Bloat Again... - Page 3

If it were me,  I think I would do some searching around carefully to find out about aunts, uncles, grandparents, and any siblings having any incidents of bloating.

If that questing around turned up some other cases of bloat in the lines, I personally would not breed the dog.  But I am new to all this and still learning,  so my thoughts are worth less than the usual two cents :o)

Heather

 Bloat/Torsion can be genetic since some lines are very much more prone than others. But it can alson be cause by environemental factors like exercice after eating or drinking lots of water etc..

ALL GSD am or german are affected and It was even there before American lines.  So please..no am versus german..we are al on the same boat!!

You have to do your research on parents, siblings and on the mothers side..are they prone too??  

What bothers me the most is breeding your dog before OFA clearance at 2 years. Why are you such in a hurry..He's still too young..be patient and do your homework on the lines you thinking of mixing togheter..they are a lot of other problems not more fun than bloat like megaoesphagus, Pancreatic insuffisancy etc...

I never had a GSD bloat or knew of one that was an easy belcher after eating.  One of my vets, an old time vet who is deceased now, insisted that easy belching was a heritable trait (conformation and innervation which produced this genetically) and prevented gastric dilation which could then tear the mesentery and lead to the dilated gas filled stomach or intestine section rising like a balloon and twisting, thus obstructing the blood flow and killing the tissues and the dog. The GSDs that I have that belch easily started doing so as young dogs usually at 2-3 months old.  I love to see that trait and it is apparently a dominant gene.

Here's another thing we often see.  Excuses, excuses, excuses for genetic and misbreeding or spontaneous breeding abberatons by calling them "conformational diseases".   Folks selecting dogs for conformation alone without consideration for ghenetics are nonetheless producing dogs with diseaqses from genetic selection, not caused by conformation. The term "conformational disease" is another double speak term.  Best for a breeder who produces GSDs with these genetically caused problems to seek heklp from experienced breed wardens and top breeders who actually know the lines and the producing backgrounds of most of the GSDs in them. 

Breeders who know the producing backgrounds of the GSDs they use and use this information wisely according to well established selective breeding practices can and do create dogs with less problems.  Often in Europe, this information is considered trade secrets among top breeders who share this info only with each other.  Unless one has access to this info breeding can become a crapshoot.  There is a lot of genetic problems in every line, and the breeders job is to select only the good visible ones (ie the dominant ones) as much as possible, and comopensate through mate selection to decrease the frequency of hidden recessives that only show in offspring.  This ability is what separates the small time breeder from the old timer breed wardens and top breeders of Europe. 

Och, Goofy, can ye not read? As for all your posts, “doublespeak” is your specialty, and as always it is you who’s “confounded”. As you exemplify to extraordinary degree, reading, writing, or reasoned deduction, is not everyone’s cup of tea! You, hodie, Blitzen, and other AM buddies also appear afflicted by endless preconceived, stock opinions, sadly mostly erroneous, ego-centrally trotted out parrot fashion whenever the opportunity presents itself. Maybe take a backseat for a while?

My May post only repeated conclusions arrived at by Dr. John Armstrong, an expert in this field, and whose findings agree with those of other researchers. Armstrong: “Bloat is not a genetic disease in the same sense as the metabolic and other described disorders, and it seems unlikely that a single gene is responsible for bloat. One might better compare a bloat attack to a bad case of indigestion in a human. Some people are more prone to such attacks than others, and there may well be an inherited component, but other factors also come into play. Research into bloat suggests that diet, behavior, and conformation may all play a role; as well as stress or anxiety, a gastrointestinal infection or blockage, or conditions such as celiac disease or lactose intolerance in which the intestines aren't able to digest and absorb certain parts of food.” Is this simply too complicated for you, Goof? Mayo Clinic may help: “Factor in the habit of bolting food, gulping air, or drinking large amounts of water immediately after eating to this feeding schedule and body type. Then add vigorous exercise after a full meal, and you have the recipe for bloat. Of course, the fact that not all bloats happen in just the same way and the thought that some bloodlines are more at risk than others further complicates the issue.”

Goofy: “The definition of whether a trait is genetic or environmental is whether it's rate of occurrence in progency can be increased or reduced by selctive breeding.”  Why is it so hard for you to understand this? Eventually most of the GSD genotype will be mapped with high tech means, and specific polygenic locations will be identified and patented.  Then genes can be substituted to create gene combinations which produce diminishing amounts of bloat or torsion.  You are way off base asserting that gastric dilation and torsion are conformational diseases rather than genetic”.

Armstrong: “Problems such as hip dysplasia and bloat clearly have a genetic component, but also an environmental component, and perhaps a behavioral one as well. Gastric torsion is not a genetic disease, and it would be foolish to think that one can identify a single gene responsible for bloat. One might better compare a bloat attack to a bad case of indigestion in a human. Some people are more prone to such attacks than others, and there may well be an inherited component, but other factors play a substantial role. Research into bloat suggests that diet, behavior and conformation may all play a role. Leaving aside the question of the role of genetics in behavior, the results suggest that the incidence of bloat increases with the size of the dog and the depth and width of the chest cavity. This is a conformational problem, not a genetic disease. There is no bloat gene we can identify and eliminate. There are probably dozens or hundreds of genes that go into determining the shape and size of the head, trunk and limbs.” Easy enough Goof?
 

Goofy: “Breeders who know the producing backgrounds of the GSDs they use and use this information wisely according to well established selective breeding practices can and do create dogs with less problems.  Often in Europe, this information is considered trade secrets among top breeders who share this info only with each other.  Unless one has access to this info breeding can become a crapshoot.  There is a lot of genetic problems in every line, and the breeders job is to select only the good visible ones (ie the dominant ones) as much as possible, and comopensate through mate selection to decrease the frequency of hidden recessives that only show in offspring.  This ability is what separates the small time breeder from the old timer breed wardens and top breeders of Europe.”

Ah, motherhood generalities now in full flight, and back to those “trade secrets”! Conspiracies everywhere! US Government perpetrated 9/11, Al Qaeda does not exist, and fascists are taking over the world!  Nightmares On Elm Street everywhere! Give us a break!

Hodie: “He is too young to breed and given a serious incident like this, reputable breeders would not be making excuses as to what happened and realize that regardless of the fact that no one knows for sure why bloat occurs, at the bottom line, EVERYTHING short of injury (or sucking air LOL) is genetic. If you breed him, be sure to tell prospective pup buyers that their father bloated at a young age. See how many suckers you can talk into buying a dog with that type of history in the sire.”

Some judicious response to one bloat occurrence! Armstrong: “Many people label any problem that appears to be inherited a genetic disease. However, though there are legitimate genetic diseases, there are also a variety of problems that have an inherited component but are of a fundamentally different nature. Even dogs with a bloat genotype do not necessarily bloat. In light of the Purdue study which indicates that stress, diet and other environmental factors play a role, this requirement is not unreasonable. What a dog inherits is a predisposition to bloat, not bloat itself. I do not rule out the possibility that two dogs of identical conformation may have one or more genes that lead to one being more bloat-prone than the other.”

And, concluding my contribution to bloat, a big thank you of course to Blitzen for the timely re-opening of this topic and enabling buddy Goofy’s hot air spiels, and for own opinionated, mostly thumb-sucking and evidence-less views.
 

IreneM, sounds like you have produced and sold GSDs that have died of gastric torsion and now just want to minimize your responsibility in improper breeding, use of sire and dam that carry bad polygenics for such. It's an old game, try to shift causation of polygenically determined genetic problems to environmental strees and the responsibility of the buyer rather than the breeder accepting responsibility.  The kind of double think and double speak you are using just help continue this problem. If you keep using GSDs for breeding that have produced offspring that have gastric dilation, torsion or splenic tosion/colic you are ignorant and just harming the breed.  You appear to be endlessly confounded in your thinking, typical of a few UK breeders that I know.  Good thing most UK breeders know better. 

I lost my just shy of 9yrs old female to gvd on 6/12.  Nothing was out of the ordinary that day, I soaked her food, she ate her dinner 6:00 P.M. she was not high energy but not overweight (65lbs).  I went to bed at 9:30 and I gave her a cookie, she ate it my husband put her outside at 10:00 and brought her in at 10:15, she was gagging and obviously in distress.  He woke my up I took one look at her and ran for the phone, while I was on the phone my husband was getting dressed.  She was in surgery by 11:15, the vet said her spleen was not affected but because of the location of the twist and the necrotic tissue there was nothing he could do.  Her mother is alive and well, she will be 12 in October.  Her father is Delhusa Vom Hause Christa, he is listed in the pedigrees, I've often wondered who ended up with him.

Zukeeper, my condolences on your loss.  This is always heartwrenching.  That is why it is so important for breeders to share information openly about dogs known to have produced this in puppies and lines.

Because gastric dilation, torsion and/or splenic torsion/colic are polygentically determined they can appear as recessive gene combinations and can skip generations.  Thus the GSDs parents may not have suffered any bouts or either of these three disorders.  I had leased a bitch once that bloated after eating (couldn't belch) but never had torsion of the gut.  Tubing her to release the gas would take care of it.  I never bred her because I believed it was genetic.  The sire and dam can be genetically configured to have bloat under certain environmental conditions but just never have it because the conditions weren't right.  Proneness to either of these three conditions is genetically determined.  Some GSDs have a high frequency of GSDs that have this potential genetically determined and have a fair number who succumb to these problems over time. 

There are lines of certain stud dogs that produced quite of bit of GSDs that ended up dead from gastric torsion and splenic torsion/colic.   I have known of situations where GSDs from known bad lines for this were handled and provided for very carefully with everything done to minimize any environmental influences (low grain good dog food, kept quiet after eating, etc.), and still succumbed to gastric torsion or splenic torsion/colic.

IreneM, look again - Blitzen did not reopen this thread. Apology accepted.