Important notes

[Gina Heitz <brier@oregonsbest.com>]

Hi Everyone,

I am not sure if all of you know about the Purina Life Long Feeding Study 
they did that proves keeping your dog extra lean is a huge key to health 
and longevity.  Here is the link:

http://www.purina.com/institute/news.asp?article=421

Everyone should go read this, while I do not endorse feeding Purina 
products the study is a huge break through as these dogs were followed 
through out their lives.  A dear friend of mine (Ellen Parr) just came home 
from attending the Parent Club conference hosted by AKC and one of the 
topics was this study and what this study truly does mean to all of 
us.  The overall message is that the ideal weight chart has been changed 
(see the site for the chart)  it use to be a 5 was ideal and now they are 
calling for a 4.5 to be ideal.  What was really interesting too was a field 
survey Purina did where they asked something like 80 individuals to say 
what condition they thought their dog was in (all-breed) most felt their 
dogs were in the 5 to 5.5 range, when experts trained on how to use the 
chart went over the dogs the average dog was a 7 to 7.5  which classifies 
these dogs as obese.

They also surveyed a number of veterinarians who actually did a great job 
at placing dogs in the right categories however where vet's fall short is 
in conveying the message to the client in a manner that really get's their 
attention.  To some degree it is understandable that our veterinarians do 
not want to make us angry ( we will go elsewhere if they do) but the 
message to the vets was you need to get tough on this and you need to 
follow up and if you loose clients then so be it remember the oath! :-)  So 
as the message gets out I am hopeful that more veterinarians will start to 
become more concerned and really start hounding ( no pun intended) their 
clients that have obese dogs.

Fair warning - I rip new ones for people who have fat dogs, both in my 
grooming practice and my breeding program and I am like a dog with a bone 
on this topic and I will follow up!  Please do not get your feelings hurt 
if I ever say to you your dog is obese just remember I really 
care.  Obesity is the number 1 disease in dogs and it is a disease and it 
is a huge problem that can and does lead to manifestation of a multitude of 
other heath concerns.  An additional warning about me: :-)  I will not 
accept but my veterinarian said my dog is fine - and I base that on the 
above paragraph...

Another interesting topic that Ellen asked about in depth at the conference 
was cancer, which was one of the hottest topics of the 
conference.  Research is pointing to cancers not so much being genetic but 
still seem to run in families of dogs so we still all (as breeders) need to 
be very concerned, cautious and watchful of the dogs we are breeding and 
their ancestors...  The overall suggestion is to look at the pedigrees for 
longevity - not to be overly concerned about what old dogs die of and to 
look for trends within pedigrees and to just use the information to the 
best of our ability.  This is what I have been doing...  In a way it's not 
good to hear that cancer may not be genetic as this will mean we will never 
be able to develop an DNA test to identify carriers.  The reasons given for 
what seems to be a trend to look to cancer being genetic was given 
as:  With our breed for example is sheer numbers, there are so many 
Goldens, our popularity is soaring we are still the #2 AKC registered breed 
only out done by the Labrador.  Communication - we communicate at the speed 
of the internet.  Veterinary medicine has improved and we as a society are 
more involved than ever with our pets and their care.  This note is proof 
of that...

Anyway I though that some of you might like to have this information and as 
I debrief  Ellen further I will be sharing more...

Also as most of you know we have puppies right now here is a link to their 
combined web page:

http://www.briergoldens.com/lucy_liberty_pups.htm


Kindest Regards,

Gina