Sydney Uni And Uk Rspca

[shortstep]

http://www.rvc.ac.uk/VEctAR/Reports.cfm#Tail

McGreevy's work in the UK on tracking dog health problems which is funded by the RSPCA, there are a few of the most recent reports listed, below is one that may be of interest.

Injuries to dogs tails

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20581358

The RSPCA is also funding a student to do more work on breed related diseases.

'Dan will be taking up the RSPCA funded PhD studentship in collaboration with the University of Sydney, starting October 2010.'

17 June 2010

Dan will be taking up a PhD studentship within VEctAR looking at breed related disease in dogs and cats. Dan is currently completing the MSc in veterinary epidemiology at the RVC and will take up the PhD studentship on the 1st October 2010. The studentship (Online surveillance of inherited and acquired disease in dogs and cats) is funded by the RSPCA and is a collaboration between the RVC and the University of Sydney (Ass Professors Paul McGreevy and Peter Thomson).'

Just a bit more

PhD Projects

RSPCA funded, online surveillance of inherited and acquired disorders in dogs and cats

October 2010 - 2012

Mr D. O'Neill, Dr D. Brodbelt, Prof D. Church (RVC),

Ass Profs P. Thomson and P. McGreevy (University of Sydney)

Aims: To estimate the prevalence of inherited and acquired disorders in pure-bred dogs and cats in order to identify breeds at greatest risk of specific conditions.

Relevance of project: With the publication of the Bateson report (2010) there is an acknowledged lack of data documenting the prevalence of major disease in pure breed animals. These data are increasingly required and this project will contribute to the long term monitoring of disease in practice attending animals in the UK.

Bateson, P. 2010 Independent Inquiry into Dog Breeding. University of Cambridge. 1-65.

Edited August 24, 2010 by shortstep

[WreckitWhippet]

Didn't McGreevy get given the arse a while back ? not before Dogs NSW handed him a substantial amount of our members money though.

[asal]

n how valid is it if there isnt a parrallel study on genetic disease incidence in designer dogs... n mongrels as well??????

[shortstep]

Didn't McGreevy get given the arse a while back ? not before Dogs NSW handed him a substantial amount of our members money though.

Not sure what you arte talking about, can you share more?

He seems very busy to me. Seems to be knocking out study after study. I posted the pug faced study below but no one commented on it. 2012/13 will be the year it really begins I think.

[mita]

Aims: To estimate the prevalence of inherited and acquired disorders in pure-bred dogs and cats in order to identify breeds at greatest risk of specific conditions.

Compared with what?

By contrast, studies conducted in northern europe made comparison across purebreds and mixed breeds. What's important is to establish the incidence of conditions across the general dog and cat populations.

Yes, I remember an appeal going out from these folk at Sydney University asking for donations to fund the project. I sure wouldn't 'donate'.

[deerhound owner]

Didn't McGreevy get given the arse a while back ? not before Dogs NSW handed him a substantial amount of our members money though.

Not sure what you arte talking about, can you share more?

He seems very busy to me. Seems to be knocking out study after study. I posted the pug faced study below but no one commented on it. 2012/13 will be the year it really begins I think.

That is how the scientific world works. The higher up you get, the more students and collaborations you get. That means you are often associated with the research but you don't have to personally collect all the data and analyse it yourself. It's not common to see papers with only one author as it takes a lot of work to produce the research and you need input from a lot of people. Thats not to say he's not very busy anyway

The study on the effect of cephalic index on brain rotation that you mentioned was actually conducted by a Masters student from Canada who was over here to do some study. She was a fantastic person and worked very hard to produce that work. It's sad to see it instantly dismissed by people just because they have a persoal dislike of one of the authors. I think it was a facinating study and it will be interesting to see what information comes to light with further research in this area.

Prehaps if you put a post in the general section you may have a more robust discussion as people often don't come into the Media section.

Cheers

Edited August 24, 2010 by deerhound owner

[deerhound owner]

Aims: To estimate the prevalence of inherited and acquired disorders in pure-bred dogs and cats in order to identify breeds at greatest risk of specific conditions.

Compared with what?

By contrast, studies conducted in northern europe made comparison across purebreds and mixed breeds. What's important is to establish the incidence of conditions across the general dog and cat populations.

Yes, I remember an appeal going out from these folk at Sydney University asking for donations to fund the project. I sure wouldn't 'donate'.

Prevalence is the number of individuals affected by a disease in a given time period ie. how common is the disease.

Incidence is the risk of developing a disease in a given time period ie. what is my chance of getting cancer in the next 2 years

Collecting incidence data like you suggest would involve longitudinal studies over a long period of time to assess the number of new cases that develop. I thought that the inclusion of crossbred information was discussed at the Building better dogs seminar in Melbourne and it had been agreed that it would be included. The problem with crossbreed data is that it is difficult to confirm what breeds went into the mix so it's hard to see if a particular cross is mor or less healthy than it's respective parent breeeds. Generalisations can still be made though as were done in the northern European studies.

[mita]

Aims: To estimate the prevalence of inherited and acquired disorders in pure-bred dogs and cats in order to identify breeds at greatest risk of specific conditions.

Compared with what?

By contrast, studies conducted in northern europe made comparison across purebreds and mixed breeds. What's important is to establish the incidence of conditions across the general dog and cat populations.

Yes, I remember an appeal going out from these folk at Sydney University asking for donations to fund the project. I sure wouldn't 'donate'.

Prevalence is the number of individuals affected by a disease in a given time period ie. how common is the disease.

Incidence is the risk of developing a disease in a given time period ie. what is my chance of getting cancer in the next 2 years

Collecting incidence data like you suggest would involve longitudinal studies over a long period of time to assess the number of new cases that develop. I thought that the inclusion of crossbred information was discussed at the Building better dogs seminar in Melbourne and it had been agreed that it would be included. The problem with crossbreed data is that it is difficult to confirm what breeds went into the mix so it's hard to see if a particular cross is mor or less healthy than it's respective parent breeeds. Generalisations can still be made though as were done in the northern European studies.

Prevalence studies which include only pure-breeds, can lead to conclusions which are THEN interpreted as being comparative

We also need incidence studies, however more time and resource demanding they are, because they bring up the kind of data that many people mistakenly believe that the prevalence studies do.

You're certainly correct about the problems with crossbreed data. The fact that pedigree breeding permits scientifically sound study of purebreds, leaves purebred dogs in the spotlight for scrutiny. And public perception follows... that the results of such scrutiny are comparison-based with the total dog population.

[shortstep]

Prevalence is the number of individuals affected by a disease in a given time period ie. how common is the disease.

Incidence is the risk of developing a disease in a given time period ie. what is my chance of getting cancer in the next 2 years

Collecting incidence data like you suggest would involve longitudinal studies over a long period of time to assess the number of new cases that develop. I thought that the inclusion of crossbred information was discussed at the Building better dogs seminar in Melbourne and it had been agreed that it would be included. The problem with crossbreed data is that it is difficult to confirm what breeds went into the mix so it's hard to see if a particular cross is mor or less healthy than it's respective parent breeeds. Generalisations can still be made though as were done in the northern European studies.

Here is the UK data for your breed

http://www.thekennelclub.org.uk/download/1...hsdeerhound.pdf

As you can see most of the areas they (RSPCA and the Uni) targeted for real animal welfare issues in large dogs are listed for your breed. It will be intersting to see how they will end up dealing with large breed dogs. I look forward to seeing reserch in this area.

[Steve]

Same question for me still stands. How is he going to define a purebred dog ? If he cant say which is a registered dog with pedigree papers no amount of research is going to mean anything to anyone.

He has admitted this is a problem and promised me in front of 250 people that it would be addressed.

He was removed as head of the project but was still there and is still very much a part of it.

[deerhound owner]

Prevalence is the number of individuals affected by a disease in a given time period ie. how common is the disease.

Incidence is the risk of developing a disease in a given time period ie. what is my chance of getting cancer in the next 2 years

Collecting incidence data like you suggest would involve longitudinal studies over a long period of time to assess the number of new cases that develop. I thought that the inclusion of crossbred information was discussed at the Building better dogs seminar in Melbourne and it had been agreed that it would be included. The problem with crossbreed data is that it is difficult to confirm what breeds went into the mix so it's hard to see if a particular cross is mor or less healthy than it's respective parent breeeds. Generalisations can still be made though as were done in the northern European studies.

Here is the UK data for your breed

http://www.thekennelclub.org.uk/download/1...hsdeerhound.pdf

As you can see most of the areas they (RSPCA and the Uni) targeted for real animal welfare issues in large dogs are listed for your breed. It will be intersting to see how they will end up dealing with large breed dogs. I look forward to seeing reserch in this area.

Thanks for the link, a very interesting read. There is currently a lot of debate amongst deerhound breeders about the trend for them to keep being bred bigger and bigger away from the sorts of sizes they were back in the day when they were used for hunting. Personally I think that they are getting too big and that it is likely leading to some of the diseases identified in the report and which certainly could cause some welfare concerns. Do I want my dog to drop dead at 5 in the middle of a walk from a heart attack... not really and i'd be happy to work with anyone towards improving my chances that that didn't happen. Again I think it's important that breeders need to avoid breeding to the extremes of the standards and particulalry judges need to stop awarding these dogs. Prehaps a change to the standard is what is needed to allay some of the welfare concerns, I son't see this as a major interfearence with my chosen breed rather they are returning it to more what it was like historically.

I agree though, would love to see more research into large breeds in general.

I know what you mean about people missinterpreting prevalence data but without doing the basic, easiest to do studies first, it's near impossible to get funding for anything more technical. Money makes the world go round unfortunately.

I'm writing a paper at the moment about differences between purebred of different sizes and longevities and crossbreds in their behavioural ageing, interesting results so far... i'll let you know when it comes out

[deerhound owner]

Same question for me still stands. How is he going to define a purebred dog ? If he cant say which is a registered dog with pedigree papers no amount of research is going to mean anything to anyone.

He has admitted this is a problem and promised me in front of 250 people that it would be addressed.

He was removed as head of the project but was still there and is still very much a part of it.

From memory they were going to link it in with the practice management software used by vets. If a question could be added (if there isn't one already) about "where did your dog come from?" It would then be easy to control for this factor in any subsequent analysis and look at differences in prevalence rates between different sources. You still might get some error from people saying.. "yeah I brought it from a registered breeder" when they may not be refering to a CC? All studies have some sources of error, the trick is to try to minimise them as much as possible and not give up on a project just cause it's not 100% perfect. No scientific advances would ever be made that way.

Edited August 24, 2010 by deerhound owner

[Christina]

I cannot understand why the RSPCA should be funding this at all.

Constantly saying they are short of money, short of staff etc & many cases of animal cruelty get left or overlooked due to these issues surely they would be better putting their money & resources into more inspections of puppy farms, abuse, cruelty & neglect cases & dealing with these.

They are supposed to be there for this purpose.

While study into these particular issues are important I think this is a minor issue in their role, mostly dealing with & euthanising cross breeds & cruelty cases.

Sounds like another

Lets discredit pedigree breeder thing.

[Steve]

I cannot understand why the RSPCA should be funding this at all.

Constantly saying they are short of money, short of staff etc & many cases of animal cruelty get left or overlooked due to these issues surely they would be better putting their money & resources into more inspections of puppy farms, abuse, cruelty & neglect cases & dealing with these.

They are supposed to be there for this purpose.

While study into these particular issues are important I think this is a minor issue in their role, mostly dealing with & euthanising cross breeds & cruelty cases.

Sounds like another

Lets discredit pedigree breeder thing.

Thats because thats what it is.

[Souff]

Gee whiz:

"Dogs with docked tails were significantly less likely to sustain a tail injury; however, approximately 500 dogs would need to be docked in order to prevent one tail injury. "

I got a swine flu shot a while back, because I had a 1 in umpteen thousand chance of catching the swine flu. Didn't want to be unlucky now, did I. Might have caused me a bit of pain and suffering.

Might have even killed me, they said.

Years ago, I got the little Souffs vaccinated against Polio, diptheria, tetanus, and other horrible things when they were kids because I didn't want them to be at risk of contracting something where the odds were quite long, but would have stuffed their little lives had I not vaccinated and kept them safe.

Did the same with the dogs too ... and vaccinated them from nasty happenings that in all probability they were less likely to catch than I realised but have nasty consequences if caught.

Docked the tails, did the dewclaws .... and they are all very happy with the results because they have never had to feel the pain of tail damage or ripped dew claws.

No vet bills for expensive surgery to amputate the damaged tail. No traumatised dog.

Anyway, it is official now:

This report tells us that 1 : 500 is the ratio for tail injuries.

Protecting 500 vulnerable dogs from tail injury doesn't bother me one little bit. Not one little bit.

Because the 1 that does get the seriously injured tail is a dog that is changed forever, not just physically, but emotionally.

The New Zealanders and other countries got it right and legally chose to protect all of the 500 dogs.

THEY GOT IT RIGHT and their vulnerable dogs will never have to suffer because of the stupidity of governments and advisers like this.

Souff

Edited August 29, 2010 by Souff