Canine Health and Fitness with Dr. Chris Zink, DVM PhD

Watch our webinar with Dr. Chris Zink, DVM PhD:

About Dr. Chris Zink, DVM PhD:

Previously named Veterinarian of the Year by the AVMA, Dr. Chris Zink is an award-winning author of numerous books and co-editor of the first ever book on Canine Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation, Co-Founder of Avidog-Zink Ventures, and a world-renowned expert in canine sports medicine and rehabilitation, with over 125 titles in Agility, Obedience, Conformation, Tracking, Hunt Tests, Barn Hunt, Nosework, Coursing, and Rally on dogs from the Sporting, Hound, Working, Terrier and Herding groups. Dr. Zink was also instrumental in establishing the American College of Veterinary Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation as the newest specialty in veterinary medicine.

Panelists:

• Cat Matloub, Esq.
• Judi Stella, PhD

About Good Dog:

Good Dog is on a mission to build a better world for our dogs by educating the public and advocating for dog breeders. We are a young, tech-savvy company with an online community that educates the public, supports breeders, helps people connect directly with responsible breeders who have passed our screening and comply with our standards, and promotes responsible dog ownership.

Our goal is to use technology as a force for good and empower the good forces in the dog world with technology – to be a voice and platform for dog breeders, to counter the extremist propaganda, and change the conversation so the public realizes how critical it is to support and recognize breeders. We’re free for breeders (breeders also can’t pay to be listed) and provide support (legal, tech, breeding), and discounts on health testing.

Transcription

Cat Matloub [0:02] Thank you everybody so, so much for joining us today. As always, we are just so thrilled to have the chance to chat with you all and are so appreciative of your time. (Hello from Alaska? Crazy!) We are just beyond thrilled today to be bringing you, as our special guest, Dr. Zink, who many of you know. We had the privilege of having her on before and are super, super excited to be announcing that we are joining forces more fully and entering into a full partnership and making Dr. Zink an advisor for us for Good Dog. We couldn’t be more honored to bring her expertise, world-renowned, into our team. We feel so honored and so humbled. We’re thrilled to kick off things today to talk about one of the very many areas of expertise that Chris has. It is hard to keep up with. Canine fitness, how important that is, and how it relates to everything—from breeding dogs to puppies and everything that goes to that. I am obviously not the expert in this area, but I think it’s pretty astounding to think about the parallels from a human health perspective around the importance of fitness and what we know, how much we know, that impacts so many aspects of our health. Again, you’ll hear from the experts—not from me—but I’m struck by how much sense it makes to similarly focus on dogs’ health because we see it in humans. We feel it. We see the harm that it can cause. So, really excited to bring this amazing education and hopefully help you guys be able to raise and have even healthier dogs. I’m going to turn it over to Chris and to Judi to talk about canine fitness and health and all that good stuff.

Dr. Chris Zink [2:14] Thank you, Cat. 

Dr. Judi Stella [2:16] Hi, everybody! Welcome, Dr. Zink, back to our webinar series. Just to get started, how about if you just give everybody a little bit of background into canine sports medicine and rehabilitation and what your role in that area has been? 

Dr. Chris Zink [2:32] When I went to vet school many, many decades ago, there was no such field. I had gotten interested in canine athletics, and so I made that a focus of mine. As soon as I got out into practice, I realized nobody knew anything about it, so I just started reading about human sports medicine and equine sports medicine. Ultimately, I joined up with a bunch of other veterinarians, and we worked for about ten years, from 1990 to 2000, to make this into a real specialty in veterinary medicine. If you have a specialty, what it means is that veterinary schools start to have residencies, so they start to teach graduate veterinarians about this so that they can become specialists. In 2010, our dream came true. This became a specialty, an official specialty. Now there are residencies all over the country—and multiple countries, actually, as well as Europe and Canada. Since then, it’s been fantastic because we have all kinds of doors open to us. The clients are the people who really want to know, who really want to get this information. I will say that, actually, in the early days, people thought I was crazy. They thought: Why would anyone want to do this? What are you doing? What it really was was that of all of the people out there—the clients are the ones who said, “You know, we need this information. We need to give our dogs the same kinds of things that we can give ourselves.” A grassroots effort, really, coming up from a desire of the clients to have this. 

Dr. Judi Stella [4:26] So it’s not just sports injuries either, right? When you talk rehabilitation, it’s for rehabilitating from back surgeries and hip surgeries and any animal that’s not an athlete necessarily—

Dr. Chris Zink [4:36] Absolutely. A physical therapy for dogs. There was no such thing. Think of all the dogs that have all different kinds of injuries, even not necessarily orthopedic injuries. Neurological problems. Dogs that are aging who need to be able to know better how to use their bodies. In humans, for example, aging humans can get trainers who will help them prevent falls, for example. You can do the same thing with geriatric dogs. And then also, all of the kinds of developmental problems that puppies can come with: hip dysplasia or panosteitis or OCD and things like that. The rehabilitation component is for all dogs. And the sports medicine component isn’t really just for “athletes.” It’s for every active dog. If a dog comes home and plays ball with their person for a half an hour after work, that’s an athlete. It doesn’t have to be something really formal. 

Dr. Judi Stella [5:42] It is interesting. When I worked at the university, a friend of mine was a technician and did rehab. It’s amazing to see what you can do with the electric stim and the underwater treadmills and how much quicker the dogs recover when you do the rehabilitation with them. It is pretty amazing. 

Dr. Chris Zink [6:00] And the science is there showing that, too. For example, there’s a great study of dogs that have disk disease or disk degeneration, showing that if they go to rehab their chances of having other secondary problems are reduced from 29% to 6%. Their time to being able to walk and be active again is about half what it would be otherwise. It’s good science. 

Dr. Judi Stella [6:26] Yeah, it’s amazing. So you talked about establishing your specialty. What all goes into doing that? That’s a big project to get that up and going and established.

Dr. Chris Zink [6:40] The American Veterinary Medical Association, of course, is the group that oversees all veterinarians in the country. They have a special board of 20 or 30 people who decide whether or not something can be a specialty or not. It takes about ten years to make those decisions. There’s all kinds of forms you have to fill out. You have to really prove that it’s something that’s needed in veterinary medicine. That wasn’t actually very hard to prove, but there’s a lot of forms to fill out and stuff like that. Then you have to show that there has to be support from the veterinary schools that agree that they would like to train people to do this as well. It’s a lot of breaking down barriers, official barriers. 

Dr. Judi Stella [7:30] And then you actually wrote the first book on this—like a textbook on this as well, correct?

Dr. Chris Zink [7:37] Yes. Again, if you’re going to be a specialty, there should be texts, comprehensive information, for residents and other people who are interested in the subject to go to. I and a colleague, Janet Van Dyke (who is also a veterinarian and a sports business specialist) decided to do that. We’d never written a textbook before, but whatever. Just do it. We got 30 or 32 other authors to co-author it with us. It’s really a nice comprehensive text that covers all of the features of veterinary sports medicine and rehabilitation. A second edition just came out in 2018. 

Dr. Judi Stella [8:24] Amazing. That’s a big project. Can you tell us a little bit about your canine sports productions—what that is all about and how that can help some of our breeders? 

Dr. Chris Zink [8:35] You know, I’m ridiculously passionate about dogs and about making sure that they live really vital, long, and healthy lives. I really dedicated my work over the past many decades since I became a veterinarian to doing that and to growing the knowledge about our dogs. One of the things that I felt was really important and that I thought was missing from veterinary medicine was so often veterinarians study things and publish things and they are addressing things to other veterinarians but actually, it’s just as important to speak to the people who own the dogs and who work with them all of the time. Because they are like the triage nurse, the person who decides whether or not the dog actually has to go to the veterinarian. I’ve really set up canine sports medicine and canine sports productions to be a way to communicate actually to the clients about their dogs, things like how do you recognize that there might be a problem with your dogs? Dogs are so good at hiding things. I talk to them about how to identify injuries really early, before you would ever see anything that looked so obvious like a lameness, for example. For about the last 30 years, I’ve been presenting seminars and producing DVDs and videos, et cetera, and books and pamphlets and stuff like that—all kinds of different media, really directed at the people who own and love dogs, so that they can have the information they so desire about what to do. For example, I see this all the time on Facebook: people asking basic questions that they need the answers to about how to keep their dogs really healthy and long-lived. I try to help them.

Dr. Judi Stella [10:37] That’s my segue. Let’s talk about fitness. Why is it important? I know you and I have had a discussion about how it’s not the same thing as just the dog being in good body condition. It’s not the same thing as just not being overweight. There’s much more to the dog being fit and how that impacts their health, long term. Can you speak a little bit more about, when you say fitness, what are you referring to? How do you define it? 

Dr. Chris Zink [11:06] There’s a ton of data out there showing that if humans are strong (muscle fitness), they’re going to live longer. It’s irrefutable data. The same is true for dogs. I think there’s several things that we need to look at. One is, of course, we want the dog to be a good weight. Carrying extra fat really doesn’t help very much at all. But in addition to that, what we want them to have is muscle strength, the ability to carry themselves. Many dogs, for example, as they get older start to get weaker in the core and the rear, and they start to slip on floors and things like that. We can prevent that from happening, totally. And then the other thing is that we want them to be neurologically tuned up. There’s a concept called procreaception, which is basically body awareness: knowing where all of your body parts are in space, knowing exactly where to place your foot so that you don’t trip, et cetera. All of us lose that as we age, and not even just geriatric, but even as you pass middle age, you start to lose that—unless you practice. What I and colleagues have set up is systems of very simple, easy-to-do exercises that will strengthen the dog muscularly, also neurologically, and start to reestablish these neurological pathways that have kind of been set aside and forgotten about. You know that whole concept of “use it or lose it,” well that really is true for dogs, too. The science is out there, that if you’re strong and you’re neurologically tuned up, you will live longer and so will your dog. That’s what our goal is—to produce that. 

The other thing is: look at little puppies. A tremendous amount of growth of the neurological system happens between birth and three months of age. Actually, most of it happens while the puppy is still at the breeders. So breeders want to know about this information as well. How can they make their puppies more neurologically strong so when they go to their new homes, they’re all set up to be a really stable, strong, and well-developed puppy. So I don’t think we want to forget all that puppy stuff. We’re not going to strength train a puppy. We’re not going to give them fitness exercises necessarily to make them stronger, but all of the things we can do neurologically—it’s very powerful. 

Dr. Judi Stella [13:56] Obviously, the neurological components all feed into the brain and when you’re doing these exercises and things with the dogs and physical fitness, it also impacts mental wellbeing too, right? What have you found from doing these exercises and keeping dogs fit—do they maintain their mental acuity longer as well? 

Dr. Chris Zink [14:22] That’s true. That’s absolutely true. There’s actually been a really cool study. The study was done in rats, but the brains of humans and rats and dogs all work the same way, for the most part. This was a really fascinating study. What they had was they had some rats that were in a cage and doing what rats do, which is mainly eat, poop, pee, and sleep I guess. Other rats were forced to run on a treadmill for a certain number of hours a day. When they looked at the brains of those two groups, what they saw was absolutely remarkable. The running rats actually had way more neurons in the parts of their brain that are related to cognition and behavior and learning and memory. This is a really important connection because we have this connection to our dogs. We have this relationship. We have this bond, right? We can grow that by exercising them. Not only by the fact that, of course, we’re working with them one on one, and that helps us with our bond, but we’re actually making new neurons in the areas for learning and memory and happiness and behavior. That is incredibly exciting. That’s a discovery that just came out about four years ago. I think that’s very, very powerful. 

Dr. Judi Stella [15:55] It’s really interesting because I feel like, for the longest time, veterinary medicine and human medicine (all medicine) has sort of gone into where everyone is in their silos and focuses on an organ system. It seems like we’re getting back or hopefully moving more towards that body wellness again. This sort of encapsulates that. You can’t just say fitness and muscle strength, because it’s tied to the neurons. It’s also connected to the brain. It affects the mental wellbeing. It’s really interesting to me that we’re getting back into that whole organism kind of fitness. You can’t separate the system. It doesn’t work like that. 

Dr. Chris Zink [16:33] That’s true. And in essence, that’s what rehabilitation is also about. That’s where rehabilitation comes in because—think about it—we’re working on the animal neurologically; we’re working on their soft tissues; we’re working on their muscles, tendons, ligaments, bones; and all of that has to do with movement, which feeds back into the neurological system. And the other thing we need to really remember is that it’s been shown absolutely definitively that when you are moving, in whatever type of exercise it is, you’re releasing feel-good neurotransmitters. Those neurotransmitters are also released in dogs, so what a great way to make your dog feel good about life and feel that joy. I think it’s really exciting. It’s a whole wellness system. 

Dr. Judi Stella [17:23] I’m sure it affects the stress response system as well, right? So does it decrease their stress level or work with their ability to cope with stressors as well?

Dr. Chris Zink [17:31] Absolutely. Those neurotransmitters are the ones that really help to get rid of anxiety and smooth out any bumps in the road, in life, you know? 

Dr. Judi Stella [17:45] Really interesting. Now we know why fitness is so important. One of the things that we talk to you about (and we’re making this announcement to our Good Breeder community now) is that we are going to launch a quarterly webinar series, specifically talking about fitness with Dr. Zink and Dr. Gayle Watkins. Can you talk a little bit more about fitness for breeding dogs? I know you touched on it with puppies, but just a little bit more about that and what kinds of things are we going to cover in that webinar series?

Dr. Chris Zink [18:17] We all know about the breeding cycle. We know that the body changes an awful lot in response to all of those hormones. We also know that fitness is related to the reproductive system, to the function of the reproductive system, to the coordinated expression of all of the hormones that need to be secreted at specific times. We also know that breeding is not a physically simple thing. It’s not just like they get pregnant and then they have a bunch of puppies and then everything is good. It’s a very physical experience. Even the stud dogs—very, very physical experience if they’re bred naturally. And then you have all of these hormones, so you have ovulation. Then you have implantation, and then you have these puppies growing to the first, second, and third trimester. And then you have whelping. We know that whelping is easier and faster and more effective (and that the puppies are going to be more healthy through that experience) if the bitch is fit. And then you have this period of time when the bitch is doing pretty much nothing for a couple of weeks but living with her puppies, getting weaker all the time because she’s not doing very much. How do we bring her back in a way such that there won’t be very much of a decline that she experiences? And then she’s lactating, and she’s producing all of this milk, and all these changes are going through her body. We’ve set up (and Gayle Watkins has been very, very important in this, too; I don’t want to leave her out) the breeding cycle and what kinds of exercise should we (and should we not) be giving bitches and stud dogs throughout that breeding cycle. There are things you shouldn’t do and things you should do. Sometimes we see people overdoing it. For example, every now and then, I’ll see a person who’s a very avid sports competitor who will be putting her bitch back in competitions the day that her puppies go home at eight weeks. I’m not sure that’s a really good thing. We can give that kind of advice—all based on science. This is not just us pulling things out of the air. What we’ve really studied is reproduction in many different species, as well as dogs, and put it together into a really comprehensive program that we’ve named Fit To Be Tied. It includes all of that muscle development, neurological development, all of the things they should and shouldn’t do. 

Cat Matloub [21:05] You’ve got a dog walking behind your screen.

Dr. Chris Zink [21:07] I know. I can see him. He’s playing with a toy over here. Maybe I should’ve put him away.

Cat Matloub [21:12] No, it’s nice! 

Dr. Chris Zink [21:16] But actually, I saw a dog behind Judi too, so… 

Dr. Judi Stella [21:20] Yeah, she’s sleeping on her bed. Now I lost my train of thought! I was going to ask about when you strengthen the muscles. This is skimming the surface of my understanding, but if they’re lactating, then you can be leaching calcium from bones. You have to supplement. That can make things a little bit weaker, maybe. Then you also said you get ligaments loosening because of whelping and everything that’s going on there. Fitness—I would assume—muscle fitness and all of that is going to make it less likely that she would get injured and that she’d be able to withstand all of that?

Dr. Chris Zink [22:10] Yes. We have several hundred breeders who have gone through this program through one or more breeding cycles and whelpings. At least they are reporting incredible experiences with very rapid whelping, very healthy puppies, fewer cesareans. We’re gathering this data, because we would really like to publish this and show that it’s true, but at least our impressions at this point are that all of that is better. All of the activities that surround making and having and bringing up healthy, stable puppies is going better—and even that the puppies are healthier. The puppies are growing faster. They’re reaching milestones quicker. This is what we want. We’re studying it. We don’t have the data for that yet, but the impressions are that this is really going to make a big difference.

Dr. Judi Stella [23:15] That’s interesting. I was going to ask about that. That segues into the puppies. Maybe there’s positive impacts on the immune system as well and just that they are just more vigorous? 

Dr. Chris Zink [23:29] In humans, we know that if a pregnant woman experiences a lot of stress, then the baby gets all of those hormones through their body as well and, neurologically, they can be affected. What we’re trying to do is we’re trying to make sure that the environment in which those puppies are growing from a single cell to their little beings—both while they’re in the uterus as well as after whelping—is a positive environment for growth and production and stability. That’s a really important thing, because we want our puppy buyers to go home with a stable dog that’s going to be a family member that fits in and that doesn’t have a lot of stressors, et cetera. All of the evidence suggests—we don’t have good evidence in dogs yet—but all of the evidence in other species suggests that the way to do that is to produce this very healthy environment for them. 

Dr. Judi Stella [24:42] Is there also a puppy set of exercises—building on that early neurological stimulation—that we can do to make their little bones and joints and everything stronger from the get-go? 

Dr. Chris Zink [24:58] There is science on this. There was a study done in Norway of four different giant breed dogs. They did Irish Wolfhounds, Newfoundlands, Labrador Retrievers (which are not giant breeds), and then one other breed (I can’t remember what it was). What they did was they studied them from birth until 18 months of age, and they tested them for the development of hip dysplasia, one of the most common musculoskeletal conditions—probably one of the most common genetic conditions that dogs will get. What they showed was that these puppies were significantly less likely to develop hip dysplasia if they had 1) moderate exercise over moderate terrain from birth until three months of age (obviously they’re not getting moderate exercise on day one, but as soon as they can move and walk around, they need to get moderate exercise—not just hanging out in the whelping pen, but out there, doing things, experiencing changes in surface and moderately hilly terrain). The other thing that they show, which was really fascinating, was the critical importance of having good footing in the whelping pen. Grippy footing that the puppies can grip. For years, people brought up puppies on newspapers. Big, big mistake! It’s really important to give them something like Wonder Fleece or something that they can dig their little feet into, because the science says they’re going to have much less evidence of hip dysplasia or much less severe hip dysplasia. Those are two really simple things that can be done. 

Dr. Judi Stella [26:48] And that’s great because that’s another thing we can do to minimize the risk of hip dysplasia. You’re doing your screening, you’re taking your hip films. We can do it on the front end with our breeding animals, but there’s still things that we need to do in order to bring those puppies up to address the environmental factors that are also at play. There’s a couple of questions here. I just want to ask you these while we have a minute here. How long should a female at lean field performance weight be off training to get “fluffy” for her heat season and breeding?

Dr. Chris Zink [27:28] Let’s say we’re talking about a field dog or we’re talking about an agility dog. I assume it’s something like that. I don’t think they necessarily have to be “off training.” I think they should be in an advancing nutritional plan. We know that very well. But not necessarily off training. In fact, what the Fit To Be Tied program shows you is the kinds of strength training that a dog should be doing. Now, Kelly might be referring to not competing in agility or not competing in field or whatever the sport is, because the dog is heavier. That would be their choice. Probably no more than six weeks or two months before she’s expected to come into heat, that would be plenty. But what I always tell people is that it’s really important to understand that the actual competition and the training of the sport is not what provides a dog with fitness. In fact, if you think about fitness as a bank, that actually takes away from the fitness equation—performance does. What really creates fitness is doing conditioning to strengthen the muscles, body awareness training, flexibility training—all those things that can be done. All of the fitness training we have in Fit To Be Tied is just done in your living room while you’re watching TV in the evening, in the air-conditioned comfort of your home. It doesn’t have to be things like we think of: road work and taking dogs for long walks. That’s really not even part of the equation, and that’s not even really good exercise either for most dogs. The dog should be keeping fit during all that period of time, even while they’re in a positive plain of nutrition. I hope that answers your question, Kelly. 

Dr. Judi Stella [29:34] There’s another one from Sherry: I asked this question about footing from day one in a previous discussion; thank you for verifying. (That’s just a comment.) I’d love to see a study of this. We can probably find that study.

Dr. Chris Zink [29:48] I have it, and I can send it to you as a PDF afterwards if you’d like. I can probably put the reference up.

Dr. Judi Stella [30:02] You can send it to us, and we can send it around to the group. 

Dr. Chris Zink [30:05] It might be a little distracting to find it right now. 

Dr. Judi Stella [30:07] Victoria said: I’ve been looking for some printouts that I can give my puppy owners about proper and improper/too much exercise, like running long distances with large breeds under a year of age. We lost a dog at five years old because the owner ran her in marathons from seven months old. She wouldn’t listen to me or others that told her not to do this. Her body gave out to pain—I’m sure due to this. No vet could help her. 

Dr. Chris Zink [30:30] I have an absolute answer for you, Victoria. I’m putting it in here: Fit For Life Puppy is a book and a program that we have on AvidogZink.com. What we did was we looked very intensively at what is the scientific evidence—the published evidence—that says how much exercise children should get. (So, Australia, Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom have publications about exactly how much exercise kids should get.) And then what we did was we looked at the science of how old is a puppy at the comparable age that a child would be, and we applied that, and we produced this book and this program that’s available on AvidogZink.com. It’s a comprehensive program that tells you everything that your puppy should be doing from three weeks of age until 18 months of age. I’ve got to tell you: this is where we should go. This is the answer. This is what we should follow. The book is available for you to give to your clients that purchase puppies. It’s about a 32-page booklet with good, colored illustrations, et cetera, that will really give your clients the knowledge about what they should and should not be doing if they want to produce healthy, stable puppies. 

Dr. Judi Stella [32:14] That’s amazing. I just have one more question. Is there any evidence with the fitness that there’s increased fertility or ease of conceiving, based on the fitnesses of the breeding dogs? Have you looked at that at all?

Dr. Chris Zink [32:30] What was the last thing you said? Ease of? 

Dr. Judi Stella [32:34] Conceiving. Do they have better conception rates for dogs that are more physically fit? Do we know that at all? 

Dr. Chris Zink [32:38] We don’t know that yet, but we’re looking into it. We know, of course, that they need to be on an increasing plain of body condition. That much we know. That’s been scientifically shown. We’re looking at the other. 

Dr. Judi Stella [32:55] Does anyone have any other questions? Those are the questions that I had for you. Like I said, we are going to launch this free webinar series that’s going to be special presentations with Dr. Zink and Dr. Gayle Watkins, delving more into this. We’ll get more information, more specifics about the programs and all of those types of things. We just wanted to introduce the concept today and introduce our official partnership with Dr. Zink, but we’re happy to take any questions that anybody has. 

Dr. Chris Zink [33:35] This has been missing from the equation of breeding. This is a really important scientific foundation for breeders to incorporate as part of their programs. I think it’s also something that will ultimately be something that you can tell people, “Look, my puppies and my breeding stock have been on this program that we know is going to produce healthier, stable puppies.” And those puppies are going to be so different when they’re ready to go home. I think that it will prove its worth. 

Dr. Judi Stella [34:20] Somebody did ask where they can buy the Fit For Life book. 

Dr. Chris Zink [34:26] The book itself is available on our website. It’s also available on Amazon as an e-book. The program, the Fit For Life Puppy program, is also available on AvidogZink.com. You just go to that website and under the top right side, it says Products. You can go look there, and there’s a description of it, et cetera. 

Dr. Judi Stella [34:54] And then we have a question from Susan. She has a nine and a half month old female pup that’s slightly cow hocked, and she’s wondering how that will affect her hips and joints as she grows.

Dr. Chris Zink [35:03] Nine and a half month old or week old? I guess she means month old. What breed is this, Susan? Can you tell me? This is something that I’m very, very interested in. It turns out that a lot of herding breeds are somewhat cow hocked. In fact, some are very cow hocked, like Border Collies. Others have less amount of cow hock. Actually, many of the sporting dogs are cow hocked. Many of the working dogs are cow hocked. We have traditionally, in the conformation ring, said that wasn’t a good thing. But if you look at it carefully, dogs that have part of their job where they need to lie down and stand up a lot or where they need to turn quickly—being slightly cow hocked is a serious advantage to these dogs. That’s why we keep getting cow hocked dogs! It’s correct for many breeds of dogs. The conformation world, many of the breed standards were written decades (if not a century or more) ago, when we didn’t understand this relationship between structure and function that well. We now absolutely understand that some of the things we used to say, like that the rear should be like a wicket, where there’s the top of the pelvis and then the legs come down—not necessarily true. A little bit of cow hocked could be very helpful and, to the best of our knowledge, it has nothing to do with development of hip dysplasia or anything like that. I never count it as a negative when I’m evaluating puppies or even adults—for them to be slightly cow hocked or even quite cow hocked, like Border Collies are. It’s an advantage in lying down, turning—not so much in running straight ahead. But if the job that they have to do involves a lot of turning, it’s a good thing. 

Dr. Judi Stella [37:20] And then there’s a question from Sherry. It’s a little off-topic, but if we have a few minutes, maybe you can address it: There’s been a recent study that released results for breed-specific dogs in regards to spay/neuter. Can you elaborate a bit on this study and your thoughts on when to spay/neuter? 

Dr. Chris Zink [37:37] I know the study. It’s a big, big topic. Let me just say a couple of things on that subject. I’m a little biased. I will admit that. I’m a little biased about this topic. But I believe strongly that dogs should retain their gonadal hormones unless you have a really good reason to spay or neuter. It’s a long, long story. I don’t really know how much you want me to get into this. There’s no doubt that the hormones have a function in a dog’s life—that they are not just about breeding, but in fact, the hormones that are released from the pituitary (that stimulate the production of ova and sperm) also have receptors on all of the cells of the body. They help to suppress inflammation and to suppress cell division. So what happens is when you take away the gonads, that hormone circulates at very high levels because it’s got nothing to bind to. It increases inflammation in general, and it increases cell division. Of course, those two things are very highly linked to cancer. For many breeds of dogs, what we’re learning is there are higher levels of cancer in dogs that are spayed or neutered, regardless of what age that happens. I’ve published on this, and a number of other people have published on this. I think I will leave it at that. I would just say that there needs to be a very good reason for removing the gonads. There are good reasons for dogs. But the dog needs to be treated as an individual, not as mass surgery. For example, every kid of my age got her tonsils removed when we were four or five or six years old—only to find out that it’s an important immune organ, and they were taking them away because someone decided this is like mass surgery that every kid should have if they get a sore throat. It’s kind of like the same thing. We need to individualize medicine and make those decisions on dogs individually. 

Dr. Judi Stella [39:52] I think as far as that particular study was concerned, they just looked at associations with risk for cancer and those types of things, and that table will tell you “when.” I get what you’re saying, and you still should not consider, but the risk increases, and it’ll tell you in that table. 

Dr. Chris Zink [40:15] Right, it talks about the risk for different breeds, but I guess I was a little disappointed in that paper because it seems to me that they came at that paper with the belief that dogs should be spayed or neutered, and the decision to be made was when. I feel that the decision to be made should be why also. 

Dr. Judi Stella [40:41] We have a couple of other off-topic questions, but we do have a little bit of time. Do you mind, do you know, do you want to discuss pyometra? Is that in your realm of expertise? 

Dr. Chris Zink [40:55] Sure. We know that bitches that remain intact are at significant risk of pyometra. That risk increases as they grow older. To prevent that, many people have recommended that the dog be spayed after its breeding period is over, or if it’s not going to be bred. I would say that you can completely get rid of the risk of pyometra if you just remove the uterus and leave the ovaries in. Now, that has never been studied yet. That study is going to be undertaken. We do know—from the hundreds of people that I know that’ve had just the uterus of their bitches removed—that takes away all the risk of pyometra. We know that they will continue to cycle because their ovaries will continue to ovulate, but they don’t have very much discharge (if any) because it’s the uterus that creates the discharge, so that’s gone. They will be attractive to males, but obviously nothing’s going to happen. They might get some moodiness or whatever on occasion. Individual bitches will do that. What we don’t know is what the long term consequences are of that. But there are hundreds of people, if not thousands of people, that’ve done it now and have done it many years ago. The data is waiting to be collected, and we’re working on that, actually. 

Dr. Judi Stella [42:29] One more! In light of a trend in the breeding world of health testing for everything, when can a breed be considered not at risk for a testing after no or minimal percentage of the dogs have been found to have the condition in several generations?

Dr. Chris Zink [42:46] I don’t think you can ever know that, unless you know the gene for a condition. For example, if we’re talking about hip dysplasia. There’s no doubt that there are many genes that contribute to it. Unless you know all of those genes, you can never say to yourself that they’re not at risk. For example, look at elbow dysplasia. Our testing for elbow dysplasia is not very good. It’s not very sensitive, and it’s not very specific. It’s not that you shouldn’t do X-rays for elbow dysplasia, because if your dog comes out to have grades two or three, you know they have elbow dysplasia. With grades zero and one, it’s not so certain. So, a person can breed five generations of elbow-dysplasia-free puppies, and it can still show up. I think you can’t ever say not at risk until you know the genes, and all of the modifying genes, and the dogs are genetically tested. 

Dr. Judi Stella [43:54] And then one last one: What’re your thoughts on canine weight pull? I think this breeder has Staffies. 

Dr. Chris Zink [44:03] I think that it’s a sport that should be limited to specific breeds of dogs that were designed to do that as part of their function. I think that conditioning is very, very important. So Staffie Bulls would be one of those. Conditioning is tremendously important, and I think that a lot of the people that are conditioning for that are not conditioning the dogs in a safe way. I think they are over-conditioning dogs, and I think they are sometimes conditioning them for endurance, for example, when they should be getting strength. For example, road work would be a completely incorrect thing to do with a dog that’s a weight pulling dog. I think it can be a good sport if it’s carefully trained for and carefully executed. 

Dr. Judi Stella [45:00] Does anyone else have any other questions? If you do think of anything, you can always email them to Good Dog, to me or to Cat, and we will be sure to get them to Dr. Zink and get them answered for you. I just want to say thank you so much, everybody, for joining us. Thank you, Dr. Zink. It’s been a really interesting conversation. 

Dr. Chris Zink [45:25] You’re welcome. I really look forward to working with Good Dog to make dogs’ lives healthier, better, happier. 

Dr. Judi Stella [45:34] We need your expertise! It’ll make it all so much better for all of us! Looking forward to the webinar series as well. 

Dr. Chris Zink [45:40] Thanks everybody for joining us.