Episode 198: Pre-Breeding Genetic Counseling

Assessing a dog’s health and genetic background prior to breeding are key to minimizing the risk of passing on inherited diseases to offspring. Dr. Carla Barstow explains what’s involved in making informed breeding decisions.

Watch the video version of this presentation here.

Transcript

Nicole Engelman  00:04

Welcome to the Good Dog Pod. Join us every other Wednesday when we discuss all things dogs, from health and veterinary care to training and behavior science, as well as the ins and outs of Good Dog and how our platform can help you successfully run your breeding program, follow us and join Good Dog’s mission to build a better world for our dogs and the people who love them.

Nicole Engelman  00:28

Thank you all so much for joining. I wanted to just formally kick off the second session of our fifth annual health symposium. So if you missed our first session, we have the recording of that that we can share. And if you did miss that session and the kickoff of this year's symposium, I just want to share a little bit more about what this entire event is and why we do it. So this is one of the highlights of our year here at Good Dog, and it's how we're able to give back to our breeder community by providing them with these free virtual opportunities to learn from experts and really allow everyone in our community (and also breeders who are not part of Good Dog) to really get the best in class canine health information, to help everyone raise the bar on their programs, and ultimately, just help us all build a healthier future for our dog. So every single person who is attending this webinar is a part of that bigger effort to build a healthier future for our dogs. So everyone should already feel very proud of themselves. These are not just presentations. They're really interactive opportunities for you to ask questions from experts who are really shaping the future of canine health. And it's really just at the heart of what we do here at Good Dog. And I think all of us coming together for these events just proves that we can really transform the world of dog breeding through just simple conversations and presentations like this. So we're just so excited to have this health symposium up and running for the fifth year in a row, which is very crazy. So for session two of our month-long symposium, we have Dr. Carla Barstow joining us for a presentation on pre-breeding genetic counseling, and so in this discussion, Dr. Barstow will teach us how to assess health and genetics before breeding to minimize inherited disease risks and make informed reproductive decisions. So lots of exciting stuff for us to get into today, but before we do that, I just want to thank our friends at Purina Pro Plan for sponsoring this event and helping us bring it to life year after year. We're going to prioritize some of the previously submitted questions during the Q&A session after Dr. Barstow’s presentation. One more thing: if you have joined our symposium in the past, you know that we post a quiz, a very short quiz after every session, so you can just test your knowledge with what you've just learned. And if you complete all four quizzes by the end of the symposium, you're automatically eligible to win very fun prizes from Purina, Snuggle Puppy, Revival. So we're really excited to have those giveaways for everyone at the end of October. We already shared our session one quiz so people can fill that out if they haven't done that already, and then we will have our session two quiz up after this presentation in our private Facebook group and our newsletter. So keep an eye out for that. And I believe those are all of the housekeeping things. I want to just quickly share a little bit about Good Dog for anyone who is new here: We are on a mission to build a better world for our dogs and the people who love them by advocating for dog breeders like yourselves, educating the public and promoting canine health, and responsible dog ownership through events just like this. We're an online community created just for responsible dog breeders to connect with quality Good Dog buyers from all across the country and find forever homes for your puppies. We help breeders place their puppies. We do everything for them from start to finish, and we support them throughout that entire placement process, so anything from getting your litters listed, connecting with quality applicants, getting payments securely for your puppies, and all of those smaller things that happen in between a litter of puppies being born and going off to their new homes. Good Dog is here to support breeders every step of the way through that. We also offer a number of free educational resources and health related discounts to help your programs thrive in other ways and support them in that way too. So if you're not yet a member of our community, we would like to have you learn more by visiting GoodDog.com/join. You can also just reach out to us anytime at breederteam@GoodDog.com if you have any questions about our community. Want to know more about our benefits, our placement software, anything I just mentioned? We would absolutely love to talk with you more about it. And then last thing from me, before I pass things over to Dr. Barstow: I just want to share a little bit more about her amazing background in canine health. So Dr. Barstow is a diplomat of the American College of Theriogenology. She's also an active member of the Society for Theriogenology. Dr. Barstow practices in small animal medicine in Lakeland, Florida. (I believe someone here, or when we announced this event, mentioned that Dr. Barstow was actually their vet, which is really cool!) And she is the only reproductive specialist serving the Greater Tampa, Florida area in her practice. Dr. Barstow works with dog breeders to breed healthier dogs, and she is a longtime breeder of Samoyeds, one of my personal favorite breeds, and participates in dog shows. So, no one better to have here today than Dr. Barstow. I will, without further ado, pass things over to you to begin the presentation. 

Dr. Carla Barstow  05:28

Alright! Thank you so much for that introduction, and thank you guys so much for joining me today. I'm so happy that Good Dog invited me to come back, and then I would say, “Good afternoon,” but we've got some people out in California, so good morning to you guys on the West Coast. Today we're going to be talking about our pre-breeding genetic counseling for dogs. It's kind of a crucial part of what we do that sometimes can be overlooked on certain aspects of that. Now, obviously, when we're breeding our dogs, we're not only shaping the next generation of our animals, but the future of an entire breed. So here I have Jazz on the left. She is the mama to my girl, Circe, who is a little bit chaotic, but we can see that we're still maintaining our type. She still looks like she's supposed to look even though she's a dork. We love her. But we know that genetic counseling is going to help us to reduce the risk of passing on inherited diseases, support healthier puppies, and ensure that we're acting in the best interest of the animals, the buyers, and, of course, the breed itself. So when we're doing our pre-breeding genetic counseling, it's a process that's going to evaluate the dog's health, their genetic makeup before breeding. It also includes reviewing their health history, any genetic testing, as well as pedigreed analysis, and obviously, we want to understand breed-specific risks, as this process is going to give us information to make more informed decisions and ethical breeding processes. Now, obviously, understanding our breed-specific risks is a big thing, because inherited diseases can be devastating for dogs and their families, and many of these conditions are breed specific. Obviously, we know we list a certain breed, they become a poster child for a certain disease, and we know that those exist. So certain breeds may develop heart issues. Others may carry like the MDR gene for “sensitive to certain medications.” So those are all things we want to make sure we've got a very thorough understanding of. And of course, how are we going to go about doing all of this? And so when we're assessing the dog's health and genetics before breeding, the first step is making sure that we're doing a very thorough physical exam on them by a veterinarian. Now, if I've got a bitch that's coming to me for breeding management, this is going to be every heat cycle. We're going to be doing a good exam—nose to tail—making sure we're not seeing anything on them. For our boys, we definitely at least once a year, making sure that they're still nice and healthy. And then obviously, we've got our OFA testing so checking their heart, their joints, their eyes, and then, of course, any other breed-specific evaluations that need to be done for them. Speaking, of course, of the OFA, this is a wonderful database that basically maintains a public registry of all of the health test results. So our parent clubs are going to establish that minimum health testing standard for our different breeds, and the dogs that meet those standards receive what's known as that CHIC number. Now for the CHIC certification, all results do not need to be normal, but they must be in the public domain so that responsible breeders can make more informed decisions. Now this is kind of a big thing that I love, is that making sure that there's that little box that says release abnormal results: I do highly recommend that everybody check that, and even if we know that that animal is going to fail, making sure we do submit those to OFA, because that allows our breeders to make more informed decisions, as well as keeping the national database up to date as best as possible, so we're not skewing our results with that. 

When we move into our genetic testing, obviously, we've got access to comprehensive DNA tests that screen for dozens of, you know, conditions. Services like Embark and Wisdom Panel, and there's other breed-specific labs that can help us to identify the carrier status, verify breed ancestry, and help us make more informed parenting decisions. When we're talking about our genetic testing, this allows us to calculate risk assessment. Can we actually breed a carrier? The real question is: Is the welfare of that future pup or parent affected when we're using that carrier animal? Most of the time, this answer is no, then it's definitely safe to use this animal to keep the greater diversity in our gene pool. We only exclude dogs when the welfare of the pup or the parent is compromised. So if you've got a Labrador who's a carrier for exercise induced collapse, the dog themselves isn't affected, so they can be bred. But it means that we want to avoid pairing it with another carrier, because our goal is to produce puppies that are either clear or carriers, never affected. We want to increase our genetic diversity while decreasing disease prevalence. The ways we can do this is limiting the number of times that an animal is used for breeding to avoid our popular sire syndrome and combine dogs wisely instead of excluding some of our carrier animals. Genetic diversity itself is not a test for a particular gene. Instead, it measures commonality within a range of inherited genes for each side of the family. A high genetic diversity score indicates a wide variety of different traits, while a low score indicates a lesser variety. Measuring genetic diversity can help provide an indication of inbreeding levels for an individual or within a population. We're going to go into a little bit more detail on that one later. 

Now, our panel tests that are out there. Word of caution: I love our panel test. However, the vast majority of them are not relevant for your breed. So this is one of the panel tests that I did on one of my Samoyeds. And so we can see that there's tests on here that are specific for Pointers, German Shepherds, even Cotons. They have nothing to do with anything near a Sammy. And even the sheet tells us that the research has not linked these conditions to dogs that's similar to my breed. So something just to kind of definitely take a peek at. And when we actually look at the ones that he has, there's only two out of the 196 tests that were run that were proven to be relevant for my breed. So obviously, we want to make sure that if they come back as a carrier for one of these other diseases, that we're being cautious because it might not mean anything just yet, because we do want to discuss any abnormal results with a reproductive specialist or even a geneticist at both Embark and Wisdom Panel; they do have those available for you that you can talk directly to them if you've got further questions. Now, just because the DNA test says that they're affected—so talking about like degenerative myelopathy here—does this mean that they're going to have clinical signs? Now, diseases like degenerative myelopathy have an age-related reduced penetrance, so just because the DNA test says that they're affected, doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to get clinical signs, and some of these tests come back as a risk or increased risk. Now this usually means that they're at an increased risk of getting the disease, but they're not guaranteed to get the disease, so that's kind of one of those things that we breed with caution when we have some of these. 

Now kind of switching gears just a little bit. I want to go into some of the mode of inheritance, because this is kind of an important thing to know, because some diseases are dominant, some are recessive. We also have X linked conditions and polygenic traits. So poly, meaning many, have lots of genes that are influencing those traits. So those are things that are going to be more like temperament and some of our orthopedic conditions. And without knowing a dog's genetic status, we can actually risk breeding through carriers of a recessive condition, which can result in some affected puppies. So we talk about recessive mutation actually a lot, because it's hidden, so it doesn't necessarily show up in every generation, or it's going to skip multiple generations, because you have to have two copies of this to show a recessive disorder, so individuals with one copy can be carrying it and hiding it long before it ever shows up in your line. And so I love when we're doing our tight line breeding, and we can be doubling up on the good but we can also be unmasking some of the bad things that are there, just because all of a sudden we've got a recessive condition that's there that we never knew about. And some of these things we don't really necessarily have genetic tests for, and that's the hard part. Because everybody has two copies of that same gene, if one of them is bad, they can usually function perfectly normal without having that. And have to see both of them gone before we're going to notice that there's a big change. So in this little table here, we've got both of our parents are both carriers for the disease in general, and then they only ended up with one affected puppy, which was great, which was then bred to a clear puppy, which then produced more carriers. So we were able to use this in this instance, obviously, make sure it was bred to a clear. However, not necessarily in most of these cases is that something we want to do. Now our dominant mutation, so these are a little bit different. So our dominant ones: these are the ones you only need one copy of the gene. So this is something you're going to see showing up in every generation. So as we can see in our little table at the bottom, basically every generation has an affected animal. So this is one of these that, you know, we kind of get a little bit more concerned about these, because these are a little bit harder to get rid of from our pedigree.

And then we have these fun ones called an X linked and so these are linked to the X chromosome. So these are going to show up differently in males versus females, because our males only have one X chromosome, they unfortunately are going to be the ones that are affected by some of these diseases. Now in this particular image down here, I've got some little poodle puppies. This is actually a pretty rare genetic hair defect. And then the females are on the left side here. And then these are the two males who are basically born without hair. So obviously we know mom has this disease now, and so that she is now going to be removed from the breeding program, because this is something she's going to pass on to all of her male puppies. 

Now, just because we have an available DNA test does not necessarily mean that it's a valid DNA test. There is currently no regulatory oversight for our DNA testing companies in the US. So if this is something that you guys wanted to do in your own garage, you can start selling your own DNA tests, and there's nothing stopping you from that. And this is where the International Partnership for dogs comes into play. So this is an international organization—because they understand that there is no standardization or accreditation for any of these—and they want to increase formal international regulation and oversight and increasing the number of genetic test providers who offer these tests, obviously, because we've heard concerns about some of the reports that are inconsistent and even fraudulent activities. Unfortunately, some of these companies do exist. So they want to improve the standardization and access to robust genetic testing to support the health improvements and sustainable future for our dogs. So this is what is known as the Harmonization of Genetic Testing, and this is basically a free portal of information that they have. And I do highly recommend that everybody actually go on to this website. It's dogwellnet.com. It's a phenomenal website with tons of great information. I just got exposed to this this summer, and it has been an absolutely valuable resource because it talks about quality assurance, different activities and resources to review the genetic tests, to coordinate some of our standardizations for proficiency testing with peer reviewed and making sure that these are actually audited to be correct, and obviously hoping we've got future developments for things kind of going on in the future. Now, I went on to their site and I pulled up the results for my breed, and what they have on there is they list all the different DNA tests that are potentially possible for your breed. Now, if we start with PRA, so this is an eye disease in some ways, it’s got a little green paw print behind that, and what that means is that there's some strong or moderate evidence that says that this test is actually meaningful for my breed, which is really nice to know when we're looking at some of these tests. When we click on that it's actually then going to take us to a different page that's then going to show us that, yes, this test is actually recommended for Samoyeds and Siberian Huskies and some genetic test providers like Embark do offer this test, which is great. Now, some of these genetic testing providers are international, so they may not necessarily be here in the US, so just use caution when we're going down. Now, if we go back to our disease list for Sammies here, and we look at the GM2 gangliosidosis—that has that yellow paw print behind that, which means that for my breed, this hasn't really been evaluated, and so may not be a good test just yet for my breed. And when we click on it and go a little bit more in depth, we know it's a valuable test for Shibas, but not so much for Sammies just yet. So kind of one of these things to kind of keep in the back of your mind when we're looking through some of these tests. The other really great thing about this site—so we're going to go back to PRA and if we scroll down, it's going to give us all of this information, so it talks about the disease itself. So this is something you're unfamiliar with, it's going to give you great information so you understand how the disease works. It has lists of recent publications. And then my favorite little thing at the very bottom there: It's called the OMIA. This is the Online Mendelian Inheritance in Animals. So this is actually a really fun site. Again, it gives you a lot more information, a lot more papers, and if you don't know anything about the disease, it tells you the mode of inheritance. Obviously, eyesight. It's in the name of the disease that we have. But for some of these other diseases, it might be recessive, and you're not really sure. And it's really nice to be able to go through and to look at that and say, “Okay, yes, this is what that is.” And then for all the other nerds in the group like I am, you can actually go to their main site, and you click on browse, and then you can look up diseases that are associated, and you can kind of go through some of that information and kind of go down a rabbit hole. It's actually lots of really great information for my breeders. I do highly recommend that everybody go check this site out. 

All right. Now, moving on to our pedigreed analysis. So this is also a big key thing for when we're doing this, and then when we're looking at our pedigreed, it's not just the depth of the pedigree, but also the breadth of the pedigreed. And so this is where I really love OFA’s database and their vertical pedigree, because you can look at what the siblings and their offspring have done for a particular breed that you're looking at, a particular dog that you're looking at, so you can see, “Oh, you know what? His siblings have actually been really good, and his offspring have been really good.” Or, “You know what? Actually, he's the fluke in this particular instance.” And those help you make more informed breeding decisions. Because, again, this is a database. It is public knowledge, which is why I definitely recommend that everybody have all of their data put up there, because it makes it easier for everybody to see everything there. And then when we're talking about all of this, it's not just necessarily about who the parents are, but how closely related they are, and this is where the coefficient of inbreeding comes in. So the COI is based on pedigree and is associated with the probability of inheriting two copies of the same gene from common ancestors, and it does not account for any genetic recombination events within a dog's pedigree. You guys remember from high school biology, you had like crossing over when the DNA is being pulled apart? Now that takes place, and when we're doing our COI, that's a basic math formula, and so it doesn't take into account all of the little nuances for these. But we do know that a high COI can lead to less genetic diversity, which can increase the risk of inherited diseases. Now, when I did the Embark panel on my dog, it told me that his COI is at 24%. However, AKC doesn't provide COIs for breeds. Other kennel clubs in, like, England—you can absolutely look up what the COI is for a particular breed. It's actually really good data to have because it kind of gives us a little bit of information. Embark does also have a pair predictor. I unfortunately don't have a female on my Embark account, so I'm unable to actually look to see what that does, because they actually do look at a different measurement when they're using that pair predictor, which is the measure of genetic diversity, and this is actually where we might get better information from them. So this differs from our COI, as genetic diversity is the range of the different inherited traits and DNA variation. So those different alleles that might have crossed over within a breed gene pool, which is the population's ability to adapt and reduce the risk of genetic disorders. High genetic diversity indicates many different alleles and genotypes in the population, leading to a wider variety of traits and greater resilience within the breed. This information can be very important in dogs, particularly in some of our breeds that have a very small, close population that's been closed for many generations, so some of our rarer breeds. Now this chart is actually taken from the Wisdom Panel, because it gives me the genetic diversity for one of the dogs, but it doesn't actually list the COI. They also have a mating tool which can help predict litter, but I don't have a male on that account. But what's really nice about these things is, if you've got them tested within the same organization—to either Embark or with Wisdom Panel—you can look at what's common for your breed, and you can get a better match for how they are, because genetic diversity matters. Information is the most important when we're planning our mating pairs for breeding. All else being equal, we're increasing that diversity score and subsequent generations of breeding, and it's generally beneficial for our individual and breed health, regardless of the exact amount of recent pedigreed inbreeding. And so that's why this is actually a very important tool to have, because we want to be a little bit higher on that bell curve for your particular breed and increasing that genetic diversity there.

Obviously, when we're looking at other things we want to look at, we want to be looking at our temperament and our behavior, because obviously we do know that these traits can definitely be heritable. So dogs with that strong genetic tendency towards aggression may not be a suitable breeding candidate, regardless of its physical health—and not necessarily even just aggression, but sometimes even shyness. Those things can definitely rub off on certain things. So I kind of went a little bit fast through that, so hopefully we've got some really good questions, and we can have some good conversations. But a big thing for you guys: Transparency is key. With our puppy buyers, with our other breeders, with the public, we want to share the test results, disclosing our known issues, and registering health data that shows both integrity and obviously that return on that investment is then worth it, because we're going to have healthier puppies out there, stronger breeding programs, and a reputation for quality and care. You're just starting out. You want to refine your program. We've talked about some really great resources. I'll have my email at the end, so if you've got questions, you can always shoot them to me. And obviously remember that pre-breeding genetic counseling, it's not about eliminating every risk, because we know that's impossible. It's about reducing unnecessary risk and being informed and being proactive. We all want healthier dogs, better outcomes, and long term successes, and so genetic counseling is one of those most effective tools to help us get us there. All right, what questions do you have for me?

Dr. Nate Ritter  25:01

Thank you so much. That was fantastic. We have some pre-submitted questions. Please feel free to write them in as well. I thought we had two interesting ones. One: when you have a genetic marker that is not tied to clinical symptoms in the breed–I know you discussed this earlier—in other words, the genetic marker comes up on DNA tests, but the disease itself is rare or maybe non-existent, what is your advice to breeders? Does that advice change for a rare, small population breed?

Dr. Carla Barstow  25:25

So if it's one of these diseases that it comes up, as you know, your dog may be a carrier or potentially be affected by one of these things that hasn't been proven for your breed, that's where that dog wellness really going to come into play, because they've got a lot of these things on there. If it hasn't been proven for your breed, then it's one of those that we monitor. And, you know, we take stock in it, so we do a test breeding to an animal who's clear with that, and then do we see it popping up? And yeah, maybe we take a step back. If we're not seeing it anymore, we're not having any issues with it, then I'm okay to continue breeding that particular animal. And maybe in the future, we may get more information once you know we've had more DNA tests. Technology is ever changing and ever evolving, and we may learn something in a couple of years, or it may never, never become a thing. So just kind of something to think about.

Dr. Nate Ritter  26:14

Thank you. We get this question a lot relating to diseases with incomplete penetrance. I know you discussed degenerative myelopathy, and I think IVDD is another common one that people ask about, and I think you've spoken to this as well, whether the breed is impacted by the condition, but say it is a breed that's impacted, should carriers be bred? You know, with that incomplete penetrance, keeping in mind that, you know, it doesn't necessarily take the two copies for them to be impacted by the disease.

Dr. Carla Barstow  26:38

So when we've got diseases with incomplete penetrance, I think it necessarily depends on how impactful that disease is, because we do know that sometimes those can pop up, and not until later in life, and so those, I think again, making sure we've got, you know, that potential carrier with that clear to hopefully, again, minimize what we're taking forward to future generations. But some of those, it is more of a risk assessment, and we're kind of playing the odds and a probability, and we may never get a great answer for that one, unfortunately.

Dr. Nate Ritter  27:11

Great. Thank you. We had a question, not necessarily so much genetic, but inherited traits. If a puppy is diagnosed with a multi-factorial condition, say, hip dysplasia, for example, at a very young age, does that mean it's more likely to be inherited rather than, you know, some other factors?

Dr. Carla Barstow  27:28

Oh, that's a great question. So we do know with hip dysplasia, because it is a polygenic trait, if I've got a young animal that's more affected by things, I do sometimes wonder. Not necessarily. It could be genetics. Obviously, genetics could be playing a role. But is this also more of—and I apologize when I'm absolutely blanking on the word—like, a developmental defect, something just didn't develop correctly in the animal? So my personal dog, Ace, you got to see some of his DNA stuff. He was born with a heart defect that is actually very common in Labradors, and so that was just something he was born with. Obviously, he was never bred anyways, just as a precaution. But some things, they just—they happen. Unfortunately, you know, I've had a bilaterally dysplastic dog at six months of age out of two OFA excellents that have never had any other future issues as well. So I do wonder sometimes about it just being one of those things. So much that has to go right, and it's amazing that it does as often as it does.

Dr. Nate Ritter  28:29

Thank you. We had another interesting question, I think, with conditions where you're talking about risk prevalence, can dogs develop certain conditions, even if they're genetically clear, for those? Using maybe degenerative myelopathy as an example, or IVDD again.

Dr. Carla Barstow  28:45

So now there are some if I'm remembering correctly, especially with degenerative myelopathy, there are a couple of different DNA markers that, yes, on one test, they may absolutely come up clear for it, because they are not testing for the right marker. And sometimes those things can come up, and we've seen that in a couple of breeds, because the most common marker that's in some of these panel tests may show them as clear. And that's sometimes, you know, it's kind of a fluke for those breeds. And sometimes that's better to actually go directly to the university who's doing that testing, which I think for DM is like University of Missouri, because technically, if they don't have the gene, they shouldn't get the disease. But things happen, you know, there's a different defect that happens to cause the same thing, so having DNA banking on your animals can be beneficial for researchers in the future.

Dr. Nate Ritter  29:35

Amazing. Thank you. I think we have time for one more. I know you spoke to COI during the presentation. Someone was wondering if you have any resources where people can pursue, you know, those values for their own programs. 

Dr. Carla Barstow  29:50

There’s lots of great resources online for calculating your COIs. When you're looking at those several great math formulas, obviously, when we're looking at those particular numbers, we want to have lower numbers is better, but know that sometimes that's not a possibility, depending on what's available for your breed pool and the genetics that you have. And that's where I really love the genetic diversity testing that can be done between like Wisdom and Embark to making sure that we're actually keeping that genetic diversity as wide as possible, because then we can be limiting traits that way, without necessarily looking so much at COI, because AKC doesn't really give us good COI, because it's not something that they're overly invested in at this particular moment.

Dr. Nate Ritter  30:32

Amazing. Well, thank you so much. That presentation was fantastic, and Nicole, I will turn it over to you.

Nicole Engelman  30:38

Thank you. That does remind me. I just want to mention to everyone here, especially if you're already part of our Good Dog breeder community, we do offer discounts on those tests with Embark and I believe, Wisdom Panel as well, so we can drop our discounts page, just so people who are already part of our community can have access to that. And if you're not part of our community, all the more reason to join so you can access those discounts, but we do want to make sure that we can do our small part to help make sure that those tests are accessible to breeders. So I just wanted to mention that. Thank you both so much for such a great Q&A. Dr. Barstow, Thank you for such an incredible presentation. Thank you to our community for joining us today for session two of our symposium. Reminder to head over to our private Facebook group tomorrow for a discussion and our favorite takeaways about this event. We'll also have our session two follow-up quiz there as well, so you can test your knowledge. We'll also have the recording so don't feel any pressure to get everything correct in the quiz the first try. And we'll also just have the recording available tomorrow for anyone who just wants to re-watch, and I will leave everyone with a preview of what we have for session three next week. So continuing with our symposium, we will have Dr. Julie Ceciri coming back, and she will be presenting on Newborns: When Puppies Crash and Burn, which is a very compelling and interesting title. So she'll be presenting on that on October 15 at 1pm Eastern right back here on Zoom. And Dr. Barstow, I believe we will be seeing you again to round out our symposium for our Breeder Q&A Roundtable at the end of the month. So until then, thank you so much again, Dr. Barstow. Thank you to all of our attendees, and I hope everyone has a great rest of their day. Bye, everyone. Thank you.

Nicole Engelman  32:27

Thank you for listening to the Good Dog Pod. We'll be back in two weeks with another episode. So be sure to subscribe to the Good Dog Pod on your favorite podcast platform.