This page is reserved for guest columnists whom I consider to be good stewards of our breed. Occasionally I will call on some of them to challenge the rest of us with their recommendations on German Shepherd health and maintenance, training or breeding.
So do check this page for updates. It promises to be interesting...
Our first guest steward of the breed is Monica Klinkham,
whose web site is the popular international
cyberzine for working dogs
Considering Canine Hip Dysplasia, Diet and Radiography
by Moc Klinkham
I have two dogs with CHD (Canine Hip Dysplasia -- CHD is a genetic disease that can first manifest itself in the young pup; *very* generally speaking, it means the head of the femoral bone , the 'ball,’ is poorly seated in the hip socket, with a variety of changes/outcomes to the joint dependent upon the degree of laxity in the socket.) I have found that with appropriate diet (real food) and exercise (low impact), the disease can be 'managed' successfully to alleviate many of the 'classic' symptoms that send some people to the hanky box once they get a diagnosis of the disease in their dog. Now I'm not pooh-poohing CHD; it's not a pretty disease; nobody wants the diagnosis for their dogs; I'm sure I've shed more than a few tears myself. It's one of the biggest concerns to those of us into the German Shepherd Dog breed -- a breed that typically hits the top of the CHD incidence charts.
Demon was diagnosed at 11 months with bad dysplasia and early arthritis -- her radiographs were a *shocking* thing to see -- basically, I was looking at hip joints that *should have been* entirely dysfunctional. I had more than one 'dog expert' (HA!) suggest that I put her down, based on the film results. Today, at almost three years of age, she runs, leaps, cuts, feints, dashes, platzes, zips, zooms and zaps as a matter of course. No outward display of discomfort or disability in her formal obedience, herding, and protection work. She's the reigning Bedsnoids champion. I've had any number of vets look at her xrays, then look at her, and comment that it's unbelievable... or that I 'must be doing something right.'
Optimal food, respect for the compromised joints in the exercise and judicious use ofsynoveal-enhancing supplements (synoveal fluid is naturally found in the joints -- it cushions the space between socket and femoral head) In my case, I use Cosequin, Ester-C and avocado oil), massage, maintaining a temperate environment (no cold, damp cement kennel floors), and plenty of good luvvin' -- all the things that otherwise lead to optimal canine health -- also support the successful management of the disease. It remains to be seen how my dysplastic dogs will fare as they age; it's generally assumed that arthritis and disuse will eventually disable the majority of dogswith CHD in their golden years. Well, we'll see about that....
I'm one of those who can't wait for science to identify the gene(s) for CHD -- I think it's going to bring a bucket of surprises for folks who have been trying, without success, to bring the incidence below the 20%+ watermark in our breed. (The eventual development of a genetic test for CHD, and what I expect to be hysterical and indiscriminate reactions to the discovery by ill-informed breeders and buyers, will also have the potential for further depletion of our genetic pool, which may well be the biggest tragedy to befall this breed and others, making CHD itself pale by comparison.... but that's another topic.)
Take, for instance, my homeopathic vet who ponders that the genetic predisposition for CHD (genotype) may indeed be triggered by vaccinations into the physical manifestations of the disease (phenotype)... hmmmmm.... of interest here is the fact that CHD is not manifested in utero....hmmmmm..... again, we'll see.... it's surely not looking too good for vaccinations these days overall .....
If you want to read more about CHD, I have a Canine Hip Dysplasia Resources page on my web site with a variety of articles about the genetics of the disease, some alternative treatments, debunking some of the myths, etc.
On the Advisability of Radiographs
I have xrayed my dogs, and will continue to do so. I believe that this is one of those areas where you assume some risk in order to achieve a balance.
Consider this: I would not have known about Demon's (GSD bitch - ed. note) hips unless I had had her xrayed as part of my personal program to prelim all puppies; and unlessI had known about the extreme state of her hips, I would not have undertakento research and understand what was going on here and seek to remediate the early damage through nutrition. And because of that, I would not have madethe decision to switch to a species appropriate diet. And because of that, I would not have automatically launched baby Mica on her raw diet upon her swaddled delivery to me. And because of that, I might not have seen those reassuring hip xrays upon Mica's prelim. And because of that, I might not be actively promoting a species appropriate diet at every opportunity. And because of that......
For those of us who are smitten with the [fill in the blank] breed, there is no other. My breed besmitten is the German Shepherd Dog, one upon which manyskeletal stressors are applied first by Ma Nature, and then by the biological imperatives of this typically high drive and extremely athletic breed, and THEN by their owners who succumb to the lure and the beauty of engaging these animals in a variety of sports and working careers. The active K9 on the street is not in any less danger of pain and disability from bone and joint disease and dysfunction than the heroic guide dog that accompanies its owner selflessly and safely through the streets of the city.
After a period of intense human irresponsibility and lacklustre attention to basic genetics (which practices continue today), a breed that is less than 100 years old has already achieved notoriety for this disease. And one can talk to those breeders who use the best that science and genetics has to offer (now reread that and notice that I didn't say that science and genetics offers THE BEST) to reduce the incidence of the disease, and *still* they're experiencing a rate of incidence that in most respects mirrors that of the general population. So here we come back to my earlier statement about a genetic test for CHD... even if we discover the exact gene(s) and a test for identifying its presence in any particular dog, will it *really* do that much to demonstrably reduce the incidence of CHD? Or improve the breed? I think not.
If we are to preserve this magnificent breed, and continue in many instancesto vest our safety and our very lives and, in some cases, our livelihoods on representative members of this breed that are genetically destined to optimally perform police K9 and therapy and herding and military and narcotic detection and search & rescue and service and seizure alert and and and..... we who have assumed the guise of 'owners' (haha, who owns whom around here is patently clear to me) and the presumed gatekeepers for most potential breedings absolutely *must* know the status of the hip and elbow joints. Presently, in 1998, the only way we can know with any degree of certainty is through radiographs.
Will seeing a radiograph change the direction of CHD? No. Will it reduce the incidence of CHD in the breed? Maybe. Will it eradicate CHD entirely? Never. We're up against a lot of theories and a handful of realities illustrated by population genetics and natural selection and the inevitable genetic absolutes that we encounter if we attempt to mechanically remove CHD from the gene pool -- we reach ground zero, we have nowhere else to turn in our breeding pool, and *still* we have a constant incidence of CHD in the subject population.
So let's assume for the sake of my argument that CHD is a natural phenomenon,and it's here to stay, and it just so happens to be of significant prevalence in the German Shepherd Dog. So what good is the radiograph? For people like me, it means I have a 6 yr old GSD that I obtained from a police K9 unit when he was 9 months of age because the radiographs of his injured hip proved that he would, more likely than not, have been unable to endure the physical rigors and demands of life as an active K9. Their radiographs, my blessings. Their radiographs meant that they didn't continue to aggressively train him and, in their blissful ignorance of the status of his hip, apply significant physical stressors that may well have meant that he would have ended up entirely disabled by about 3 or 4 years of age, in pain, an unattractive and unlikely candidate for adoption, a liability to be hustled off the force and disposed of..... how?
For baby Mica, it means that I am equipped with the knowledge that more likely than not, I can actively pursue training her in Schutzhund and herding and agility and narcotics detection work and maybe Search and Rescue. Have the radiographs benefited her? You bet. She's having the time of her life, doing what she was genetically engineered to do. THAT is important to HER. Will the radiographs benefit anyone else? Absolutely, if through her training and competition and work I am able to deduce without a reasonable doubt that her physiological and psychological characteristicssupport the premise that she should be included in the genetic pool for the continued perpetuation of her lines and of the breed, hopefully to create MORE successful K9 police dogs, search and rescue heroes, drug detection dogs ......
The summary point being, in most areas of life and of
dogs, there are few absolutes. I believe that this is one of those areas.
You do the best you can do, for the greatest good.
GSD Breed Vigor and Other Considerations
by Beth Shea
Worldwide the GSD is in dire straights! We have more inherited genetic diseases than any other breed in the world. It seems to me that we need to increase the genetic diversity of our breed not restrict it. Currently, worldwide if you look at the SV Sire line charts and go to the root dogs we have ONLY five sire lines (And this includes the American lines). If you study the pedigrees of dogs since WWII you will see 2 major trends - German & American. Believe it or not both are actually Rolf/Axel crosses. The German tends to be Rolf sire line to Axel bitches. The American tends to be Axel sire line to Rolf bitches. (With a few minor lines added to each for spice & flavor). IMHO what we need to do for the survival of our breed and all the wonderful things we love about it is to initiate a discussion between the two sides about our genetic bottleneck and discover ways to save the good traits wherever they come from and ways to open up our genetic bottleneck.
I have owned, bred and studied GSD's for 35 years. I breed very infrequently because I breed only for my replacement dog. All other pups go on a written K that is written for their protection. If I can not find what I consider apropriate homes the dog stays with me. The lines I have had up to the present time have been a combination of very very old American(Nordraak) combined with very old German (Volker v. Zollgrenzschutzhaus & Klodo v. Erimitenklause with a dash of Italian. This was taken to more recent German lines.
My dogs are AKC registered (tho there is no love lost for this organization) not USA. I have worked & titled my dogs in herding, & obedience. I have sucessfully shown them in conformation under both the German and AKC system. I choose not to put a SCH title on my dogs prefering to do stock work (which if you read Von Stephanitz you know that is what he refers to when he talks about "the work").
This does not mean that I do not know about, recognize or not have good prey & defensive drives in dogs that I have owned. I just choose to channel them differently. I have been and am still a student of our breed. Not only does the breed fascinate me but also the genetics. From my perspective of 35 years, I have seen the cycle/argument of German vs. American a number of times. The ironic fact is that our most illustrative dogs have been crossed between the two.
Both sides produce good and bad, sound & unsound. We need to choose the good and the sound and not get wrapped up in "paper" breeding. LOOK at the dogs. Look at what that individual had to offer. Yes, also look at his family but don't throw away an excellent dog 'cause you don't like his nationality. As you can tell from what I have, I appreciate many German dogs. ..
Germany 30 years ago made a point of maintaining minor lines for breed vigor (Volker was one such line). Germany 30 years ago was not quite so bifurcated along "high" lines vs. working lines. Until I believe the 70's the stud book was still open to working herding dogs. All of these things made for a very different German dog than we have today. Look at the pedigrees both working & show. Look at the bottlenecks (backing up to the same dog over & over).
Thoughts on Shrinking Gene Pool and Breed Vigor:
Recently one of the news shows did a story about some research into the role smell plays in human choices of mates. I believe the research was European. A test subject was asked to smell boxes that had dirty t-shirts in them and mark the ones they found appealing or disgusting. The interesting part of the work to me was they found that the ones marked appealing generally were for someone who had complimentary (i.e. different) immune traits(markers).
The theory seems to be that smell helps us identify a mate which will give our offspring a stronger immune system and therefore a better chance of survival. In GSD's breeding or reproductive traits have a very high rate of heritability (with bitches often the timing of the cyle, the size of the litter etc.) I had always presumed breeding "vigor" was the same. However this study got me thinking. Some of the dogs I know that had lack of breeding vigor or came from lines with that were in fact heavily linebred (or sometimes inbred) and usually were being bred back into those same general lines. Could their noses be saying to their brains - "this isn't right; it will not work" ergo the lack of libido?
The dogs I have observed that have good breeding vitality have made it very obsvious that both smell and taste were important to them. On the other hand I've also seen stud dogs take a quick smell and walk away. Our usual explanation is - "she's not ready". Perhaps we need to listen more closely to our dogs?
Should Breeders Look Into PennHIP?
by Fred Lanting
I must acknowledge that even among those who attempt to use and follow precepts of science and logic, there will be emotion-mediated decisions and courses of action. Take for example the decisions relating to canine hip joint integrity. I think we can all agree that HD (hip dysplasia) is a serious problem, and that only a few ostrich-brained relics are still sticking their heads in the sands of ignorance and avoidance, claiming HD to be simply or mostly an environmental problem. Even among the ranks of the cognoscenti, however, there are those who hang onto the hope of a "magic pill" approach, like Linus clutching his security blanket, or a religious person holding by his fingernails the notion that his good aspects should outweigh his bad ones at the final judgement. Vitamin C or seaweed or chicken joints or anything else that comes along with the false promise of an easy, mystical or non-understandable (or rationalized) way out of the suffering that severe HD can bring - any of these approaches are emotional roads to the goal of better dogs. Only their proponents have unintentionally or ignorantly twisted the road signs to make you think they are accurately pointing to the same destination.
Only the hardcore of those who want the easy ways out are today avoiding the logical, science-supported fact that HD is essentially a genetic disorder and can only be finally dealt with by selecting breeding partners. You can sometimes ease the life of one afflicted by modifying the environment through nutrition, bedding, temperature, etc., but you cannot change the genes.
As my nephews and grandchildren used to say about the dinosaur days when this Grandpa was a kid, "in the olden times" people who wanted to avoid the health problems looked to the proven working dog breeder for their stock. My principal breed is the German Shepherd Dog. When von Stephanitz and colleagues were establishing the breed a hundred years ago and more, they looked down their noses at "the city dog" because they saw many health deficiencies among those communities; the working farm and sheep dogs, the "country dogs", were sturdier, longer-lived, and more resistant to almost everything. Von Stephanitz liked to tell of the sheepherder who, after a full day's work with the flock (dog running a good 10 hours) bicycled many miles to a trial with his dog trotting beside him, competed in it, and made the long trek home again. Sled dog racers before the snowmobile era used to mush across great expanses of wilderness; this is duplicated today on a smaller scale, in order to race from Juneau to Nome or similar competitions. This type of demanding work eliminated the dogs with bad hips from most of the breeding opportunities. Less strenuous but similar work did not have the same effect, as discovered by Australian Shepherd breeder and vet John Pharr who with Dr. Joe Morgan studied HD in the working stock dogs of his breed and found more than half of them to be dysplastic. Apparently modern dogs, in this hemisphere at least, are not pressed to the same limits that uncovered weaknesses and eliminated HD in bygone gene pools.
Still, in the early days of the GSD in America, many found some benefits to using HGH (European-style certified herding) dogs in hopes (and some success) of putting the brakes on HD in their lines. With the decline of vocational sheepherding and the percentage of strenuously selected working dogs, that option went the way of spats and buttons on shoes. We just don't work our dogs today in any way that comes close to natural selection. Survival of the fittest now is only practiced in the wild, I'm afraid; there the slowest, weakest wolf gets the leftovers of the weakest elk, and doesn't stand a chance of getting near a breedable female. Passing along genes is reserved for those at the pinnacle of the hierarchy. Responsible breeders today must do something else do copy Nature, and that is to select breeding animals on the basis of genetic quality as measured by such yardsticks as joint congruity.
In the 1960s, growing out of the observations of past decades' pioneers like Gerry Schnelle, the Orthopedic Foundation for Animals (OFA) was founded. The use of radiographs to see defects and details in the hips of dysplastic and normal dogs proved a boon to the serious efforts of the better breeders. About the same time, the SV (GSD Club in Germany) was using Schnelle's foundation stones to erect an edifice that would eventually deny registration rights to dogs with severe HD (unfortunately they never outlawed the moderate and mild cases from breeding). In East Germany and other Iron Curtain countries, where working ability and health were at a premium and money was not to be wasted (except secretly by party officials), faster progress was made by more restrictive breeding, of only those with the best hips (and bitework). In the U.S., the categories of relative hip joint tightness (and other features) changed somewhat over the years, until lately when we have three grades of OFA-certifiable "normal" hips: excellent, good, and fair. The OFA also classifies Borderline, mild, moderate, and severe HD. The best progress in percentage of normal offspring is seen in the mating of "excellent" to "excellent", then "good" to "excellent", and so on. In recent years more and more fanciers have concluded that "fair" is not worth much more than "mild HD" as a criterion for breeding.
Two movements arose in the past decade or two that promise better progress than given by adherence to OFA numbers as the way to coxofemoral nirvana. One is the proposal to use a voluntary "open registry", and that is promulgated by Center for Genetic Disease Control (GDC), an organization which has laudably focussed our attention on the elbow dysplasias that are big problems in some breeds, nagging ones in others. The other is PennHIP (University of Pennsylvania Veterinary School Hip Improvement Program). I had the pleasure of working with the OFA's first "program director", Dr. Wayne Riser, when I was researching and preparing my book, Canine Hip Dysplasia, and I also have had the good fortune to visit Dr. Gail Smith (PennHIP) in Philadelphia in the early 1980s, and was a special guest at some of their seminars years later. I reviewed his methods, philosophy, and results, and am increasingly a supporter of this protocol. My experience with "wedge" radiography, palpation, and follow-up OFA-AVMA radiographs has convinced me that joint laxity is by far the leading indicator of incipient dysplasia, and that early diagnoses or pre-diagnostic predictors are not only possible but entirely feasible. For practical purposes, in most breeds, you could say that laxityy IS dysplasia. Good statistical evidence is being developed to prove that breeders (through PennHIP-licensed vets) can detect the signs of future dysplasia and degenerative joint disease (arthritis) at a pup's early age. Early enough to cull it or them from the breeding programs, start over with better stock, choose better partners, and improve the general welfare of their chosen breed. Or at least the quality end of the breeding publics will do this.
What PennHIP offers are younger ages at which to identify the most likely carriers of the most bad (or good) genes, a more quantitative (numerical index) evaluation, a more natural positioning of the dog, and faster progress in reducing the incidence oF HD. This is no Topsy who arrives on the scene "full-growed, not born", nor a sudden discovery like that of penicillin, but the result of building "line upon line, precept upon precept". It has its roots in the fulcrum method I practiced in the 1960s and '70s, in various attempts to position the patient more closely similar to the stance in which weight and stresses are put on the joints, and in the Bardens-Ortolani concept of palpation to discover covert laxity in young puppies. Statistics prove very good reliability in radiographically predicting which pups are at greatest risk of developing DJD (secondary degenerative joint disease), even to as young as four months.
My logical, skeptical, analytical bent leads me to favor the position utilized in PennHIP, that of a dog that looks like it is standing, but the picture is upside-down. I tried for a long time to devise a means of radiographing the dog while it was awake and standing, but the difficulties included keeping the dog from moving, and placing a film cassette between its thighs and getting the shadow of its hips exposed while at the same time not having the dog stand spread-eagled. I knew that the extended-leg AVMA standard-view position actually "wound up" the joint capsule, the ligaments around the hip socket, when the dog was in that ventro-dorsal mode on its back on the table; that the position tended to show a false tightness of the soft tissues, driving the femoral head into the socket and making it look like a deeper seat.
My own recourse was the wedge, a can or firm roll placed between the femurs while the hocks were pressed toward one another, in a leverage action that pulled loosely-held heads out of the sockets. This was fairly good in pups from four to about twenty or so months, but had a few minor drawbacks. The PennHIP method first seats the heads of the femurs in the acetabula by pressing them in from the "outside" (laterally). Then, while still in the knees-up position and still under anesthesia, the distraction force is applied medially to push the femurs apart and reveal latent or otherwise hidden looseness. Measurements of joint space in both views are made, and a ratio reported (Distraction Index, DI). A threshold level of 0.3 (30% of the way from no space to "horrible") is probably the best "feel-good" floor for the serious breeder, though other aspects must be factored in, such as size of the gene pool (as in a rare breed), or scarce but extremely valuable characteristics such as hunting ability, health, or temperament.
A breed with very few representatives might have to accept a slightly slower rate of progress (through less stringent initial joint laxity/congruity requirements) until the other desirable characteristics are assured of survival. After all, you wouldn't want to end up with all the dogs in a breed missing half their teeth just because in the beginning of the program those with such mouths also had the best hips.
In the case of a populous breed like the German Shepherd Dog, the critical genetic diversity is not really easy because of heavy linebreeding. In America it has been Lance or Bear; in Germany it's Q-litter Arminius, Palme, Lasso di Val Sole, and one or two others. Several years ago Dalmatian breeders had the opportunity to rid their breed of a widespread genetic defect by simply adding a sprinkling of Pointers (these breeds are very close in origin, anyway) and following that with blood testing and elimination of carriers. They rebelled against the idea, even though there would not have been any change in the appearance of future Dals. Today this breed is one of the worst in regard to health problems. It was a "simple" trait, governed by one or two alleles (genes).
HD, on the other hand, is a polygenic trait, governed by many genes, and therefore much more difficult to weed out. In addition, HD is not the only problem in the breed. We are seeing many other defects that can be tied to a lack of genetic diversity, and to climb out of that hole, American GSD breeders need to use German lines (judiciously selected so we don't get all their problems along with any benefits), and Germans need to keep some lines going that avoid the bottleneck of gene pools now being used. There are almost no choices of studs coming down from Marko Cellerland, anymore, for example. While genetic diversity may be the only or best way to improve on the health and structure problems we have in both German and American lines, there is another answer or approach to the HD problem. That is: a more stringent criterion for selection of breeding partners, a criterion based on better diagnosis of hip joint laxity than we have been used to for the past 30 years. After close to 20,000 evaluations so far, the PennHIP database has more than sufficient evidence and logic-based conclusions on which to decide what you should do. The picture is clearly developed in favor of looking for a PennHIP-certified practitioner before you breed those dogs.
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Copyright 1998, Fred Lanting. Permission required in writing or e-mail from the author in order to forward or reprint. Fred Lanting, Mr.GSD@juno.com
Fred's all-breed lectures, the next of which are scheduled as follows:
***Aug. 22nd, either a.m. or p.m., the other half-day being for the
Gait-and-structure seminar, same location and sponsor:
Seattle area: Tumwater WA City Council Bldg,
Just south of Olympia/Tumwater, Exit 101, Israel Road.
Contact Karenb@cted.wa.gov
***Sept. 12, late afternoon after UKC show, Detroit MI suburb.
Contact fantasy@ismi.net