Epilepsy - Meerdyke Machk's short life - Page 2

Here is a link for his pedigree and a photo of him

http://www.pedigreedatabase.com/german_shepherd_dog/dog.html?id=1860605

Margaret - It is very sad to see that our lines are so close,  with your beloved girl being half sibling to my boy's mother. How many more are there out there suffering in silence?

Hundmutter - These lines are, I believe, being only sold as pets, there are many 'colours' in the lines and my boy was very large and longer haired.  Sold to us with breeding restrictions.  Our boys Dam was bred by two different breeders that we know of.

NansGSD – it is possible that these lines are still being used. Meerdyke Machk's mother had at least four litters. Our breeder is choosing not to keep in contact now? There could be even more dogs with hereditary illnesses relating to these lines but may be living with families like us, who thought our dog's epilepsy was 'just one of those unlucky and isolated incidents'. We didn't know anything about his lines until the very end, when we tried to rehome through German Shepherd Rescue, who, sadly couldn't rehome him but had heard of his lines before and very kindly had his pedigree researched for us. For obvious reasons we didn't want to have him PTS as he was so young, but his breeder would not take him and neither could we rehome him. It was for the best in the long run as his fitting was getting much worse and I feel that he was never going to stabelise on the medication. He got to the stage of fitting only an hour after his epiphen and usually the clusters didnt cease until 4 to 5 doses of diazepam.

Siantha – yes there is inbreeding with his great grandmother being mated with her own grandson. I am no expert on breeding but I believe this is allowed from what I have read. I totally agree that lines must be checked prior to planned breeding.

Sunsilver – I am so pleased that your mum's spaniel still continued a happy life but sadly many dogs don't respond as well to the medication, ours being an example of this. There is no cure for epilepsy and it appears that many sufferers have different triggers and different types of siezures. There is always the fear of that huge siezure that will not stop and could eventually end the life of your dog. We would never have chose to end our dogs life had we not given his illness so many chances. For us there was no more options left and at least our poor boy can rest now.

 

That's horrible. My hear goes out to you, and others whose dogs are affected by this disease.

Hundmutter: RIGHT ON!!

Here's the linebreeding from my showline's grandparents. There are thousands of showlines out there with very similar pedigrees. And we wonder why our breed is in trouble...


Ursus v. Batu: 

• 5 - 5,5........................................... in V16 Dax von der Wienerau
• 4 - 4............................................. in V Häsel von Tannenmeise
• 4,5 - 5........................................... in 2X VA1 Uran vom Wildsteiger Land
• 4 - 4............................................. in 2X VA1 Quando von Arminius
• 5,5 - 5,5......................................... in V Xaver von Arminius
• 5,5,5,5 - 5,5..................................... in V Palme vom Wildsteiger Land
• 3 - 3............................................. in VA6 Odin von Tannenmeise
• 5 - 5............................................. in V Dixie von Tannenmeise

Kessy v. Simmersberg:

• 5,5,5 - 3......................................... in 2X VA1 Uran vom Wildsteiger Land
• 5,5 - 4........................................... in V Palme vom Wildsteiger Land

Notice in particular the doubling up on both Uran and Palme!

Then, of course, in her father's pedigree, Palme and most of Uran's contribution are dropped because they are more than 5 generations back!

Erko vom Haus Tchorz:

Linebreeding - 5 generations

• 4 - 5............................................. in V Anett vom Noricum
• 5 - 4............................................. in 2X VA1 Uran vom Wildsteiger Land
• 5 - 5............................................. in V Quina von Arminius
• 4 - 4............................................. in VA4 Mark vom Haus Beck
• 5 - 5............................................. in VA7 Fedor von Arminius
• 3 - 4............................................. in VA1 Jeck vom Noricum
• 5 - 5,5........................................... in VA1 Eiko vom Kirschental
• 4,4 - 5........................................... in VA6 Odin von Tannenmeise
• 4 - 4............................................. in V Ines von der Ehrenfeste
• 3 - 3............................................. in V Quitta von der Ehrenfeste
• 5 - 5............................................. in V Zora vom Wildsteiger Land

It may be more than 5 generations back, but the genes are STILL THERE! If I did a COI on these dogs, I'm sure it would show a totally unacceptable ratio of inbreeding!

Fortunately, she herself is a total outcross.
  
  

Firstly, I am so very, very sorry about your poor young boy. What a sad situation for you all, you must be devastated.

These lines are very, very well known epileptic lines in the UK and these breeders know this full well and CANNOT deny knowledge of it and still claim to know anything about GSD's, but  they just keep on breeding regardless. Frankly they shouldn't be given the title breeders at all, they are not worthy of the name. 

I truly wish that these *breeders* could have experienced your life with the pup that you loved over those 27 months, to see what they had created, and maybe then they could see beyond the cash crop they produce.. I find it heartbreaking and have to wonder what type of person can know that they have caused this amount of suffering to the pups they have produced and the people that bought a dog, hoping for a happy life with him for the next 10 - 13 years, and then just keep right on doing it KNOWING it is going to happen again.

They have their pretty websites, their pretty colours and pretty puppies, but what tragedy hides behind it.

I am so angry that it just keeps on happening. They should hang their heads in shame, all of them.
  


 

Abby normal - your comments and sentiments are most appreciated. Thankyou. My belief is that any responsible breeder would have taken him to save us the heartbrake of having him PTS. During his last weeks We were very strongly advised by our vet that he must not be in the room with our babies. Even if we are in the room. I can understand the vets concerns because my dog had become destructive during his confused, post ictal phase. And of course it is near impossible to keep your dog away from you because they just want to be with you all the time. We loved our dog dearly, we had him from 12 weeks old to 27 months. We were sold a dog that was doomed to die basically. Now we are left heartbroken. Without our beloved dog, who we miss every day, not to mention the costs incurred from his illness. I have written to my breeder, who suddenly choses to be ignorant, and I have complained to the kennel club, who choose to shirk responsibility. Someone needs to be accountable!

Bailey and Abby - re the Kennel Club and this problem,

Despite what the KC have been chatting recently on 'puppy farming', they must have been able to see FOR YEARS
what has been going on, just through puppies registered with them... if I could work it out easily from Breed Record
Supplements, eny fule could.  No good whingeing "Well, some people registering lots of litters might be properly set
up for looking after them properly ...so the KC can't act."

Producing huge quantities, quarter after quarter, of white puppies, and large numbers of 'non-standard' colours, the
constant frequent appearance of the same stud dogs names,  what the hell else does that say ?  And that isn't
counting the well-recognised fact that lots of BYB GSD litters get bred and sold without coming anywhere near KC
registration.

The breeder who sold Margaret and John their unfortunate Megan was a KC Accredited/Assured Breeder at the point
where I (as someone else's agent) bought a dog pup from her;  as I understand it later this pup was a young half-sibling to Megan
and I met the 'mum' (who was a lovely dog, but unfortunately  that isn't everything).  If the pup was to be my own purchase
I would not have touched it with a bargepole;  but under instructions ...  I did briefly raise the epilepsy question with the
breeder, 'cos although I did not know EXACTLY how the puppy was bred until after he was bought and paid for, I had my
concerns based on the knowledge gained as outlined above.  She denied any problems known in her breeding.  Not to say
she didn't know about the pre-history sections of the pedigrees she was basing her lines on, of course ...
It was also obvious to me after the purchase that this breeder was not very interested in ongoing contact / communications about
how the puppy was doing.

When Megan's story was quite widely published a couple of years after this, the breeder STOPPED being a member of the
ABS.  Obviously I hoped, whyever the reason for that was, that she would revise her breeding lines in the light of the knowledge
of Megan's suffering.  Clearly she hasn't, given that Baileyboy is talking about less than two years ago.  She created and presumably supplied Bailey's dam to the holder of the second kennel name involved.  I don't know if Bailey was actually KC registered ?  If he
was, the KC has little excuse for continuing to register litters in this particular line, but I DOUBT THEIR STAFF SPOTTED IT.

Hundmutter- thankyou for your comments. Yes he was registered and I would consider not cheap either, at £600. We have the fancy certificate and all the registration paperwork but, no dog! His mother was half sibling to Megan with same father. I haven't heard negative comments about my dogs father or his side of the pedigree but I do know that the research showed a large number of lines to hendrawens. So he is obviously a carrier of the gene and now is a producer. It is possible that he is still being put for stud too.

Have not seen the grandsire used in the last couple of quarter-yrs BRS, but that doesn't mean he
still isn't being, if he's still alive and still fertile, he could be producing non-registered litters still.
Before that, i.e. if you go back 3/4 of a year or so, he was  recorded as the father of many
dogs registered.  Unfortunately I don't know who owns him or where he's kept.  I bet the KC
could figure that out, if the will was there ... 

Can't recall without scrabbling back through old paperwork whether Spirit of Rajah was the sire of
the mother bitch concerned, or was he father to your dog's sire ?  
Would you be prepared to tell me ?  You can do it by PM if you don't want to publicise it on here.

The sire is with the breeder that I bought from and he is a large blue boy. The dam comes and goes to the breeder I bought from. I don't know much about the previous breeder of the dam but her father is the dog you mentioned. I have listed my dogs pedigree here on the database in the hope to help other people like myself. Feel free to take a look. It is meerdyke machk. I only have the 5 generations according to my pedigree certificate. But have listed as much as I can. Unfortunately I had great difficulty in adding spirit of rajah at Debylyn as the sire to my dogs dam. So I had to create a new file but it is the same dog!

Because the thought of him being alive is far better than him being dead!

I am being very honest in admitting that 'we just didn't know what to do?'  We had a dog who we love dearly, still cry and miss him every day, we WERE responsible owners, he was monitored regulary and medicated for this awful disease for which there is NO cure.  We had a year of him being a normal puppy and then a year of him being an epileptic.  He had a good life, as much as we could give him.  Daily runs in the fields, visits to the beach, fun and games in the garden, he wasn't left alone very often and he was a huge part of our family and before his epilepsy he even slept on our bed!   Also I must add that if his epilepsy had been under control he would still be with us.

Sadly, his epilepsy wasn't under control and probably never would be, it was quite likely that he was approaching that final fit that would do severe damage.  We were distraught and just did not know what to do!  Yes, we were probably clutching at straws when we contacted German Shepherd Rescue, but we just didn't know what else to do. 

I totally agree that owners need to be responsible and responsible WE WERE!  We obviously just tried all avenues before he was PTS.  Keeping him was no longer an option especially after our vet 'strongly advising us' he must not be around our babies.  It had reached the stage where his fitting had become a potential danger to our children and however awful and sad for the dog, we must put childrens safety first.

So by us making a couple of phone calls in desperation to find out 'what can we do' with our beloved dog - does not make us irresponsible owners.  We did not want to have our dog PTS but were left no choice.  Had we been given ulterior options we would have tried them.