Some vets are spotting an alarming trend.
century: the golden retriever. As a young veterinarian working in small-town Massachusetts, he saw many of the fair-coated dogs come through the practice, and like so many others, he couldn’t resist them. There’s a reason they’re now one of the
Years of anecdotal reports from other golden lovers as well as scattershot studies seemed to support the idea that something was wrong: Were the big, sweet dogs now perishing earlier than their forebears? Why? Golden retrievers emerged around the same time as the practice of modern dog breeding took hold. Humans had been shaping dog genetics since the first wolves joined us by the fireside—by raising and breeding only the most formidable pups, or those with the keenest intellect, or simply the cutest faces, we’d created different general dispositions of dogs: guard dogs, hunting dogs, lap dogs.
The GRLS wouldn’t be possible without a contingent of enthusiastic veterinarians across the country who helped find and enroll participants and continue to diligently collect data. Lappin is one of those vets. When he caught wind of the GRLS, he immediately got on board, signing up 17 of his patients, including a golden retriever of his own, Isaac.
A lot of golden retrievers do die of cancer—that is clear. And that’s the primary concern of Robert Rebhun, a professor at the University of California, Davis, School of Veterinary Medicine and a cancer biologist. Rebhun was raised around goldens growing up, and lost two of them—Bourbon and Rum—to the disease when they were each around 10 years old. When he started a family of his own, it included a golden named Jessica. “Our four girls, she was their childhood dog,” Rebhun said.
But Boyko and Rebhun are both hopeful that the plethora of new data on dog longevity could push dog breeding in a healthier direction. Right now, the best breeders play a kind of genetic “whack-a-mole,” Boyko said: While they do test for known genetic problems, unknown harmful genes invariably slip in whenever we select for those desirable superficial characteristics. In the future, Boyko expects that health will become a higher priority, thanks to advances in dog science.
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