
I
believe that is where I read articles about dwarfism many years ago.
There
were a cluster of articles written by several breeders (pyr) who had
dwarfs -
(I believe it was a GPCA bulletin from many many years ago - but I could be
wrong) the articles did state that their experiences were awful &
heartbreaking.   >>

To the best of my memory there was only one such article.  It was written
by Sandy Adams who bred a litter in which she had 3 dwarfs in 10 puppies.
That litter is the one that I have been discussing in terms of discovering
the carrier male and what eventually happened with the test breeding of his
son.  The truth of a lot of this is that Sandy was totally devastated and
very angry about what happened.  I did not see these puppies but I know
several people who did including the owner of the sire.  I have a friend
who saw two of the dwarfs at about 5 months old when they were taken in to
my friend's vet for the extensive body x-rays required for diagnosing a
dwarf older than 10 or so weeks.  She saw nothing obviously apparent in
either of them that indicated that they were either sick or crippled.  Not
too long after that they were euthanized.  I am not here to argue Sandy's
personal perception, only to say that hers was not the only one.

It was Sandy's pain and grief and anger that really created in me the
strong belief that every buyer deserves to know all that there is to know,
even if it is generations behind.  Nobody close to Sandy had the slightest
idea that this problem existed.  The initial carrier had been bred in to
the line 13 years before Sandy's pups were born with NO intervening dwarfs.
When that inital breeding was done (and I did the breeding) nobody said
word one about dwarf risk.  Perhaps nobody who should have known did, but
at some point in the chain information that should have been shared was
not.  What happened to Sandy did need to have happened.  That is the bottom
line.

<<I remember her saying "Ubu is one of the few with
minimal health problems - he is lucky - so many are deformed and go through
a
hell of alot of pain".>>

With all due respect to Carolyn and her memory, I'm not sure that she
actually knew a lot of dwarfs personally.

<<it is interesting to hear that many people do not consider this to be
threatening or less than threatening or heartbreaking to the breed opposed
to
the other diseases.>>

I think that dwarfism is a heartbreak, a shock, and a potential nightmare
to the breeder.  It is no doubt a "problem" for the breed in some large
sense, but it doesn't hold a candle to the crippling, blinding and
devastating lifelong disasters that some individual dogs (and their
breeders and owners) are heir to.

<< we are only hearing the reports of the ones who are not being put down
at a couple of weeks of age due to serious problems.  >>

In no dwarf litter with which I am familiar (and that is probably 30) have
I ever heard of a dwarf puppy euthanized at a couple of weeks.  Indeed, in
many (most?) cases breeders are not even aware that they are dwarfs at that
age.  I would hazard a guess that the ones that are euthanized later
(probably 8 or so weeks) are done for reasons other than health.

<<There are so many
diseases that can be tested for and I rarely ever see an ad that states for
example:   Thyroid Normal.   I am glad to see OFA or Penn Hip ratings and
hopefully we will see in future ads - that they are also cleared for Eye
Diseases, Heart Diseases and any other inherit diseases out there.   >>

This is all very interesting but it is difficult to convince a breeder to
do certain tests when those conditions have never been a problem in her
line.  I have not bred nor owned a dog who had any problems resulting from
low thyroid so it would be hard to convince me to test routinely.

I would like at this point to put out, once again the initials GDC.  The
*only* truly open disease registry for dogs.  Not all the individual
clearances in the world will matter if that information is lost or not
shared or not connected to many other dogs.

Please check out the GDC at:
http://www.vetmed.ucdavis.edu/gdc/gdc.htm

The GDC also maintain the dwarf registry and the patella luxation research
database for Pyrs.   I would hope that all Pyr owners when they decide to
test would take advantage of the GDC and its open registry system.  For the
long term good of our breed.

Linda