By John C. Kerr
On October 15-17, 1999 the AKC Canine Health Foundation hosted their third National Parent Club Conference in St. Louis, Mo. The meeting was both exciting and educational as presenters of funded projects, guest speakers from around the world and over 275 Parent Club Representatives converged over good food, entertainment and of course non-stop education. As in the past the Ralston Purina Company sponsored much of the activities, and I must admit.... they do it right!
In spite of the out-of-pocket expense, I feel lucky to have been able to represent the Spinoni at this meeting and personally stimulated by the weekend of science and camaraderie amongst the dog fancy people. As some of you know my previous role was in training and management in the Departments of Surgery at Boston University and New Jersey Medical School. This work in gastroenterology and peripheral vascular disease afforded me the opportunity to attend numerous scientific meetings. Although my emphasis has shifted from academic medicine to business and computers, I have remained in the health arena. This weekend really rekindled many memories of those previous scientific sessions and was just “down-right” a lot of FUN.
The weekend started with my arrival at the Hotel in St. Louis in the early afternoon on Friday October 15th. After conference registration we were whisked away to the Grand Tour of the AKC Museum of the Dog. The Museum is located in a beautiful park with immaculately kept grounds. The Museum itself was very interesting, it contained works of dog art and memorabilia for almost all breeds, but nary a Spinoni was found. After spending a couple of hours at the museum we departed for Purina Farms and the Ralston Purina Pet Care Center.
At Purina Farms we were given a tour of the Pet Enthusiast Activity Center. This relatively new addition to Purina farms has been developed and offers a place to hold canine events. These facilities can accommodate outdoor dog shows, conformation and obedience, as well as demonstrations, meetings and seminars for large numbers of people. The use of these facilities for clubs to hold these dog fancy events is free, and they offer the grounds, bleachers, equipment and facilities for a number of types of dog events, they even have sheep for herding events. They also have facilities for lure coursing and Whippet Racing Trials and they discussed plans for development of field and hunting trial areas, as well as plans for an on-site hotel. From here we went to the Pet Care Center.
The Pet Care Center is also, quite an impressive site. We visited the buildings and grounds of the Research Center where Purina pet food development begins with feeding studies. In these studies more than 60 staff determine food palatability, digestibility and perform a number of nutritional adequacy studies. Animal studies included reproduction, growth and maintenance studies. There were ongoing studies addressing obesity, protein consumption and aging, and hypoallergenic diets. In addition, the scientists and the center are very intimately involved with the Canine Genome Project. The Center established and funds the Canine Family DNA Distribution Center, which consists of DNA from 16 canine families. These canine reference families consist of related individuals for whom genetic material and information regarding desired traits are available over several generations. Blood samples from the grandparents, parents and offspring are collected, stored and maintained as the source of DNA. Much of the DNA maintained at the center was transferred from Cornell University. The distribution of these known DNA samples are directed by committees of research scientists from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, National Cancer Institute, Cornell University and Ralston Purina Company. The working introduction to the DNA Distribution Center by Ralston Purina was a great lead in to the two days of seminars, lectures and poster sessions that were to follow. After a marvelous dinner at the center we returned to our hotel at about 10pm.
The seminars over the next two days were very informative. Most, but not all, of the topics were in some way related to genetics and the Canine Genome and Mapping Projects. We were honored by a speaker of particularly notoriety, Dr. Malcolm B. Willis, the author of “Genetics of the Dog”. Dr. Willis is a world-renowned lecturer in Animal Breeding and Genetics at the Faculty of Agriculture, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, unfortunately, I hadn’t thought to bring my copy of his textbook with me for his signature. I will probably never get a similar chance. Dr. Willis gave a particularly entertaining presentation. The people were exceptionally friendly and I met a number of dog fanciers that I am sure I will continue to correspond with.
There was introductory genetics throughout the seminars. I don’t intend to reiterate that information here. I would suggest that you see the report prepared by Kathy Kerr, MD following here attendance at this same meeting 2 years ago. You can find that report in the Spinone Newsletter Vol. 9 No. 1 from February 1998. (It is also available on the Spinone Club of America Web site at http://www.spinone.com/AKC_health97.htm ).
Rather than detailing the presentations from the weekend I intend to just give a brief overview of some of the ideas and attitudes I came away from the conference with. For a detailed discussion of the major presentations I have put up abstracts of 28 of the presentations that were part of the seminar and poster sessions from the weekend. You can see them on the Spinone Club of America Web site at: http://www.spinone.com/AKC_CHF99/index.htm I have also included the titles and authors of these articles below for those unfamiliar with our WEB Site. Please note that some of these articles have also been reprinted and included with your newsletter.
CANINE GENOME MAPPING
For those of you that are keeping abreast of the current situation with regard to CEREBELLAR ATAXIA in our breed (see http://www.spinone.com/fr2CerabellarAtaxia.htm for discussion ), and I assume that includes everyone with a Spinone of breeding potential or those interested in acquiring their first or another spinoni, the importance of the Canine Genome Mapping Project can not be over emphasized. As you know, the only hope for stopping the spread of this terrible disease in our breed is to STOP THE BREEDING of those dogs that carry the recessive gene for the disease. To date we have no clear indicator for those animals that carry the gene and that can pass it on to the next generation other than retrospective analysis. In addition, history has already shown us we cannot rely on ALL breeders to show practical and ethical integrity to insure that this disease is not spread further. We have had a number of dogs that have been bred that have produced the potential to pass on this dreaded gene. Since the disease manifests itself with little or no symptoms prior to its onset, and since carriers of the afflicted gene have no symptoms our only hope now is to develop a genetic test for the disease.
The Canine Genome Mapping Project is important to us in two ways. First, identifying the general location of a gene allows cloning of the gene and determination of the mutation that actually causes the disease. Secondly, once the location of the gene on the chromosome is know, specific diagnostic tests can be developed which can be incorporated into breeding programs to insure the identification of the carriers of the disease, thus halting the potential for passing on the devastating genes.
I find it quite interesting that the canine genome mapping has progressed further along than the human, might it say that we dog lovers are a very committed group? Regardless, there is a major difference in the way data from the gene mapping will be used in the human versus the dog. In humans, this information is generally described as intended to be used for fixing problems associated with identified diseases through technologies such as gene splicing. Whereas, in the dog, this technology is intended, not to fix the problems, but rather, to eliminate the disease through identification and selective breeding practices. That is exactly how we have discussed the use of an identifying DNA marker for Cerebellar Ataxia in the Spinone.
Another topic of interest was the Perdue 5 year prospective “Bloat” study by Larry Glickman. In summary, Dr. Glickman reported that those issues that we would intuitive expect to reduce the risk of bloat such as feeding smaller more numerous meals, elevating food, etc. were over shadowed by the only breed-related characteristic significalntly associated with a decreased risk of bloat, a higher score for being “HAPPY”, as reported by their owners. The study is ongoing evaluating potential risk factors including diet with results forthcoming.
......More to come at the National Meeting in Michigan in April and in the next newsletter!
John
Click here http://www.spinone.com/AKC_CHF99/index.htm
for the Abstract of Presentations and Posters from the 1999 National Parent Club Canine Health Conference in St. Louis, MO - October 15-17, 1999