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BU Guest Editorial
by Sheila Bowman
Rupik Boxers, UK
It’s an honor to be asked to write the guest editorial for the Boxer Underground. The obvious subject, in the current climate, has to be the health of our Boxers.
In the UK we have a pretty good track record on health and have been held over the years by both the veterinary profession and the KC to be a breed which faces up to and resolves problems which arise.
In the past we have acknowledged and defeated Progressive Axonopathy, despite the fact that it decimated some top kennels and bloodlines. Those breeders involved were loudly applauded for their unselfish attitude when they disbanded many years of work, withdrew champions from breeding and picked themselves up, started again, and second time around, climbed to the top.
Then came Thyroid Deficient Dwarfism. Luckily this proved to be fairly isolated and did not touch major bloodlines, so was relatively easy to eradicate.
Our next challenge was Aortic Stenosis. This is easy to quantify at a young age and therefore breeding
recommendations…… basically breed the best grades to the best
grades….. have proved to be an excellent way to improve the mean grades overall. We may not have totally eradicated this problem (and I doubt that we ever will) but we certainly have arrived at the point when cardiologists no longer report seeing Boxers with high grades and/or clinical symptoms. If all Boxers can live a normal life, then minor grades of murmur would seem to be acceptable. We cannot afford to curtail the gene pool too drastically.
Recently however, things have changed. In the last nine or so years, Cardiomyopathy has raised its head in the UK and the attitude of breeders is now totally different.
To me, with a good knowledge of the North American Boxer scene and wonderful friends across the ‘pond’ it is a nightmare scenario. I know enough about CM to be able to see the implications of allowing CM to gain a foothold. It could become unstoppable and eventually endemic in our UK Boxers.
Earlier this year the British Boxer Breed Council set up a Health Committee, as a sub committee of BBC. This was to facilitate immediate action on any reported health problems which arose in the breed. As a member of the Health Committee (as I was of the previous Heart Panel which addressed AS), I can tell you that the most pressing problem we had to deal with was the emergence of CM. Other health issues we were considering were the ongoing state of AS, Cancers, VWD and an inherited kidney problem. The latter two are apparently fairly isolated and hopefully not a threat to the breed in general. But it was to be CM that we had immediately to work on as a matter of urgency in an effort to halt any possible spread through the breed.
The Health Committee, along with Dr Bruce Cattanach, our breed geneticist and renowned Boxer breeder, (who worked in the past to define and defeat PA, Dwarfism and AS), and a small band of dedicated cardiologists set to work to investigate the problem and attempt to set out some way of controlling and hopefully nipping CM in the bud before it became widespread. The cardiologists had been telling us for a number of years that they were concerned as to the increasing number of cases of CM that were being referred to them, many obviously related. Action was obviously essential.
With North America’s work on CM as an excellent starting point, we counted ourselves lucky. We at least knew what we were dealing with, as opposed to the early days of CM in the US when breeders probably had no definitive diagnosis and little chance of comparing notes across such a vast continent.
So, the HC formulated proposals which included purchasing holter monitors with the idea of testing, in addition to diagnosed cases, a cross section of the breeds’ most used stud dogs/bloodlines in order to give us, over time, a great deal of information. Holter monitoring was never intended to be a quick fix.
After all, not even the US can yet make definitive diagnosis of freedom from CM. Holtering would be an ongoing research effort, which we hoped at some point would prove its value to the breed through supplying information.
We also planned a number of lecture meetings around the country where cardiologists, along with genetic input from Dr Cattanach, would be available to educate breeders.
More immediately, Dr Cattanach formulated a scheme whereby stud dogs from suspect bloodlines could be ‘salvaged’ by retrospective breeding analysis. Briefly, if a male had enough adult offspring to be statistically meaningful and all could be accounted for as fit and well, then he could be presumed not to be transmitting the gene for CM. This was much the same way that retrospective breeding analysis was used to clear dogs of the PA gene some years ago. A number of stud dog owners asked to take part in this
program, but sadly, to date only one has been able to complete enough information to qualify. Why? Because some breeders have, in their wisdom, refused to supply details of offspring and their health status to the participating stud dog owners, thereby thwarting an excellent way of helping the breed to move forward and damning some stud dogs perhaps unnecessarily.
Not only has there been opposition to this retrospective breeding analysis, but some owners and breeders who have reported cases of CM and supplied pedigrees of cases have been subjected to both verbal and written abuse. We have evidence that cases of CM are now being hidden and the whole thing has degenerated into a fiasco. Members of the HC have been vilified and also received abusive letters. Dr Cattanach and HC chairman, David Webb, have been slandered and
libeled and even Dr Cattanach’s qualifications as a geneticist have been questioned publicly.
At the recent Breed Council meeting, the decision was taken to disband the Health Committee! Apparently this was done to demonstrate the importance that breed clubs were placing on the health of the breed??????????? Excuse me, can someone explain to me how that could be? Surely disbanding the HC can only be to the detriment of the breed, as Breed Council decisions, due to its constitution, are slow and laborious.
The effect of all this has been that Dr Cattanach has resigned as breed geneticist and many of us now feel that the Boxer in the UK is under a greater threat from some breeders than it ever could be from inherited defects.
It saddens me that we have gone from being a breed held up in admiration for our integrity to a breed which now appears to be fragmenting beyond repair. Anyone who has witnessed a dog die horribly and slowly from CM or drop dead at their feet, or any breeder who has tried to console devastated owners who have received the dreaded diagnosis, must have a heart of stone if they refuse to help us to stop this disease in its tracks. We have to put personal vendettas and pride behind us and work together for the good of the breed before it’s too late. Sadly, the attitude that I have witnessed from breeders in the UK these past few months gives me no hope whatsoever that that will happen. There is still time, but it is fast running out. |
