there isnt much I could find on them, so could you talk about Caucasian Mountain Dogs / Tibetan Mastiffs?
I would prefer it if folks didn’t ask for two breeds in the same ask, but since I can talk about Tibetan Mastiffs but not Caucasian Mountain Dogs I will answer for that breed only.
But first, as usual, please note the disclaimer. Theseposts are about the breed from a veterinary viewpoint as seenin clinical practice, i.e. the problems we are faced with. It’s notthe be-all and end-all of the breed and is not to make a judgementabout whether the breed is right for you. If you are asking for anopinion about these animals in a veterinary setting, that is what youwill get. It’s not going to be all sunshine and cupcakes, 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 your dog is going to encounter in their life.
(Image source Wikipedia by Pleple2000)
Tibetan Mastiffs are rare because they’re huge, and living in suburbia doesn’t grant many people the space to keep such a big animal. They’re also not easy dogs to keep or train and I can’t say I’m fond of them. The breeding scene for these dogs was also interesting and highly political, with odd practices such as mating two different dogs to the same bitch and DNA testing the resulting pups, breeding a bitch every season and being very demanding about progesterone supplements for pregnant bitches even if they had no history of infertility. We clashed a couple of times.
It’s worth noting that I didn’t actually get to see and treat many of these dogs when they were old, because the local breeders were in the habit of desexing these dogs after their show careers were over, and rehoming them as adults.
Hip Dysplasia is a big issue in the breed, and no surprise there for a dog of such large size. Somewhat concerning, the rates of hip dysplasia have not improved in the last 30 years, despite screening. Now that might be because certain breeders have been screening, but breeding dogs with bad hips anyway, yet still assuring puppy buyers that their breeding dogs have ‘had their hips checked’, but that’s none of my business.
Entropion and Ectropion (eyelids rolling in and out respectively) are extremely common in the breed, as is Distichia (extra eyelashes that rub on the eyeball). This is compounded by many of these dogs having excessive skin on the head, a roly poly look similar to St Bernards. These eyes need surgery in order to not be a constant source of irritation or pain for the dog.
I saw lots of pups with overbites, though most were not overly severe. I didn’t get to see these ;ups grow to maturity, so I don’t know how they fared.
The breed is also reported to develop hypothyroidism and Addison’s disease (both immune mediated in origin) and Cushing’s syndrome, but I didn’t get to see enough of these dogs beyond middle age to comment on the frequency of these conditions.
Interestingly, it was a male dog of this breed which was one of the only two dogs I have encountered so far that I would have considered as being possibly asexual. We had a male tibetan mastiff patient who was physically and physiologically normal as far as we could tell, but refused to breed the bitches he was put with. Normal anatomy, normal bloodwork, no response to testosterone supplementation, he just did not respond to bitches in heat. He wasn’t remotely interested in them.
Even when attempting manual collection of semen, this dog was basically impossible to get a sample from. He would not get more than 50% of the way to an erection. We declined to attempt electroejaculation because at this point it was just getting ridiculous, and we decided as a clinic that we weren’t going to electrocute a dog’s prostate on welfare grounds and that the whole enterprise was going too far, but I did think it was interesting. So we just said enough's enough, let the dog get on with his life.
Now, whether this individual’s lack of sexual behavior is a inherent characteristic of his, or whether it was a learned behavior due to a bad experience interacting with one of his owner’s female dogs (which were large and frankly aggressive) I have no way of knowing, but both scenarios seem equally likely at this stage.
