Dogged Blog

Coming at 11... or, you know, soon....

It's hard for me to blog in the daytime; apparently my blog muses prefer the night. But Gina's at Global Pet Expo and I'm in charge, so I must blog to you, even in the face of overwhelming daylight adversity.



You know those little promos for the evening news where they say, "Stories we're working on for later"? This is one of those.



I'm still digging into the disappearance of the press release on a "new" strain of parvo from the Oklahoma State University website. The head of their media relations department is trying to get an answer for me. I have an idea of what's going on, but without confirmation, I'm just sitting here waiting to hear from them.



Also, I'm tracking down a response from the FDA as to what, exactly, was "updated" on their pet food recall page last month -- it lists a January 22 update, but I can't figure out what it was. And thank you to the 45897897 readers who alerted us!



I'm trying to focus on how excited I am to see Dr. Marty and attend the Western States Veterinary Conference on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, while simultaneously trying to forget how little I want to go to Las Vegas. I hate leaving my dogs, don't care for Las Vegas, and did I mention that I don't like leaving my dogs?



Of course this is nothing compared to the trip I'll have to take next month, when I'll be attending the South by Southwest internet, film, and music festival in Austin from March 7-15. On the 9th, Therese Kopiwoda of PetSitUSA.com and I will be leading a core conversation (sort of a mini-panel, it's something new this year so I'm not quite sure how it will work yet) on "Pet Blogging: Not just a fluffy puppy story." I'll keep you posted on the exact times and how you can attend if you're in the area. It will also be available as a podcast, I believe.



Now Gina can stop texting me from San Diego telling me to blog.



Okay, I made that up. But she's thinking it. I can feel it creeping up the coast of California, and into my brain.

More on " parvo scare "

The media release from Oklahoma State University about a "new" strain of canine parvovirus that's created so much hysteria on the Internet and in the dog parks has been removed from the university's website. I posted a copy of the original release here, and will try to find out what the issue is and update you.



My original post expressing concern over some of the information in the release, and even more, about some of the inaccurate and sensationalistic warnings flying around about this "new" strain of parvo, is here.

Wherein I whine about Las Vegas

I hate Las Vegas. I seriously hate it.

I go to a lot of conferences and conventions, and while I'm not really thrilled that most of them could be anywhere -- I mean, a convention center is a convention center, a convention hotel is a convention hotel, from north to south or sea to shining sea -- there is something a bit relaxing about the predictability of most conference sites.

Except for Las Vegas.

There is not one moment in Las Vegas that you can forget you are in Las Vegas.

Now, if one is in New York City or Philadelphia or San Francisco, that's a good thing. To be reminded that one is in a world-class city full of interesting cultural and historical landmarks, beautiful architecture or natural settings, music, art, film, shopping... whatever... is a good thing. And yet, when I'm at conferences and in convention hotels in those places, rarely, if ever, does that happen. I may as well be in some small, anonymous airport oasis in the neon.

No, only in Las Vegas do the slot machines in the lady's rooms of restaurants ensure that not for one moment can you forget you're in the tackiest convention town on the planet.

I don't drink. I don't gamble. I don't enjoy being around people who are doing those things. I don't like Las  Vegas, as no doubt you've deduced, being smart folks with above-average reading and comprehension skills.

I do like veterinarians and veterinary medicine, so hopefully the fact that I'm going to Las Vegas for a veterinary conference  will balance out the fact that I hate... wait, it's coming.... Las Vegas.

Sigh. That is all.

Mother Jones: All Hillary's Base Are Belong to Barack

Most. Hysterical. Headline. Ever.

From Mother Jones' Magazine's email newsletter today: "All Hillary's Base Are Belong to  Barack." Snort.

In it, David Corn and Jonathan Stein contend that Hillary Clinton should be worried, "not because Barack Obama won the Potomac Primaries, but because of how he won them." Interesting. I'm not actually convinced and while I support Obama passionately, I still believe Sen. Clinton could pull this out. Only a fool would count her out now. Here's their thinking, though:

"It is so wonderful to be here." So declared Hillary Clinton in El Paso, Texas, on Tuesday evening, as vote results being tallied in Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia showed she was being clobbered by Barack Obama. But worse for Clinton was that she was losing another clump of post-Super Tuesday primaries by large margins (51 points in D.C., 29 points in Virginia, 23 points in Maryland) because her base voters were abandoning her. The message of the night: Clinton should be scared. And perhaps John McCain should be, too.  

Obama won the Potomac Primaries by eating into Clinton's core. In the Super Tuesday states, Obama won 43 percent of women. He took 55 percent in Maryland and 60 percent in Virginia. In the Super Tuesday states, Obama was supported by only 35 percent of voters over 65 years of age. In Maryland and Virginia, a touch more than 50 percent voted for him.

Within all the Democratic constituencies Clinton relies upon, Obama not only made gains, but won. He won among voters making less than $50,000 a year. He beat her among those with no college degrees. He won Latinos. He won Catholics. He won white men by a substantial margin. And Obama triumphed in every part of that state: urban, suburban and rural. Of the subdivided demographic groups, only white women stood with Clinton tonight. The rest of her base—at least in these states—collapsed.

Read the rest here.

Doggedly liberal. Deal.

I was amused to read the Pet Connection this morning and see Gina waxing political. She had a nice gloss of non-partisanship all over it, but yo, Gina, I'm so onto you. She's an Obama fangirl, just like me.

She linked to Terrierman, who is competing with me for leader of the Cranky Dog Bloggers for Obama political club. He's currently winning because, as usual, Chat Month is eating my soul, and I'm not free to blog as much as I'd like to. In fact, I just woke up from 13 hours of sleep, the first good night of sleep I've had in more than a week. I'm completely exhausted.

I'm tired of something else, in addition to, you know, sleep deprivation. And it ties in with what Gina was saying.

It's the assumption that people who believe in preserving heritage dog breeds, support the right of people to own, show, and breed dogs, and who want to hold government, including animal control, accountable for its actions on their behalf must also be Republicans.

I'm not. As you have probably previously noticed.

There's also something of an assumption that anyone who fights against mandatory spay/neuter laws will also support a whole host of other things, none of which I do... like the mass commercial breeding of dogs, selling puppies and kittens through third parties, whether brokers, websites, or pet stores, factory farming, or fur ranching.

I not only refuse to get in bed with the Hunte Corporation in order to preserve my right to own intact purebred dogs, but I think the argument that I have to do that is bullshit.

That's because just because I advocate for something, write persuasively about it, and believe it myself, does not mean I think it's a good idea to make it mandatory. I believe in people making up their own minds.

I also believe in speaking mine, and yes, I try to be persuasive when I do. That's my form of advocacy.

I will not sacrifice one right -- the right to speak freely about what I believe -- for another -- the right to preserve the Scottish Deerhound. In fact, with all due respect to my beloved breed, if it's a contest between the two, I'll pick the first.

I understand that some of the people I've stood with in opposition to mandatory spay/neuter laws believe they have to support the sale of puppies in pet stores in order to be "consistent," and in order to have the support of the pet industry for the cause. As I said to one of those people a few nights ago, I sat on the floor once with an Italian greyhound who had spent the 8 years of her life or so in a puppy producing facility. I would call it a puppy mill, even though it may well have been clean, USDA approved, and had its own little team of vets and vet techs supervising everything.

She didn't react when you petted her. She didn't see you when she looked at you. She didn't care about being cuddled or walked, didn't want a toy or even a treat. She wasn't curious, or interested, or aware.

When I looked in her eyes, she was dead.

And that's why I don't care how clean the mill was, and I don't care if a thousand studies say that puppies are just as healthy and loved if they come from a pet store as if they come from a home breeder. Because it's not about the puppies, it's about their mothers.

And their dead eyes.

I believe mandatory spay/neuter harms animals and the people who love them. I believe it's designed to impede pet ownership in furtherance of an anti-pet agenda, not to reduce the number of animals killed in shelters. That's why I fight it.

I believe that the way to change things is through free expression, speech, persuasion, and education, not legislation.

I believe that the only way to shut down puppy mills is to dry up the market, because there's no just way to legislate them out of business without trampling on people's freedoms, and in the end, harming the human/animal bond.

But I believe that as a liberal, and as a dog lover, and as the opponent of the mass commercial production of puppies, and someone who is against the sale of puppies and kittens in pet stores.

And I don't find any of those things a contradiction.

The real face of pit bull laws

I feel bad slipping this in here among all the Westminster reporting from Kim, which I'm otherwise enjoying very much, but it broke my heart and I don't want to suffer alone tonight.



From K9, a British dog magazine, one of the best arguments against breed-specific legislation I've ever read, in the form of one animal control officer's life-changing experience with Britain's pit bull ban. Her name is Celine Jacobs, and she told this story:

The other day I had to do something that went against everything I have ever strived for, I took a lovely, young, healthy dog to the vets and I had it put to sleep, the reason for this was that he had been identified by an expert as being a Pit Bull type.



When the expert identified the dog yesterday I thought my heart would break, without an owner to fight the dog's case the law says we have to destroy them. For seven years I have been a dog warden and for seven years I have never put a dog to sleep that wasn't on the advice of a vet due to illness or injury.



Red was a stray. He couldn't help the fact that his genetics and appearance categorised him as dangerous. He was young, healthy and apparently very friendly.

Red showed no signs of aggression with people or other dogs, and yet England's breed specific laws against pit bull-type dogs meant he had to die. The morning of his death, Celine took him out of his kennel, took him for a five mile walk, and let him run and chase a ball in a secure field until he was exhausted, after which she took him out for a junk food meal. Then she held him in her arms while he was killed.

When we went in to the vets his tail was still wagging and he sat there licking my face and licking the tears of my face, he didn't know I was going to have him killed. I held him all the time and he slipped away in my arms quietly, I held him even when he was dead and sobbed my heart out.



Now I feel empty, I feel like I have finally been beaten and that all I have ever tried to do has been broken, I wanted to dedicate my life to saving dogs and now I have killed a fit, healthy, happy dog and I don't think I can live with it or continue to work as a Dog Warden.



I know a lot of people think dog wardens enjoy killing dogs, I have never been so miserable or felt that what I was doing so wrong. Now I feel that I hate people, I hate the law and I hate my job. The only small thing that has kept me from falling completely apart over this is the fact that at least I know no one can hurt him now, he will never be thrown in a pit and ripped to pieces and no one will ever abuse him or beat him. I hope he enjoyed his morning with me before he went. I know that I had to do this as it is the law and it is what my job entails, as a dog lover however it is heart breaking.

Read the story. Fight BSL.

Of parvo and pit bulls, puppy mills and dog shows, and more

Since the "new parvo scare" fire is still raging on the lists, blogs, and forums, I wanted to link to the post I made about it yesterday, explaining why everyone needs to take a deep breath and stop freaking out because this "new" strain of parvo is 8 years old, the current vaccines cover it, and oh yeah, the sky is not falling. Please check it out and help spread the word.



In other news, Gina asked me to do the weekly roundup today, because she's busy making “Bad Girlz Club” badges for her dogs working on her books.



Now, I, too, have a life. Well, no, I don't. I have deadlines, which is not the same thing at all. But we'll pretend that's remotely like a life, and that this was thus a huge sacrifice on my part, and that therefore Gina owes me something, and so I'm going to steal a bit of Pet Connection bandwidth to remind everyone to come chat with author Karen Delise tonight, Sunday, February 10 at 9 PM ET/6 PM PT on DogHobbyist.com.



Karen Delise is the author of "The Pit Bull Placebo: The Media, Myths and Politics of Canine Aggression" and "Fatal Dog Attacks: The Stories Behind the Statistics, as well as the founder and lead researcher for the National Canine Research Council.



In her words:

"The Pit Bull Placebo: The Media, Myths and Politics of Canine Aggression" explores and reveals how our views and beliefs about canine aggression have changed over the last 150 years and how our perceptions about the nature and behavior of dogs has been influenced and shaped by persons and organizations who often times disseminate information about dog attacks which is tailored to further an agenda unrelated to the improvement of the human/dog bond.



We have come to be in the midst of a social hysteria about Pit bulls because we have abandoned centuries-old common sense and reasoning and have been duped by inaccurate reporting from a media that thrives on sensationalism and by politicians who traffic in rumors, myths and pseudoscience in their efforts to pass legislation that demonizes dogs while exonerating criminal and abusive owners.



Despite the intense media, political and public interest in dog attacks, there is a disturbing scarcity of accurate information and investigation done on the real causes and reasons for these incidents.



If we truly believe that the extremely rare cases of fatal dog attacks merit extreme measures in the management of dogs — if our concern and shock is genuine — then we must be equally genuine and sincere in seeking out and addressing the real causes for these incidents.



Whether our goal is community safety, understanding canine behavior, furtherance of humane treatment towards dogs, or the advancement of the human-dog bond, it is critical that we examine all the details available about dog attacks.

I hope some of you will drop by!



And not about pit bulls specifically, but from the "save the pit bull, save the world" blog, a few words on Prozac for pups:

I’ve come across a number of people on the internet who think that the use of Prozac (including the doggy version Reconcile) is an absolute Laff Riot. They see it as another symptom of our excessively medicated society. And maybe they’re right, but here’s the thing– it’s not so funny when you’ve seen dogs tear up their feet and break off teeth trying to escape a crate during a thunderstorm. It’s not much fun when you have a dog come in all broken and bleeding because she’s jumped out of a second story window when the low battery warning for the smoke detector started beeping. It’s no fun to have your dog hurt himself, destroy your house, and be a complete disaster because he’s got fears that are out of control and neither he nor you know how to handle them.



I know there are cases where psychiatric medications are prescribed inappropriately. But that’s true of many medications, from steroids to antibiotics to Prozac. That doesn’t make the medication bad or ridiculous. And there are many cases where psych meds could be extremely helpful, but the owners are unwilling. They scoff about it “just being a dog” or laugh about it being Prozac, and allow their dogs to suffer just the same.



Phobias like this are very real medical issues. Thunderstorm and sound phobias can claim lives. And yet, there’s help available. Karen Overall, a well-respected veterinary behaviorist, wrote an excellent article about thunderstorm phobia for DVM magazine, in which she talks about the benefit– the importance– of medication, specifically with alprazolam (Xanax), and the absolute necessity of treating these dogs.



[....]



To me, sound phobia is just another medical issue, and one that there is help available for. Watching him suffer and stress through storms, through fireworks, was heartwrenching, and knowing that by doing anything to comfort him, I’d be making him worse, was incredibly hard for me. So being able to pop him some pills and make him not need that comfort was just wonderful for me. Call me lazy if you will. Call me just another brainwashed victim of the drug industry. But if a couple of pills can improve both of our lives so dramatically, sign me up.

I didn't mean this to be a pit bull-theme post, and it's really not... but Pet Connection BFF Dr. Patty Khuly is scaring the crap out of me with her post about a nasty infection at her local shelter that's killing dogs:

The tawny pit bull mix was clearly dead, lying in a pool of his own blood. In the run next door, a shepherd mix was laying on his side, panting heavily and staring at the wall with a glazed expression on his face. Omigod, is this what it’s always like at these places?



I made my first visit to Miami-Dade Animal Services (our County-funded animal shelter) last Monday night. In an overabundance of guilt I decided to get a little more active in my local VMA (veterinary medical association). Truth be told, it was because the South Florida Veterinary Medical Association (SFVMA) held its first board meeting of the year at this venue that I felt compelled to attend. (Killing two birds with one stone, as it were.)



For a while now, I’ve been hoping to get a bird’s-eye view of the shelter with a behind-the-scenes tour. Last Monday’s meeting offered a double-bonus: A full-facility tour presented by Miami-Dade’s top dog in Animal Services, Dr. Sara Pizano.



I also got to see the first two cases of a devastating disease now sweeping through the facility: a fulminating respiratory infection that looks like kennel cough but progresses quickly to what looked to me like canine Ebola. Blood everywhere. Within 24 hours of the first symptoms. I can’t imagine anything scarier.

Me either, Dr. Patty! She goes on to describe a scene out of any animal lover's hell, and tells of efforts being made to identify, treat, and prevent the spread of the infection. She goes on:

Dr.Pizano has been at the shelter since its management structure was overhauled by the County three years ago. Instead of law enforcement managers (yes, the police department), the County recruited a vet who had cut her teeth at a neighboring county’s shelter.



It’s clear that Dr. Pizano is a political animal of the take-no-prisoners variety, which I’m hoping will serve her well in our cutthroat county government. Since she arrived at this dilapidated, egregiously mismanaged shelter, she’s doubled adoption rates and can recite chapter and verse of Winograd’s treatise. When I questioned her, she claimed that, “there’s nothing [he advocates ] we’re not doing here.”



To that end, she’s lobbying hard for a private foundation to funnel money into building a new facility where infectious disease can be better managed and the citizens of our County can be better enticed to meet their new loved ones.



But every day brings new disasters. Over a hundred new animals come in every day. Over 30,000 a year. And she’s only one person.



As I left the facility on Monday night I couldn’t help asking the security guard on duty at the gate one last thing: “How many employees work here at night?” It was a trick question. I already knew the answer: “Just me, Miss.”

Read the whole sad, scary thing here.



Other good stuff out there: Our friend the Terrierman has some rants on about the AKC and puppy mills (with which I agree) and dog shows (on which I both do and don't; a lot of what he says about their impact on working dogs is inarguable, but dog shows and the clubs that put them on can do a lot of good, too).



Hope to see you at Karen Delise's chat, and enjoy the rest of your weekend, everyone!

The ' new strain of parvo ' hysteria and why it should stop

Suddenly all the dog blogs and email lists are going crazy over a supposed new strain of canine parvovirus (CPV) that the current parvo vaccines don't protect against and that is deadly to adult dogs as well as puppies.



These reports all cite a press release from Oklahoma State University, dated January 14, 2008, as saying that OSU has identified a new variant of CPV, known as CPV-2c.



Is any of this true?



Well, there's a press release.



And there's a strain of parvo that's not new as in, "just discovered yesterday," but it's new as in, "it's eight years old now."



And it's new as in, "we knew it was common in Europe but we only just looked for it in the U.S. and found it here":

“We were quite fortunate to discover this variant,” explains (Dr. Sanjay) Kapil. “It has been known for six years in Italy but nobody paid attention to it here until we found it last year.”

Nobody except the other researchers who had written about it in a bunch of places including here (2007; U.S.) and here (2006; Prague) here ("Management of canine parvovirus type 2 in a kennel environment"; Toulemonde CE, Brunet S, Cariou C, et al.: 2006, Proc Journe´es GTV, Dijon, France; Spibey N, Greenwood N, Tarpey I, et al.) and here (2001; Japan) but okay.



And okay, probably not really new in the U.S. either, given that it's apparently everywhere already:

“What was so interesting was that after we described this disease, we ended up with samples from other locations here in the U.S.”

No, the only thing new here is this press release [UPDATED WITH NEW LINK HERE]. And perhaps this one line from it:

A patent has been filed on the characteristics of the U.S. CPV-2c.

But the press release is full of scary little phrases like "six hundred dead puppies in one night" and mention of an adult dog (one single dog) who had been vaccinated multiple times and still came down with parvo:

“Sometimes we received ten dead puppies a day. We are working with several veterinarians and are receiving samples from cases with a history of vaccine failure,” continues Kapil.

I'm going to guess they were getting "ten dead puppies a day" because people are sending them those for purposes of their research, not because there has been any increase in the number of puppies getting sick with parvo, a disease known to be particularly common in puppies.



Back to the release:

According to Kapil, the disease presentation is different in that normally parvovirus does not affect adult dogs only puppies. However, since publishing their findings, the OADDL has received samples from adult dogs in Minnesota.



“Veterinarians are confused because the in office diagnostic tests come up negative,” explains Kapil. “Clinically it looks like parvovirus so they send it to us. The OADDL tests it and it is parvovirus. Now world-wide (except for Australia), this particular variant can attack the heart and intestines.”

Let's start with this: adult dogs have always been able to get canine parvovirus. It's simply more common in puppies, because there are difficulties in successfully immunizing young puppies against this disease -- not just the "new" strain, but all known strains. But most adults are vaccinated for parvo, and since the vaccine is extremely effective, even those who don't continue getting so-called "booster shots" remain immune for many years, most likely their lifetimes.



The problem of a very, very small number of dogs who cannot be successfully vaccinated for parvo is not new, and has been established long prior to this in the veterinary literature.



All strains of CPV attack the intestines, and they can all attack the heart in young puppies. I have no idea why this is being presented as some kind of "stop the presses" news; it's not.



What is news is that there are some qualities about this strain that make its laboratory diagnosis difficult, and yes, vets and veterinary labs do need to be aware it's out there and account for it.



What this release is not saying is either of these things:

• That there is a new strain of parvo that we have no vaccine for



• That you should be sure to vaccinate your dogs more for parvo because of this new strain

This strain of parvo has been around for eight years now:

In 2000, a new variant of CPV (subsequently named CPV-2c) was detected in Italy and is now widely distributed and cocirculating with types 2a and 2b in that country. The CPV-2c has also been reported from single outbreaks in Spain and Vietnam.

The vaccine we currently have, as well as natural immunity in dogs who have recovered from parvo, both produce immunity to this strain. ("Canine parvovirus type 2 vaccine protects dogs following challenge with a recent type 2c strain;" Proceedings of the World Small Animal VeterinaryAssociation Congress, Prague, 2006.)



The study on which the OSU press release is based says the exact same thing:

The original CPV type 2 based vaccines have been shown to provide protection against the Italian isolate of CPV-2c.

In addition, in a study at the University of Georgia in 2006, the dogs with what they found out was CPV-2c and the dogs with other strains of parvo all had similar vaccine histories. I want to go through this information carefully:



Researchers tested 33 samples from dogs with parvo; 27 were found to be positive for CPV using a test known as "real-time PCR."



Of those, seven turned out to be the CPV-2c strain. ALL of those dogs were puppies. They had all been given vaccines, of several different brands, between two and four times.



Of the dogs who had the older strains of parvo, some of them were young adults (14 months was the oldest), and all had been vaccinated with varying brands of vaccine between two and four times.



In other words, the only difference between the two strains as far as the vaccine went is that the dogs in this study with the new strain were younger than some of the dogs who were sick with the old strains.



It's almost certain that every one of these dogs became ill because their parvo vaccines were given at inappropriate intervals (too close together), or the final vaccine was given too young. The difficulties of successfully vaccinating puppies for parvo are well-established.



Since the dogs who have disease from parvo of any strain have the same kinds of vaccination histories as the dogs who have CPV-2c, there's nothing to suggest that the current immunity, from vaccine or natural infection, doesn't cover CPV-2c, which has been widespread in Europe as well as the United States for years now.



Unless you're dealing with what test to use to diagnose parvo in a sick dog, and where to have the test done, this information means nothing. It doesn't mean your dog's immunity won't protect him.



It certainly doesn't mean you need to re-vaccinate your dog; the logic of this suggestion, which I've seen dozens of times in the last two days, really escapes me, since if the vaccine works against this strain (which it does), your dog is already immune, and if it doesn't, re-vaccinating him won't do anything.



In other words, folks, if the existing vaccine didn't cover the new strain (which it does), re-vaccinating your dog with the existing vaccine wouldn't make one damn bit of difference. It would literally be no better than throwing a virgin in a volcano to placate the fates.



In all honesty, I'm not surprised the loaded language in the OSU press release scared people, with all the stuff about 600 puppies dying in one night and mentions of "vaccine failure" and dead adult dogs. And yet... if you really look at the various studies, what you see are the usual kinds of vaccine failure from maternal antibody interference. You see dogs who are not vaccinated at all. You see dogs who got sick so soon after being vaccinated that they were clearly incubating the disease already.



The researchers themselves say this -- say there's no evidence this strain has evolved out of the coverage from existing vaccines. The very fact that this strain is so widespread, and is being found all over the country, tells us this is just another strain of CPV that's out there, of interest to virologists, yes, but its practical importance? Other than the fact that one of the common lab tests for parvo can miss it, not much.



So enough, already. Sure, one day we might have a strain of parvo that mutates beyond coverage by existing immunity. I'm glad that researchers are watching out for that. I certainly want labs to know when strains evolve beyond the ability of some of their tests to detect.



But all we're doing with this hysterical "sky is falling" reaction, our insistence there's a new strain of a deadly disease and our dogs aren't protected against it, is spreading false information and scaring the crap out of people.



So can we stop all this terror and fear on the lists and blogs?

Is there a new strain of parvo?

I'm going crazy right now, with the hysteria on the blogs and lists about this "new strain of parvo," based on a January press release from Oklahoma State University.

The amount of bad information that's getting shot all over the Internets is scary, kids. So of course I blogged about this over on Pet Connection:

In all honesty, I’m not surprised the loaded language in the OSU press release scared people, with all the stuff about 600 puppies dying in one night and mentions of “vaccine failure” and dead adult dogs. And yet… if you really look at the various studies, what you see are the usual kinds of vaccine failure from maternal antibody interference. You see dogs who are not vaccinated at all. You see dogs who got sick so soon after being vaccinated that they were clearly incubating the disease already.

The researchers themselves say this — say there’s no evidence this strain has evolved out of the coverage from existing vaccines. The very fact that this strain is so widespread, and is being found all over the country, tells us this is just another strain of CPV that’s out there, of interest to virologists, yes, but its practical importance? Other than the fact that one of the common lab tests for parvo can miss it, not much.

So enough, already. Sure, one day we might have a strain of parvo that mutates beyond coverage by existing immunity. I’m glad that researchers are watching out for that. I certainly want labs to know when strains evolve beyond the ability of some of their tests to detect.

But all we’re doing with this hysterical “sky is falling” reaction, our insistence there’s a new strain of a deadly disease and our dogs aren’t protected against it, is spreading false information and scaring the crap out of people.

Check it out here. Please.

Beating puppy mills... or joining them?

Here's yet another chapter in the saga of my ongoing love/hate relationship with the American Kennel Club. Yesterday, some folks thought I was the spawn of Satan for saying nice things about them, but today? Not so much.



Five years ago, it looked to a lot of people in the purebred dog world as though the AKC board had decided if they couldn't beat the puppy mills, they'd join them. From an excellent article in the new issue of the Canine Chronicle, written by Gretchen Bernardi:

In 2000, the AKC was in the midst of a crisis. The cash cow was drying up, due, in large part, to the boycott of the AKC registry by the commercial breeders in Missouri, spearheaded by Missouri Pet Breeders in March of that year. The back-breaking straw in this scenario was the newly implemented Fre-quently Used Sire program. What was the AKC thinking? First, it institutes a policy requiring minimum standards of care and now it wants to ensure the parentage of the dogs in its registry.

So this particular camel, wanting to be out from under the yoke of more inspections and more requirements, moved most of its registrations to a little-known registry in Arkansas – American Pet Registry, Inc. Actually, that organization and its breeders were visionaries. They had been told repeatedly that without AKC registration papers their dogs were worth very little and that the American public wanted, actually de-manded, those papers. Until then, only the United Kennel Club and the American Kennel Club controlled the puppy paper market and the AKC certainly held the lion’s share of that market.

But soon everyone realized that people who bought their puppies in the pet stores didn’t care who printed the paper that accompanied those dogs and APRI is now one of the four or five major registration entities in the country. From its website: “The nation’s only pet registration service dedicated to the preservation and promotion of pet ownership and the professional pet industry.” It has subsequently merged with Academic Kennel Records and American Breeders Association, among others.

Unable to distinguish itself as the premier registry that we know it is, the AKC found its registrations in serious decline. We have all been bombarded with this news, but suffice it to say that in six years – from 1999 through 2006 – AKC registrations dropped by 249,428 dogs and 113,066 litters. Those figures are even more significant for our discussion than a simple formula of number of dogs registered times registration fees, since most of the commercially-bred puppies are sold with at least one supplemental transfer fee. During the initial, dramatic drop in these registrations, an officer of the AKC stood before the delegate body and said that although we had lost a significant chunk of the commercial breeders, we really “don’t need the puppy mill dogs.” But someone clearly thought we did.

Bernardi goes on to list each recommendation of the committee, and points out that the AKC has implemented none of those aimed at "raising the bar" of what the AKC is and what AKC registration stands for, but only those designed to, as she says, "sanitize" commercial dog breeding:

AKC became a platinum member of the Missouri Pet Breeders, the very organization which launched the boycott. AKC removed the “do not buy puppies from a pet shop” from its website. Andrew Hunte, founder of the Hunte Corporation, was invited to sit in the VIP section at the Invitational and in the AKC box at Westminster. AKC entered into and then backed out of an undisclosed contractual arrangement with Petland. AKC offered quickly expiring discount registration coupons clearly aimed at the most frequent breeders.

In August, the board unanimously passed a resolution, with directors Patty Haines and Bill Newman abstaining, “to direct management to aggressively pursue the registration of every AKC registerable dog and to actively welcome any breeder or owner who is willing to abide by all AKC rules, regulations, and policies”.

[....]

In the end, what am I to think of the good work carried on by this committee and the thoughtful recommendations it made to the AKC board? More importantly, what am I to think of the AKC board and staff that, five years later, have addressed those recommendations that abide by its current philosophy of pursuing commercially-bred registrations in the absence of “raising the bar” and has ignored those that eight of the nine committee members thought would do just that and thereby enhance the name AKC.

At the creation of the committee, its critics said that it was formed to sanitize the commercial breeding industry and that “high volume breeder” was simply a euphimism for puppy mills. I disagreed with that assessment when the committee began its deliberations five years ago, but to my everlasting shame, I think they were wiser than I.

It's an excellent, thought provoking read, and it's here.