Wrinkly Dogs Get Nip And Tuck

[Steve]

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/more-news...2-1226040642804

ROLY poly designer dogs are undergoing radical facelifts to remove their deliberately bred folds of floppy flesh. Almost all shar pei bred in Australia are forced to have plastic surgery to save their sight.

More than eight out of 10 of the distinctive dogs suffers eye deformities that require going under the knife for a nip and tuck.

But owners who pay up to $2500 for one of the designer pups are instead dumping the animals at alarming rates when they discover they have to fork out another $2000 for their pet to have the saggy skin tightened around their eyes.

While other animal breeds suffer genetic conditions needing surgical correction, none is beset with the high rate of eye disorders that afflict the shar pei.

Retired Melbourne grandmother Amanda Booth is using her life savings to pay $15,000 a year to rescue and re-home as many of the dumped dogs as possible.

President of the Shar Pei Rescue Inc group which she established three years ago, Ms Booth said hundreds more dogs were put down and she blamed greedy breeders.

"Some breeders are simply failing in their duty to warn prospective owners of some of the veterinary and personality problems associated with the ancient Chinese breed," Ms Booth said.

Vet Scot Plummer from the South Eastern Animal Hospital said heavy skin on their head forces a shar pei's eyelids to turn in, causing their eyelashes to scratch their cornea, leading to blindness.

He performs 50 entropion surgical procedures on the rescued dogs in which he cuts skin from the eyes to give a dog the appearance of having had a nip and tuck.

Ms Booth wants new laws to try to breed out dogs whose litters require entropion surgery.

Queensland sister and brother Rumple and Stiltskin underwent the surgery last week after being surrendered at 16 months.

They are recovering with Ms Booth until they are adopted.

[Guest Ams]

How do the statistics match up with the MDBA/DOL survey? I would expect rescue to have a higher incidence of entropion in the breed as it certainly is high on the list of reasons for dumping them.

[Staranais]

The specialist veterinary opthomologist that I spent some time in clinic with reckoned he operated on sharpei to reduce excess forehead skin & entropion very commonly.

I'd wonder if it's more common with back yard bred sharpei than registered ones? Either way, something for the kennel club to do something about if they want to retain good public opinion (i.e., I think the kennel club either need to show that it's the BYB and not them producing these dogs, or if it is them, do something to stop registered dogs being bred to such an extreme).

[aussielover]

I don't think Shar Pei's are actually meant to be that wrinkly but perhaps a breeder could clarify?

I've seen photos of chinese bred dogs or dogs from chinese lines and they appear no where near as wrinkled as what you see in Aus.

I think BYBers who don't know a lot about the breed probably think the wrinklier the better which is contributing to the problem.

[Guest Ams]

Here are some links to what shar pei used to look like before they were changed by US.

http://www.sharpeiclubhk.com/Sharpei1.html

http://www.hkshar-pei.com/index.cfm?pageid=1

[Guest Ams]

.

Edited April 18, 2011 by Ams

[Guest Ams]

oops. too many wrinkles. :D

Edited April 18, 2011 by Ams

[Steve]

The MDBA survey backs up the fact that there are more Shar Pei - lots more with eye problems than with out eye problems. Dogs Queensland have also acknowledged that there is a very high incidence in the breed.

[Guest Ams]

Is there a move amongst breeders to try and reduce the wrinkling to bring them back in line with the original Hong Kong style pei?

[Steve]

Is there a move amongst breeders to try and reduce the wrinkling to bring them back in line with the original Hong Kong style pei?

I wouldnt think so. According to Dogs Queensland the problem is caused by selecting for small eyes - no mention of the wrinkles.

More wrinkles is also associated with more incidence of Shar Pei fever.

[megan_]

Is there a move amongst breeders to try and reduce the wrinkling to bring them back in line with the original Hong Kong style pei?

I wouldnt think so. According to Dogs Queensland the problem is caused by selecting for small eyes - no mention of the wrinkles.

More wrinkles is also associated with more incidence of Shar Pei fever.

Steve - if the number of wrinkle is associated with shar pei fever, then why isn't their a move to breed less wrinkles? The poor dogs seem to be suffering from the trend of breeding extremes for looks IMO.

It would be interesting to see what dogs are winning in the show room. I hope it isn't the super wrinkly variety and.or dogs that have had the surgery.

[Guest Ams]

Megan the discovery of this link is relatively new.

http://www.wvc.vetsuite.com/Templates/Clean.aspx

[shortstep]

I posted this recently about the excessive wrinkle gene being connected to the fever disease

A New Wrinkle on Why Shar-Peis Suffer Fevers

by Elisabeth Pain on 17 March 2011, 5:00 PM | Permanent Link | 0 Comments

Email Print | More Previous Article Next Article Enlarge Image

The same mutations that wrinkle Shar-Peis make them susceptible to fevers.

Credit: ThinkstockA mutation responsible for the characteristically wrinkly skin of Shar-Peis may also make them sick, according to a new study. The finding could eventually help dog breeders produce healthier Shar-Peis and may offer a new explanation for why some people are plagued with periodic fever.

Originally from China, Shar-Pei puppies have seduced the Western world with their wrinkles, encouraging breeders to select for dogs that would keep the trait as adults. (In the original breed, puppies lose most of their wrinkled skin as they grow.) Underlying the breed’s thick and extensive crinkles and furrows is the accumulation of a common skin component called hyaluronic acid (HA). Also characteristic of the breed is a disorder known as Familial Shar-Pei Fever (FSF), which causes apparently unprovoked yet recurrent episodes of fever and inflammation.

Even though the canine disease has long been thought to be hereditary, a genetic cause remained to be found. In a study in which they compared the DNA of 24 Shar-Peis having FSF with 17 ones that don’t (not all of the breed suffers the fevers), an international team of researchers recently identified a region on chromosome 13 associated with increased susceptibility to the disease. In parallel, the same team, led by Kerstin Lindblad-Toh of Uppsala University in Sweden and the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, screened the Shar-Pei genome for signs of what gives the breed its characteristic wrinkles. A comparison of 50 Shar-Peis with a control group of canines from 24 other breeds pointed toward a location, near a gene that codes for an HA-producing enzyme called HAS2, that overlapped with the FSF susceptibility region. Looking more closely at this area, the team then identified a mutation—duplications of a DNA segment—that was present in highly wrinkled Shar-Peis but not in control breeds.

The researchers next looked at whether this same mutation was associated with FSF susceptibility, comparing 28 affected and 16 healthy Shar-Peis. A large number of the duplications appears to predispose animals to FSF, the team reports today in PLoS Genetics. Lindblad-Toh says she suspected that the genetic causes for the thickened skin and for the fever syndrome would be near each other but not that they “would be the same mutation.” Further studies on Shar-Pei skin cells by Lindblad-Toh’s team showed that the more times the duplicated DNA segment is repeated, the more HAS2 is produced.

The findings are “really exciting news,” says Anna Simon of Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre in the Netherlands, a clinician-scientist who specializes in fevers. FSF resembles some of the hereditary periodic fever syndromes in humans, a group of rare autoinflammatory disorders whose most common form affects between 10,000 and 20,000 patients in the world, Simon estimates. Although mutations affecting inflammatory molecules have been identified in some cases of the syndromes, more than half remain unexplained. “Hyaluronic acid was outside of the scope” of fever researchers, in spite of its already-documented ability to stimulate the immune system, Simon says. It may now help explain some of the cases that had no known genetic cause, she suggests.

As for Shar-Peis, the study offers a good example of “the unintended consequences of selective breeding,” says genome scientist Joshua Akey of the University of Washington, Seattle. While selecting for excessive wrinkling, breeders “were also selecting for Shar-Pei fever and increasing that in frequency. That’s probably generally true of a lot of traits that were selected for in dog breeding.”

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011...s-s.html?ref=hp

[shortstep]

Just wanted to add that there has been several face lift stories due to breeding for excessive skin and wrinkles in the UK press as of late, not just sp but all some of the mastiff breeds. Some prety shocking photos in the news stories too.

[Nekhbet]

yes the shar pei is not the only breed to suffer excessive wrinkling. Have you seen what some Neopolitan mastiffs look like these days?

[KatrinaM]

I could be wrong, I hope a breeder could correct me, but dont responsible breeders tack a great number of baby pups eyes to prevent damage?

[Nekhbet]

Megan - http://www.dogzonline.com.au/breeds/pastch...ns/shar-pei.asp

I think the point should be the breed should not require surgical tacking in the first place. If your dogs need surgery simply to be able to see properly you should think, hmmm breeding's a bit wrong there.

[Staranais]

Yes. If the kennel club doesn't do something in response to these stories, & these problems, then IMO they're practically digging their own grave.

[megan_]

thanks Nek. The dog on the front page doesn't look that wrinkly to me, but some of them in the current breed list are very wrinkly indeed.

For the life of me I can't understand the "I love this breed so I'll breed dogs that have to have surgery just so they can see" mentality. I put them in the same boat as BYB's deliberately breeding runts and marketing them as teacups. Putting looks/trends before health is unethical no matter which way you look at it.

[SHAR PEI Rescue Inc]

These two pei are more Chinese style than a lot of pei we see through here. They were bred by a reg breeder interstate who sold them on limited register without desexing contracts. The purchaser had intended to breed them (they are brother and sister).

However, these two have received little if any training and although very friendly, obviously haven't received a great amount of stimulation as they escaped the confines of their yard on more than one occasion.

After numerous escapes and impounds, the owner decided to surrender them both to the pound. The pound then contacted us and we had them delivered straight to our vet for consult.

As per the MDBA code of ethics for rescue, we contacted the breeder and told her they had been impounded, transferred to SPR Inc and had since been vet checked and would need entropion surgery. The breeder neither wanted them returned nor offered to contribute to the cost of desex/vacc/entropion.

Meanwhile, the Herald Sun contacted us for the interview and we offered these two as examples given they wanted before, during and after pics. We didn't go out of our way to pick especially rolly dogs but offered the dogs who were the last to arrive into our care for the article.

The statistic of 82% of Shar Pei need entropion was taken from the MDBA records, however, I would have to say that the numbers we see through SPR Inc, being 8-9 dogs in 10 are similar.

Edited April 19, 2011 by SHAR PEI Rescue Inc