I just hate looking in the GS Review seeing memorial ads for not-so-famous show dogs simply saying “2007-2011”. No one ever tells how their dog died. You have to wonder why are they dying? What disease? So we know if we should avoid that line altogether? Oh no, can’t have that embarrassment on top of grief. It should be part of the record - cause of death.
Yes, that is troubling.
We have a really good veterinarian that we have used for over 15 years now, and he is a reproductive specialist and diagnostician supreme.
He says he is seeing a lot of cancer in GSDs, particularly the AKC lines. He thinks it is due to several causes: 1) Very small gene pool in AKC dogs, much smaller than the European lines; 2) Not as much screening for genetic problems as European lines; 3) Dogs are living much longer now, since we have a better handle on a lot of the diseases that killed dogs in previous years. As such, diseases that never had a chance to manifest themselves are now showing up more frequently. And, of course, some of these are lethal.
We are seeing a lot of hermangiocarcinoma (not sure about the spelling). It is a blood-borne cancer that has rapidly growing tumors all over the body and is lethal (the tumors can grow fast and big, and eventually rupture, and the dog bleeds to death internally). If you know of a dog that is relatively young (5-9) that died in its sleep, there is real good chance that this was the cause. It is hard to diagnose and can kill in a matter of weeks, once it starts up.
We are also seeing bone cancers, and breast cancers. And of course, the ubiquitous “bloat” or gastric torsion, which has a genetic component.
In short, there are a lot of new things starting to show up now that we need to start following and breed out of the breed, but as these diseases only show up when dogs are older, it is very hard to weed this out of your breeding program. By the time you start seeing it, the dogs in question are mostly retired from breedings and you are working with their kids and grandkids before you can start collecting information on these sorts of things.... It will be a very hard thing to do.