Age related deafness?

[stockdogranch]

Eileen's mention of deafness that occurs later in life on the white-headed thread got me to wondering...how common is it for a BC to lose hearing later in life? Do we know what causes it? Is there any way to prevent it? I'm just curious, as in the last year, my almost 13 year old has definitely lost a lot of his hearing,

A

[bc4pack]

IME experience it's common to all breeds ... just like in humans, pretty much age related. Vision

tends to be an issue too. Good nutrition and a 'healthy lifestyle' seems to be the best answer... Hmmmm, wonder

where we have all heard that?

 

Just about all the senior BCs I've had through the years have lost hearing and vision in varying degrees.

You make allowances for the older ones and you accomodate them... give them their duly deserved warm

spots in the sun; you walk with a heavier footstep so they can feel your presence through the vibrations in

the floor; you don't make many furniture changes; hopefully you have taught them handsignals too so they can be released from a 'stay', because they can't hear " Good dog ! " anymore....

[Journey]

No answers for you Anna but one of mine at 13 also lost his hearing, at 14 though he could still hear whistles. He was not white headed and the good that came was he was not as frightened when the storms rolled in.

 

Karen

[Liz P]

Eileen's mention of deafness that occurs later in life on the white-headed thread got me to wondering...how common is it for a BC to lose hearing later in life? Do we know what causes it? Is there any way to prevent it? I'm just curious, as in the last year, my almost 13 year old has definitely lost a lot of his hearing,

A

 

A thirteen year old dog is probably going deaf due to old age (damage to the ears over a lifetime). It's the middle aged dogs (usually 4 to 8 yrs old but sometimes as young as 1 yr old) that are a big concern, because that is a genetic hearing loss and the dogs have already reproduced. The neurologists at Tufts suspect that this (http://www.cavalierhealth.org/deafness.htm) is the type of middle age hearing loss that BCs are suffering from. Deaf BCs are more common than some will have you believe, I have never seen numbers though. I say it's more common than people will admit because I know of it in many bloodlines, yet some claim the dogs went deaf because of trauma/drugs/etc.

[bc friend]

Sara, 15, has mild deafness. Mostly it just means that she doesn't wake up as easily as when she was younger and strange noises don't disturb her sleep! She's never had ear infections, it only became noticeable in the last few months and nothing was abnormal on vet exam, we can only assume it's age related.

 

My late cocker, however, was almost totally deaf by the time she passed away at 17. Unfortunately, like a lot of cockers, she had had constant ear infections resulting in a lot of physical damage. Her hearing loss was noticeable for years before she died and gradually progressed - I think part of it was age but most of it was due to genetics - her ear infections were treated, her ears cleaned on a regular basis, etc. - just couldn't prevent them.

[sea4th]

Loss of hearing in an older dog can be genetic as well.

 

My Tib, at 13 is deaf. Her son Tam at 10 1/2 is deaf also and I suspect might have been losing his hearing for a while. Tib's daughter, Maggie is 7 yrs. old and has no problem. I know that there was a repeat breeding of Tam's litter making those dogs about 9 yrs. old now. I know that one bitch out of that litter is deaf as well.

 

OTOH, Pete, totally unrelated to the above dogs could still hear OK at the time of his death at almost 15 yrs. His daughter Flick, who just turned 12 has great hearing as do the others from her litter. They're living into their old age with their hearing pretty much in tact.

 

Thing is about Tam, and I'm kicking myself for it now, is that he was always pegged as a hard head. I'm wondering now if it could have been loss of hearing at a young age. This experience with him has taught me yet another lesson. Before labeling a dog as hard headed, like Tam was, have the hearing checked.

 

JMHO.

[juliepoudrier]

Anna,

I suspect there's no way to prevent the deafness that comes with old age. My Boy, who will be 13 in March, often can't hear me because my voice is just too high pitched. He still hears, for the most part, Jimmy, who has quite a deep voice. When I let Boy out at night, I have resorted to blinking a flashlight at him to let him know to come back in (since yelling for him would wake the household and he can't hear me anyway most of the time).

 

I agree with Liz that where deafness should be a concern is in young and middle-aged dogs.

 

J.

[urge to herd]

Sammi, who will be 13 next April, has lost a fair amount of hearing in the last few months. I've assumed it was age related, and she's just generally slowing down bit by bit.

 

Her favorite spot to sleep is in my bedroom on the far side of the bed from the door. We used to call her from the front door to go out, now we have to walk through the house back to the bedroom and speak pretty loudly to wake her. She even barked at DH the other day when he came in and she didn't hear him.

 

It's actually helpful right now, we've got a lot of roadwork going on just in back of us, and there's new construction across the street and down a couple hundred feet. Sammi's always been noise phobic, and now, it doesn't bother her nearly as much.

 

Ruth n the BC3

[Northof49]

Eileen's mention of deafness that occurs later in life on the white-headed thread got me to wondering...how common is it for a BC to lose hearing later in life? Do we know what causes it? Is there any way to prevent it? I'm just curious, as in the last year, my almost 13 year old has definitely lost a lot of his hearing,

A

A friend of mine's Border Collie lost her hearing by 4 years of age, and three others in that litter did as well. None of them were white factored. The deafness was traced to one particular line in the pedigree on the Dam's side.

[Sue R]

I have been rather concerned about what seems to be some hearing loss in our Megan, who is just five years old. I waver between thinking she's losing hearing or if some of it is selective hearing. There are just so many instances where I am quite convinced that something's not right with her hearing...

 

This is a dog we adopted, who comes from less-than-stellar breedings (including Swafford and others of little respectability) and I am sure that health issues were never a real concern in those breedings.

 

She's here to stay and loved dearly, but I really would like to get her BAER-tested sometime again. She tested well a couple of years ago but that was free at a clinic, and I don't have access around here to someone who BAER tests. At least I'd know better if she was blowing us off or unable to hear properly. I think it's often the latter...

[Pipedream Farm]

Prevalence of Unilateral and Bilateral Deafness in Border Collies and Association with Phenotype

 

Among the 2,597 tested Border Collies, 2,481 (95.5%)

had normal BAER, 60 (2.3%) were unilaterally deaf and

56 (2.2%) were bilaterally deaf. The percentages of

unilateral and bilateral deafness differed between

puppies and adult dogs (Table 1). In particular, the

percentage of bilateral deafness was much higher among

adult dogs (15.3%) than among puppies (0.5%), reflecting

the nonrandom selection of adult dogs for testing.

The overall prevalence of congenital deafness was

estimated from the test results for puppies as 2.8%.

The corresponding prevalences of congenital unilateral

and bilateral deafness were 2.3 and 0.5%, respectively.

 

There is ongoing research on early onset of deafness in Border Collies. This research could lead to a genetic test. This is from the Health & Genetics Committee Report at the ABCA meeting in Gettysburg.

 

Early Onset Deafness

UCDavis tested the new technology (

Affymetrix Canine Genome 2.0 Array

) on a family of Border Collies that has early onset deafness

Results were very promising for finding genetic markers for this

UCDavis is soliciting additional samples

 

 

Mark

 

[Liz P]

Thanks for that link Mark.

 

So it looks like about 1 in 20 Border Collies is either unilaterally or bilaterally deaf. Some would have you believe that deaf BCs are extremely rare, but according to that study it by far more common than CEA was before we had a test.

[Pipedream Farm]

Be careful about making sweeping generalizations about the total population from these results; we don't know how the tested Border Collies were selected from the total population. The sampling process could have skewed the results somewhat. It's safe to say that deafness is present in the total population (working, sport, show, and pet) at the <5% level.

 

Mark

[Laurae]

Very true, Mark. My dogs have not been BAER tested because I do not suspect that they are at all deaf.

[Liz P]

Be careful about making sweeping generalizations about the total population from these results; we don't know how the tested Border Collies were selected from the total population. The sampling process could have skewed the results somewhat. It's safe to say that deafness is present in the total population (working, sport, show, and pet) at the <5% level.

 

Mark

 

True, and looking through the study I also see that 4.5% was only for puppies and we know some are normal as pups then go deaf when they are middle aged.

[stockdogranch]

Thanks for all the input everybody. I guess poor Sabre's facing lots of the same stuff I am with this getting older s*it. I believe it was Bette Davis who said, "getting old ain't for sissies!"

A

[Pipedream Farm]

True, and looking through the study I also see that 4.5% was only for puppies and we know some are normal as pups then go deaf when they are middle aged.

 

 

You're implying that because this sample of puppies yielded 4.5% deafness rate that the actually deafness rate is higher for all the population (since dogs can go deaf with age); as I already stated the numbers in this study may not reflect the true rate of deafness in the total gene pool due to how the population was sampled. Below is from the study, I've underlined a few key statements. From these statements one can see that the data came from dogs/puppies people suspected of having hearing problems, were going to be bred, or were from people who test for everything. Also note that while these were purebred Border Collies it is implied that most were KC registered (not ISDS). I do not believe this constitutes a random sampling of the total population (and even less so for the working Border Collie population) and therefore does not reflect the rate of deafness in the population. It does set an upper limit for the rates of deafness in the breed.

 

Mark

 

 

 

The BAER test results of 2597 Border Collies presented to the

 

Animal Health Trust (1994–2002) for assessment of their hearing

 

status were evaluated. Of these, 2303 were puppies aged 9 weeks

 

old or younger, and 294 were more than 9 weeks old. An additional

 

20 dogs who were tested with BAER and found to have impaired

 

hearing were excluded from this study.

 

All dogs were purebred, although not all were registered with

 

the UK Kennel Club. Most puppies were tested, at approximately

 

6 weeks of age, with their litter mates. Many of the adult dogs were

 

tested before being used for breeding if they had not been tested as

 

a puppy, although some were tested because the owner had become

 

suspicious that the dog had abnormal hearing.

[Liz P]

I don't think you said anything that changed what I said, just better worded. The numbers for the adults should be thrown out, as the study said, because they presented for testing since the owners suspected hearing loss. I was looking at the numbers for the pups. The study did not say that the litters were presented because of suspected hearing loss (unless I missed that line somewhere). I was suggesting that if middle age onset hearing loss is a problem for the breed that the % of deaf BCs would be higher in a survey of adult dogs than in a survey of pups.

[Pipedream Farm]

Liz,

 

That would be true; however, it's the exact number I am disputing. If the sampling was representative of the entire population I would not doubt the published number is representative of the population; I do not believe that study had a representative sampling of the population. I believe the sample was skewed towards those who were worried about deafness in their breeding and towards the KC.

 

 

From 1997-2006 (the study was from 1994 to 2004) there were 21,391 Border Collies registered with the KC (source: 10 year Pastoral Breed Stats) compared to the over 70,000 with the ISDS (source: Number of ISDS Registered Border Collies); one can hardly get a representative sample if the largest population is not adiquatly represented in the sample.

 

Mark

[Eileen Stein]

The study Mark linked to is the same one I referred to in the white-headed thread. When reading it, note that "predominantly white dogs" actually means "predominantly white-headed dogs." The authors explain that "Dogs who had white as the dominant [body] color were allocated to the color group of their existing pigmented areas" -- i.e., a white border collie with a mostly black head would have been classified as black, while a black border collie with a mostly white head would have been classified as white -- but then they unfortunately use "white" as shorthand for "white-headed" throughout much of the writeup, which can lead to confusion.

 

Interestingly, the authors also say that "all Border Collies are homozygous for the sw and sp alleles so that the S locus is not thought to be involved in the regulation of deafness in Border Collies." This is a very interesting statement, because the S locus is the "white-factor" locus, so if I'm reading them correctly they seem to be saying that white-factor is not related to deafness in border collies. I was under the impression that this had not been proved one way or the other, so I wish I had access to the study they cite in support of this statement (fn 23). If they feel that white factor has been excluded as a cause of deafness in BCs, I guess that would explain why they did not attempt to break out excess body white in classifying their subjects.

 

I agree with Mark that we would be on shaky ground in trying to extrapolate these data to estimate the prevalence of deafness (or even congenital sensorineural deafness) in the US working border collie population.

 

ETA: Sorry for wandering off-topic. As regards deafness in old age, well, my hearing ain't what it used to be. Just as most people's hearing deteriorates some with advancing years (despite the fact that some octogenarians hear as well as they ever did), I suspect the same is true for our dogs.

[Bill Fosher]

EH? HOW'S THAT?

 

I'm really sorry, folks, but I can't get myself to feel that dogs losing their hearing in their teens represents any problem for the breed. Many breeds of purebred dogs simply don't live into their teens. Sure, it's sad when my old dog who used to respond to whistles from hundreds of yards away needs to be touched to wake up and is relying more and more on hand signals, but I don't feel that we need to expend a lot of resources trying to "fix" this "problem." Old dogs go deaf. Their joints hurt.

[Liz P]

Is it possible that there is a totally separate gene for white heads vs white bodies? I've seen dogs who regularly produce white headed but not white factored pups and dogs who produce white bodied but never white headed pups.

[Eileen Stein]

AFAIK, it's absolutely true. There are new developments all the time in teasing out information at the gene level, so there may be some new findings that I'm not aware of, but in the past, when we could only go by observing the results of various breedings, it appeared that white on the head was probably not governed by the same gene(s) as body white.