#designer dog

[toyastales]

That dog has style!

[esther-pentecostal]

RESCUE PUPPY.🖤🐕

[adventures-in-therapy]

Kai is TWO today!! Can you believe it????

https://www.instagram.com/p/CBYN9dYjWR5/?igshid=1v9943tbtb1pu

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A post shared by Malakai String (@malakai.0613) on Jun 13, 2020 at 7:20am PDT

[drferox]

The Puppy Farm

@courtney-climbing-out said to @ask-drferox:  Wait, now I want to know why Addison’s is your favorite endocrinopathy and what happened with the argument with the puppy mill?

Addison’s is my favourite endocrinopathy because we can treat it so well. You can take a dog that looks like lukewarm death and bring it back to life with just a simple steroid. And they respond to treatment so well. They live nearly normal lives and that’s rare enough with chronic illnesses. I did a video on it ages ago here.

As for the puppy farm, and I say farm because that’s what it was. They had all these dogs in pens on a farm, about 50 breeding females plus the males, and were bringing in a litter or two every week. They were producing a product, and a ‘premium’  products at that. They didn’t sell to pet stores. They sold to buyers directly, even shipping them overseas as far as the USA, already vaccinated, desexed and microchipped. They had produced thousands of dogs by the time I encountered them. 

But everything just legal enough so the RSPCA inspectors couldn’t stop them, just grow increasingly frustrated about their operation.

Anyway, among their various sins, the puppies they produced started throwing congenital defects as they insisted they were not inbreeding, but also not buying in any new genetics, and as something of a genetics enthusiast this made me very angry.

In particular, their puppies were throwing base narrow canines (lower canine teeth too close to the middle, so they strike the roof of the mouth when the mouth is closed) and ectopic eyelashes (extra eyelashes growing on the inside of the eyelid to rub on the eyeball), and they couldn’t have that because these pups came with a ‘health guarantee’ so were getting fixed up before shipping out.

So to solve it, they would stop breeding the problem pair together, but instead of removing them from their breeding pool they would cross them to different partners. And then cross their offspring back together. So the problem parents became problem grandparents as these puppy farmers were surprised them the problem showed up again!

They were also seeing inbreeding depression and probably just exhaustion of the breeding bitches as their litter numbers dropped. We had spirited debates over this.

This culminated in a rather piffed off Ferox, in her own time, writing a twelve page document on the genetics of these dogs, complete with diagrams and custom coloured clip art to more clearly explain the concept, about why they were Doing It Wrong, and how to fix it.

This document was given to them and promptly ignored, but a copy was also given to my vet mentor at the time, who dealt with them more than I did.

The document made several predictions:

Increased incidents of base narrow canines and ectopic eyelashes because the carrying dogs genes are propagated more widely in the gene pool

Increased risk of structural abnormalities, like underbites

Increased risk of immune mediated disorderd and probably immune mediated disorders like Addison’s, Hypothyroidism, and Diabetes Melitus

Lower litter sizes and pup survival rates

So subsequently when they went to my mentor to complain or express concern that these problems were becoming more common, she could gleefully point to this document and say they were told. In 2011.

And it gives me a small degree of satisfaction to look at this puppy farm’s advertised litters and see that 30% of those litters only had one puppy in it (a single puppy is very rare in dogs) when they used to average six.

[apetemoss]

I tried to explain to him he needed to move over so I could get in my bed...

[the-lonewandering-courier]

I have a sneaking suspicion she knows I'm eating...

[apetemoss]

Please enjoy my pupper. I love him more than anything else. His name is Billings but we call him Billy. His teeth are sharp and my hands are missing skin. Please send help.

@thebibliosphere

[drferox]

I imagine it would be difficult giving a medical review on a mixed breed, especially F1s, since the traits they could get vary a lot more than purebreeds. For example, my first gen labradoodle was unfortunate to get long skinny legs and a massive body, which rendered him unable to even stand for long periods despite keeping him as healthy as possible; yet other labradoodles are built much better from what I've seen of them. Do you agree this to be the case?

Labradoodles are funny. There’s the F1 Labradoodles, where one parent was a Labrador and one was a poodle, or there’s the multi-generation Labradoodles, including the ‘Australian Labradoodle’ which does contain both Labrador and poodle, but may also contain things like Cocker Spaniel and Curly Coated Retrievers.

Please note the disclaimer that theseposts are about the breed from a veterinary viewpoint as seenin clinical practice and isnot intended as a personal insult against your favorite breed. Thisis general advice for what is common, often with a scientificconsensus but sometimes based on personal experiences, and is not aguarantee of what an individual animal is going to encounter in their life. That said, I have quite a lot of experience with Australian Labradoodles from one very large puppy farm, both farm dogs and adopted pets.

It’s also worth realizing that Labradoodles can come in different sizes, just like the parent poodle breed can. They vary in coat type and color, with fleece coats and trendier colors attracting higher prices.

Hip and Elbow Dysplasia are present in both parent breeds, and all breeding labradoodles should be screened. Unfortunately due to limited genetic diversity in certain populations, this isn’t necessarily predictive of the result in the puppies.

Ectopic Cilia became increasingly common in the puppies I saw. This condition causes extra eyelashes to grow on the inside of the eyelid, rubbing against the eyeball. This requires delicate surgery to remove the aberrant hair follicle, otherwise the dog is left with an eyelash permanently rubbing against its eye, causing ulcers and pain.

Floppy ears plus non-shedding coat equals a strong predisposition for ear infections, especially yeast infections. For all the fancy talk breeders do about ‘designing the breed for health’ you’d think they could select for hairless ears.

The breed, especially the individuals I saw, had some interesting genetic pedigrees, and this most certainly reduced their genetic diversity. As expected, this is gradually increasing auto-immune conditions.

Hypothyroidism is usually caused by auto-immune process attacking the thyroid gland, and this is more common that average in multi-generation labradoodles.

Addisons Disease, is thought to have a similar disease process, and it’s common in both parent breeds. While it’s usually a purebred dog condition, it is a distinctly Labradoodle disease and should be considered in any dog with vague symptoms.

Now, permit me a rant about genetics.

I can’t speak for every labradoodle breeding establishment, but keeping a ‘closed’ studbook of less than 100 dogs will lead to inbreeding. Refusing to remove dogs that throw problem puppies from the gene pool and simply giving them a new partner will allow those problem genes to propagate in your population. The fact that you took two originally different breeds and repeatedly crossed the offspring back to themselves provides you no benefit to genetic diversity or hybrid vigor, you don’t get to ride that train when you’re actively undermining any benefits it gave you.

So don’t believe these dogs are ‘better’ than a purebred, because they could be equally as inbred, if not more.