TNS

[Mark Billadeau]

ETA Just out of interest have you found that the number of CEA affected dogs is dropping now that the DNA test is available?

Unless every dog is tested, the results of every DNA test will eventually become skewed towards showing a higher incidence of the disease in the breed; people will not test dogs known to be "normal" via inheritance (i.e. progeny of known "normals"). If I remember correctly, the CEA test results are already showing higher incidence of CEA then when it was first introduced; in other words sampling the gene pool is no longer random.

 

Mark

[jdarling]

mjk05, I'm sorry you had to go through this. I am sure it was heartbreaking. Did you lose the entire litter of puppies? When did you first expect a problem beyond, "Oh, we lost a pup..."? Taking away all the bickering back and forth, what should us Americans take from this conversation? That TNS is possible in the working lines, but that it's not yet a problem so we shouldn't test for it until it is (if it ever comes to that)? Do you think TNS is problem enough in Australian working lines to be testing for it? Is this the only working litter in Australia that you've heard of having a problem? Do you know if others that are advertising stud dogs out of the same lines have had their dogs tested or feel it's necessary?

 

Thanks.

Jodi

[juliepoudrier]

mjk05,

I understand where you're coming from, or at least I think I do. What I don't understand is the apparent need to hammer away at a point that we've all (mostly) apparently agreed on. If we've agreed that TNS carriers exist and that so far at least the COI of working bred dogs means that TNS is likely to crop up only rarely, why the continuing lecture? (Yes, I get that there are folks who are still arguing other points, but I'm sure you understand what I'm getting at here). I know if I had a litter where several puppies had issues, even if seemingly unrelated, I would try to find out why. Most of the folks I know would do the same, Wendy's comments notwithstanding. Does that mean that every instance of some rare genetic disease will be discovered? Of course not. But as you are feeling insulted here by some of the comments others have made, I find rather insulting the insinuation that we (working breeders) would somehow deliberately ignore an obvious [emphasis deliberate] problem. Maybe we'll just have to agree to disagree on that point, but please try to understand that when speaking in generalizations (and we all do it, so I'm not just fingerpointing at you) people broadly paint others with characteristics, intentions, and motives that they don't have.

 

I bred a litter. One pup at 2 years old is having seizures. There is no known epilepsy in the lines I bred, and it was an outcross. I have made no effort to hide that fact, and I have suggested to the pup's owner various tests I think should be done to rule out possible causes before diagnosing epilepsy (which is apparently a diagnosis of exclusion anyway). I also promptly informed *everyone* else who had a pup from that litter so they could be on the look out for any symptoms in their own dogs. I also started asking questions among other working dog people I know to see if I could have missed anything before making this cross. I think I am not an exception to the norm. And I think if some disease were something that had struck much earlier, perhaps even before pups went to their new homes, I still would have tried to figure out what was wrong, and I would have been open and up front with all puppy buyers. I would also be asking around of the working dog community to see if I somehow missed something that was known or suspected in particular lines. As someone else said, the working border collie community is pretty small here, and if there's information, even a rumor, someone will know of it. So, please, when you make sweeping comments about all working breeders sticking their heads in the sand or being in denial, remember that we are all individuals and while some may indeed have their heads in the sand and be in denial, most of us do indeed try to do the right thing by our breeding choices and the pups those choices produce. If I had a litter of fading puppies, would TNS be the first thing I'd ask the vet to consider? Maybe not, because you just don't hear about a lot of fading puppies and a connection to TNS. But that doesn't mean that during the investigation, after the more obvious potential causes were checked, that something like TNS wouldn't be brought up and checked for.

 

I think it's also helpful to remember that when people say "it's not in working bred dogs" they aren't saying it never could be; they are saying that as far as the working dog community knows it's not a significant problem among the dogs of this particular population. That's not the same as saying with absolutely finality that it doesn't exist. If I had to choose my words carefully, and I've tried to do that throughout this discussion (and I think I've said this before), the gene most certainly exists in the working dog population at some unknown level, but so far we aren't seeing it expressed to any great degree. If the working dog community suddenly started having litters of fading puppies, then surely someone would start to investigate why and a cause, genetic or otherwise, would eventually be found. True, there may be the odd litter where pups die of TNS and it goes undetected and the surviving pups might then be carriers, but honestly if we all spent our days worrying about and looking for every rare possible genetic disease a dog could have, I don't think any litters would ever be bred.

 

I think the working border collie community as a whole does show responsibility toward genetic diseases that are known to be expressed with enough frequency in the breed as a whole to cause concern. That's why we now have a genetic test for CEA (which I used on all my breeding dogs) and have a university team looking for the genetic cause(s) of epilepsy. That's why there are methods for checking for hip dysplasia. The diseases and conditions that have been expressed to a degree to be of concern are generally tested for before breeding. If there's not a test, then most responsible breeders would at least study lines and pedigrees to make sure that there's no obvious potential problems with a particular cross. It's called being sensible about what to test for. And that's really all I have to say on this thread.

 

J.

[Denise Wall]

The only valid argument I can think of for more diversity in dogs

selected for function over conformation with the same COI (amount of inbreeding) is that

behavioral traits are more complex than structural traits and therefore have more complex

inheritance patterns. So unless one is just inbreeding without

selection, selecting for behavioral traits will be much more

difficult to "fix" than conformation traits, therefore the

heterogeneity (diversity of genes) will be greater just by nature of the selection

criteria despite the COI. Science will soon prove this one way or the other through DNA analysis of the various populations.

 

I think the better health issue when inbreeding for function is due to culling which doesn't really seem to work as far as decreasing expression and increasing incidence of new genetic diseases.

[Katelynn & Gang]

"We"?!

 

Wow, that was a reach if I ever saw one. "We," as in anyone who breeds working dogs, yourself included.

 

"It doesn't exist" is so pointless.

 

I never said that, I only said that there is no real proof that it exist in dogs bred within North America. Big difference then saying it doesn't exist.

 

I presume you've read the rest of the thread, Katelynn, so you'll have seen multiple comments from me that you don't need to worry about it, you don't need to test for it.

 

I get that you haven't said it but you've been preaching like we should. I am missing the point.

 

What, so they can get the 3rd degree from you, the way I have?

 

The third degree because I am interested in what your dogs pedigree looks like? Com'on, grow up. I could care less if your dog is or isn't working bred, their not my dogs. I was (not anymore) interested to see if maybe there was a common line in your dogs pedigree as well.

 

So you can spend a couple of hours on the databases and come up with a station-bred dog in the 10th generation, or, heaven forbid, an obedience titled dog somewhere there, and "prove" that their dogs aren't really "working bred"?

 

Did I ever say Spryo wasn't working bred? No, I didn't! In fact I said he had a pretty nice pedigree if you really looked into it and that that one of his lines is pretty obviously used in the TNS pedigrees.

 

Did I spend ten hours looking for Patanne's name? Hell no, it took me maybe all of three minutes to scan a ten generation pedigree of Spryo's and maybe another two before that getting to the pages I used.

 

Katelynn

[mjk05]

Hi Jodi,

mjk05, I'm sorry you had to go through this. I am sure it was heartbreaking. Did you lose the entire litter of puppies?

No, we lost 2 out of 4. The other 2 are happy healthy dogs, one of whom is probably going to be my next trial dog.

 

When did you first expect a problem beyond, "Oh, we lost a pup..."?

I'm not sure- probably when the boy had got sick for a second or third time. With him, each presentation was different, so I was slow to put it together. The kennel cough thing going through confused issues a bit, and the fact that the bitch was a novice and not a great mum, so the little two missed out on colostrum. If we'd done what is usually done, they both would have died naturally in the first couple of days, I guess.

 

Taking away all the bickering back and forth, what should us Americans take from this conversation? That TNS is possible in the working lines, but that it's not yet a problem so we shouldn't test for it until it is (if it ever comes to that)?

Yeah, exactly. Also that its not a disease of conformation breeding or sports breeding. It might be more common in those sub-breeds because of inbreeding practices in those communities (ShowBCs in particular), but it isn't a disease that is limited to those sub-breeds. Because of the nature of the disease, as well as its autosomal recessive genetics, it is the sort of thing that can be present in working dogs, and selecting for working ability isn't necessarily protective. In fact, the typical farmer, as Lenajo pointed out, is more likely to let nature take its course with one or two pups over years of breeding than a ShowBC breeder. So TNS may take longer to be recognised in that community.

 

I guess all I'd like is to stop hearing that its a disease of conformation breeding -and no, that's, not what Julie or Eileen said, but it has been implied in statements like "We've given you valid points as to why we don't like AKC or conformation (CL, TNS and loss of inherited working traits that make a Border Collie a Border Collie)." - from a previous discussion.

 

And to not have every TNS thread descend into "proving" some dubious background on any identified carrier dogs. That's just a way of trying to say "it doesn't exist", and somehow implying that selecting for conformation or obedience or whatever is the root cause. It isn't.

 

Do you think TNS is problem enough in Australian working lines to be testing for it?

I don't know. Basically the only working dogs here that seem to have been tested have been dogs in my fairly small trialling community, because many of them are related to mine, and a few dogs over East, where the population is much greater, that are closely related to our carriers. As far as I know, only a handful have tested as carriers. Like Mark's comments on the CEA stats, its a very skewed sample. I have no idea what the actual carrier rates are like, but I can only presume they are fairly low (maybe 1 or 2%).

 

Is this the only working litter in Australia that you've heard of having a problem?

Yes, it is. As I said earlier, some of the lines my dog is based on have been used extensively and inbred heavily, and haven't produced TNS.

 

Do you know if others that are advertising stud dogs out of the same lines have had their dogs tested or feel it's necessary?

I think more people are becoming aware of it. We've informed anyone I know in other parts of the country, especially those with related dogs. People here don't tend to advertise stud dogs. We're still largely a rural/stockmen based trialling community, and people tend to take their bitches to dogs they've seen working. In my area, there was a flurry of activity when we first got the TNS diagnosis, and quite a few people got dogs tested (especially those related to our carriers). From what I've heard, a good proportion of them, especially those from other lines, were clear and now people tend to think about it only if they are breeding to a known carrier line. The general approach has been that dogs from those lines that are shaping up really well and might be breeding prospects have been tested. Most of them have been clear. One or two have been carriers, and they are still being considered for breeding, but they will test the dogs they'd breed them to. That's basically the way it should be, I think. And people are aware of it, so if an unrelated or untested mating crops up a sick pup, they'll think of it. I have heard that some people in other areas have been taking the "its not in our state" line, which is a bit silly.

[mjk05]

mjk05,

I understand where you're coming from, or at least I think I do. What I don't understand is the apparent need to hammer away at a point that we've all (mostly) apparently agreed on.

Its probably the exceptions to the "mostly", I guess. I would have dropped the whole thing and left it at the only point of disagreement being that the idea that breeding for working ability minimises risk of this sort of disease. I understand why you and Eileen take that view, and in practice in places like the UK or US it probably does work, but I think our story shows that breeding for working ability, and even trying to use outcrossing, doesn't always protect. Minimises, yes. So I think we agree, and we can leave it there. But then apparently it was essential to see our dogs' pedigrees etc etc...

 

But as you are feeling insulted here by some of the comments others have made, I find rather insulting the insinuation that we (working breeders) would somehow deliberately ignore an obvious [emphasis deliberate] problem.

I guess because I consider myself (and my OH) "working breeders", I haven't been as careful as I should have. That wasn't what I've been trying to say at all- in fact, I was trying to show how easy it is to miss, and how it can be present in a working dog population without anyone knowing. I don't think there has been any deliberate overlooking of a problem here or elsewhere. It hasn't been (and really still isn't) a problem.

 

So, please, when you make sweeping comments about all working breeders sticking their heads in the sand or being in denial, remember that we are all individuals and while some may indeed have their heads in the sand and be in denial,

Julie- where have I said that?

That's more of a stretch than me assuming that all those posts saying "its never been found in our dogs" and trying to prove that carrier dogs aren't really working bred are essentially saying "it doesn't exist". (ETA the end of the sentence, sorry).

 

If the working dog community suddenly started having litters of fading puppies, then surely someone would start to investigate why and a cause, genetic or otherwise, would eventually be found.

OK, I guess this is also something that bothers me. The idea (and I'm sure you don't mean it this way, but others reading might take it this way) that TNS appears as "litters of fading puppies". Statistically, each pup born to 2 carriers would have a 75% chance of being fine. In an average litter, the chance of getting most or even a good proportion of a litter dying is significantly less than the chance of them all being fine.

 

But yep, you're right, if people noticed that dogs from a certain line frequently lost a puppy or two from each litter it would certainly be investigated and come to attention. My impression based on our experience here, though, is that by the time that happened, the gene would have to be very common in the population. Of course, given the wide gene pool and the degree of outcrossing that is used in the global working border collie community, that is unlikely to happen. One or two popular sires could increase the rate enough for it to pop up here and there and go unrecognised, though. That's what has most likely happened here. (note- not lecturing- just discussing, because now that I'm over the heartbreak has settled, I actually find this situation interesting).

 

I think the working border collie community as a whole does show responsibility toward genetic diseases that are known to be expressed with enough frequency in the breed as a whole to cause concern.

I agree.

 

It was just a story, about how an outcrossed litter bred for working ability, from two dogs completely bred for working ability, have produced TNS. Not intended as a lecture (sorry if it came over that way), not intended as a plea for universal testing, and not a request for certain members to "prove" why our dogs aren't really *working* bred or whatever.

[Eileen Stein]

So, please, when you make sweeping comments about all working breeders sticking their heads in the sand or being in denial, remember that we are all individuals and while some may indeed have their heads in the sand and be in denial,

Julie- where have I said that?

 

The statement you made that I took that way was "'It doesn't exist' is so pointless. You can only keep saying until it does appear, and then you have to either try to hide it, or disassociate yourself from it." I took you to be saying that we were trying to deny it or stick our heads in the sand, and that if we did actually encounter it, we would try to hide it or evade it. I don't think that's true, and I kind of decided to give you the benefit of the doubt that you didn't really mean that. I was glad you posted your story, and very interested in it. The more information, the better. I'd be interested in the pedigrees too, on the same theory, but they probably wouldn't mean much to me.

[mjk05]

The statement you made that I took that way was "'It doesn't exist' is so pointless. You can only keep saying until it does appear, and then you have to either try to hide it, or disassociate yourself from it."

That was more directed at Katelynn, to be honest.

 

As is this:

The third degree because I am interested in what your dogs pedigree looks like? Com'on, grow up. I could care less if your dog is or isn't working bred, their not my dogs. I was (not anymore) interested to see if maybe there was a common line in your dogs pedigree as well.

You can ask me if there was an obvious common link. Did you find one? You can ask me whether my dogs are working bred- they absolutely are. You aren't going to find anything on the internet or elsewhere to say otherwise.

 

Every time you get involved in this sort of discussion, Katelynn, you seem to spend most of the time either taking the high and mighty position about how TNS is a ShowBC condition, or trying to find some dubious breeding behind any implicated dogs so you can say they're not "working bred", and say "there's no proof it exists in working-bred dogs". It is just wearing thin for me.

 

I do find it interesting that it seems there are common denominators in all the pedigrees.

(emphasis added)

I'd be interested to know what those common denominators are, too.

 

ETA:

Seems all the TNS dogs are somehow related by lines which were/are used for breeding in things other then working ability

Oh yeah, and I'm still waiting to hear how this relates to my dogs. What exactly is their link to "breeding for things other than working ability"?

(the only "link" I can see is that they're border collies, whose lines probably deviated from any other known TNS lines in the 1950s at the latest)

 

I spy a Obedience Champion in this dogs tenth generation. From that, I am going to assume that breeding for things other then working set in well before the fourth generation.

Or- you could assume that it might be someone who dabbles in Obedience with working bred dogs, and still breeds for working ability- like Roy Goutte?

[mjk05]

The only valid argument I can think of for more diversity in dogs

selected for function over conformation with the same COI (amount of inbreeding) is that

behavioral traits are more complex than structural traits and therefore have more complex

inheritance patterns. So unless one is just inbreeding without

selection, selecting for behavioral traits will be much more

difficult to "fix" than conformation traits, therefore the

heterogeneity (diversity of genes) will be greater just by nature of the selection

criteria despite the COI. Science will soon prove this one way or the other through DNA analysis of the various populations.

 

I think the better health issue when inbreeding for function is due to culling which doesn't really seem to work as far as decreasing expression and increasing incidence of new genetic diseases.

That's really interesting, Denise, thanks.

[DeltaBluez Tess]

I have been reading this thread with great interest.

 

This person spent $6K on the pups to find out why the problems was. It's her money and she has a right to spend it as she wants. You may not agree with her on her philosophy or breeding but if she wants to spend $6K on her dog, so be it.

 

I spent over well over $6K to put Shiro back together again after she was run over by the UPS truck. She was over 9 years old as I recall. Some people gave us *s**t tht we would spend that AMOUNT of MONEY on a older dog. Some of the comments were downright rude or nasty.

 

I told one person it was our damm money and we could spend it as we pleased. That person was very nasty and said some thing liker "It's just a damm dog, she is spayed and you are stupid to waste your money on a dog" or something like that). Shiro lived for 5 more years and we never regretted our decision.

 

 

Diane

[Janba]

QUOTE

Seems all the TNS dogs are somehow related by lines which were/are used for breeding in things other then working ability

 

I have a feeling that the reason that it appears that all TNS dogs (and I am assuming you include carriers in these dogs) seemed to be linked to breeding in things other then working ability is because most of the people who are testing and allowing their results to be made public are the non working BC people. Until a decent random sample of dogs are tested and the results made public you can't make assumptions about lines. This also applies to the working BCs.

 

I also think the incidence in the show lines will probably come down as more dogs are tested. At the moment the results are very heavily weighted with dogs related to known carriers or suspected carriers the same way that if you took the incidence of TNS carriers in our working dog population from the tests performed it would show a falsely high result because most of the dogs tested are ones who are closely related to mjk05's litters parents.

 

ETA Didn't mean to hijack mjk05's question

[juliepoudrier]

Janba,

You're probably right. It's similar to the situation of CEA testing here. In the case of CEA, results are skewed by the fact that as dogs are tested genetically clear, their progeny will not likely be tested, so the test results will start to trend toward dogs who are not clear. TNS is sort of the opposite of that, since the dogs being tested now are the suspected affecteds or carriers, but the end result is the same in that the results of the tested population will make it seem like a more prevalent problem than it really is, if that makes sense.

 

J.

[mjk05]

I'd be interested in the pedigrees too, on the same theory, but they probably wouldn't mean much to me.

I did post one carrier pedigree in an earlier post. Only one ISDS dog features (Glen II 48637), and he's not in the bitch's pedigree, so there's every chance he's not involved (although he could be ).

 

For interest, the COI on the pedigree I posted comes out at 18.8% on our pedigree program (that includes dogs a bit further back than that 6 gen pedigree). I haven't done the COI on the affected pups yet. But there are a few dogs around here that would have to have higher COIs than that, and so far the breeders doing those sorts of breedings have been pretty successful (could be due to training and handling, of course). The dogs are physically massively different, even though so closely related, and I don't know if we can say their working traits are very similar, I will have to watch a bit longer and discuss with more qualified people.

[Katelynn & Gang]

JW because TNS is being assumed to have been within the Border Collie breed for so long, has it been seen in the Collie, Shetland Sheepdog and most of all, the Bearded Collie?

 

Katelynn

[mjk05]

I don't understand your point? Are you suggesting that the the Henniker dog, Australian working border collies, ShowBCs are as closely related to the Sheltie, the Collie Rough/Smooth and the Beardie as they are to US working border collies?

 

And still waiting for clarification on this:

Seems all the TNS dogs are somehow related by lines which were/are used for breeding in things other then working ability

[Janba]

JW because TNS is being assumed to have been within the Border Collie breed for so long, has it been seen in the Collie, Shetland Sheepdog and most of all, the Bearded Collie?

 

Katelynn

 

I also don't see the point in this especially in relation to the beardie. These breeds and BCs don't neccessarily share the same genetic diseases even if they originated from the same dogs. Beardies as far as I am aware don't have a problem with CEA and no pure BC last time I enquired has tested postive to MDR1 whereas it is a problem with collies and shelties.

 

I have not heard that TNS has been found in the breeds you mentioned but they could suffer from related disorders.