The Paw Print Genetics Blog

There are few sure bets in the NFL or the Super Bowl. Calls are blown, favorites lose or the national anthem can be flubbed. When it comes to the biggest bets however, Super Bowl commercials are the riskiest around. But the power of a puppy is undeniable, as was clearly illustrated during this year’s championship game.

At around $4 million per 30-second commercial spot, an advertiser’s big gamble can vault their branding into the stratosphere (at least in the short term) with a winning commercial. On the other end of the spectrum, with that much money spent just on air time (and not counting production costs), heads can (and probably do) roll when a commercial misses its mark.

While it’s anyone’s guess as to what will resound with the Super Bowl audience from year to year, and in turn be fodder for water-cooler talk on Monday and go viral online (imprinting that branding, if done correctly, for days after the game), there seems to be no denying that puppies are a safe bet to at least garner the “awww” factor and vote and to keep a media buyer’s head from being kicked across the marketing department’s floor.

This year, Budweiser ...

One the oldest breeds known, the pug has always been a companion animal that has wanted to be around people. It dates to at least 400 B.C., and likely served as a foundation for several other breeds – including the bulldog, Pekinese and King Charles spaniel.

The pug is believed to have originated in Asia, likely China. Buddhist monks in Tibet were among the first to keep pugs as pets. Pugs were then taken to Japan, followed by Europe in the 16^th Century. They were imported by the Dutch East India company and quickly became a favorite to royalty – including House of Orange (legend has it that a pug saved the life of the prince by alerting him to assassins), William III and Mary II, as well as Napoleon Bonaparte’s wife, Joséphine, and Queen Victoria and her grandson (King George V) and great grandson (King Edward VIII). The pug made its way into the homes and hearts of Americans in the 19^th Century and was recognized by the AKC in 1885.

Ever a people-dog, pugs have been depicted in paintings and writings throughout history as accompanying their owners on travels, at parties, sitting in portraits and ...

Since early in canine domestication, humans have been selecting individual dogs with desirable behavioral and physical traits to be founder breeding animals for the hundreds of dog breeds we have today. Early on, the traits selected for were often of great importance for their role as working animals. With time, as the world of dog fanciers took shape, dogs with particular physical traits of aesthetic value began to be the chosen bearers of future generations regardless of their ability to work. Unfortunately however, there are multiple examples of selected physical traits that are significant risk factors for disease.

One important example is a disorder seen in Rhodesian ridgeback (RR) dogs known as a dermoid sinus that has been associated with the characteristic “ridge” trait in the skin overlying the spine. In 2007, a large genetic duplication on canine chromosome 18 was identified as the underlying genetic cause of the ridge in this breed.² Unfortunately, the same genetic duplication responsible for ridge formation has also been found to predispose RRs to formation of dermoid sinuses.^1,2

Dermoid sinuses are tubular to round shaped cavitations in the skin often filled with hair and keratin that are present at birth. It ...

You can run drills all day long, day after day, and you will produce a hunting, obedience, agility or whatever other kind of dog you're interested in producing. It's not until you understand why you're running them and what effect they, and any subsequent corrections or praise, have on your dog that you start to really become a trainer. Plugging along from Point A to Point B and beyond will build a foundation for your hunting dog. It's vitally important that your dog have that foundation to build upon, and it's also one of the biggest problems amateurs have with training.

We get excited to "get to the fun stuff" and skip all the small steps that teach a dog to correctly carry out that fun stuff. When someone says their dog doesn't do something correctly or only does X, Y or Z incorrectly, you can almost always bet that the issue was caused by glossing over or altogether skipping a step in their foundation.

However, just plugging along and running drills, exercises, obedience and applying praise, corrections and the like in a more or less ordered sense isn't what it's all about ...

The field of genetics has progressed rapidly in recent years.  Perhaps you’ve seen headlines about these top genetic topics in 2013. These stories show the importance of genetics and how it affects us as individuals and as a society.  To understand the impact, though, one may need a review of Genetics 101: dominant vs. recessive disease traits.

In order for our bodies to work properly, our DNA must be coded in specific sequences.  DNA sequences are grouped into units called genes, which tell our bodies what to make to build cells and metabolize nutrients.  We are all a unique combination of re-shuffled genes from previous generations.  Everything from eye, hair and skin color, muscle, bone, etc. is coded by genes.  A mutation in a gene usually causes something to change and many of these changes can lead to disease. There are thousands of genes, and in humans, thousands of genetic disorders that result from mutations. 

One way to classify genetic disorders is to group them by how they are inherited.  With the exception of the sex chromosomes, X and Y, each of us has two copies of our genes.  One comes from ...

Large, muscular dogs, Rhodesian ridgebacks trace their ancestry to southern Africa, and it includes hunting dogs, guard dogs and semi-domesticated tribal dogs. The ridgeback is notorious for two things: first, as an athletic lion-hunting dog that could chase down and keep lions at bay until hunters showed up to make the kill, and second for the ridge of hair on their back that runs counter to the rest of the dog’s hair.

With roots that begin in present-day South Africa and Rhodesia, the ridgeback descends from semi-domesticated hunting dogs of the Khoikhoi people. These dogs possessed a line of hair that ran against the direction of the rest of their hair, creating a “ridge” along their backs. These fierce dogs were noted for their guarding abilities. Dutch settlers eventually brought European dogs with them – including greyhounds, bloodhounds and great Danes – which were bred with these indigenous dogs of South Africa. This crossing resulted in the Boer hunting dog, which continued to possess the ridge of hair along its back, and which was eventually taken to neighboring Rhodesia, where it was bred with other hunting dogs. The results of these pairing established the foundation for the ridgebacks – athletic ...

There’s generally two camps when it comes to training: the positive-only camp and the aversive camp. Positive-only trainers eschew any use of punishment and use rewards to motivate, reward and shape behaviors. The aversive camp, in an overly simple explanation, tends to shape behaviors by punishing, in one form or another, the wrong behaviors – which doesn’t necessarily preclude rewarding proper behaviors. This is simple carrot-and-stick training: do this correctly, get a treat; do that incorrectly get punished.

Chad Culp, a certified dog trainer in California, does a great job outlining the carrot-and-stick approach to training. However, he takes it further and discusses a study done with human children (you can read it here http://www.thrivingcanine.com/beyond_carrots_sticks). The basic premise being that continual rewarding reduces, even destroys, intrinsic motivation (which is very interesting) – the child, or dog, no longer wants to work for the pure joy of it; they hold out for a reward. This has been one knock from the aversive side of the aisle: that sooner or later that cookie isn’t enough of a reward to counter the desire to carry out the undesirable act.

The knock on aversive training is that it can destroy ...

Back in my younger days I enjoyed skiing. A day on the mountain was filled with fresh, cold air and adrenaline rushes as my buddies and I pushed each other to do better. I used the mantra (sometimes it doubled as an excuse): "if you're not falling, you're not skiing hard enough."

The same might be said of training your dog: if you're not making adjustments, corrections or changes to your dog's performance, you might not be training hard enough. You might just be practicing. Now, I say might because with dogs it's very subjective and depends upon what you've already done with the dog.

If you haven't taught the dog what you expect and then suddenly throw him into a scenario that he has to figure out by trial and error, then corrections, be them verbal, physical or via e-collar, are woefully unfair.

However, if you've gone through the teaching phase, the dog understands what you're doing and what's expected, then pushing him to do better by challenging him mentally and giving him every opportunity to make the correct decisions is training the dog.

If you're simply running ...

Truly great, as much in majesty as in size, the Great Dane is one of the largest dog’s in existence. A gentle giant, the Great Dane possesses a friendly and playful disposition. It’s an ancient breed, with similar-type dogs appearing in frescoes and other artwork from Greece and Egypt dating to more than 5,000 years ago! A 5th Century Danish coin depicts a large hunting dog believe to be a Great Dane.

The most striking feature of the Great Dane is their massive size. Minimum standards dictate that male Danes are not less than 30 inches tall – 32 inches and above is preferable (females can be slightly smaller, standing only 28 inches or more). Their weight ranges from 100 pounds for females to 120 pounds for males – while the AKC no longer states a minimum weight, those are generally accepted standards, however, the tall dogs should appear well muscled and proportionate to its great height.

Their large size makes Great Danes easily identified, and their presence will draw attention from everyone in the immediate vicinity. The largest living dogs are usually Danes – currently the Guinness Book of World’s Records recognizes a black Great Dane named Zeus ...

Like many scientists, I despise conventional wisdom. Given that I’m a veterinarian, this is especially true when it comes to medical conventional wisdom; the type of beliefs I remember many adults from my childhood relaying as fact that, I too, held as true for many years. Despite what my family told me in youth, I’ve since learned that shaving my body hair didn’t actually make it thicker, that reading in low light didn’t hurt my eyesight, and that vitamin C didn’t cure my cold. Nearly every day you can find postings on social media that appear to be based on fact, but are actually pieces of 21^st century conventional wisdom. One such Facebook posting recently struck near and dear to my veterinary heart. The posting was a link to an article discussing the ways dog ownership can improve our health. After reading the story, I decided to do some digging to see if there was science behind the claims being made. Since childhood, I had heard that pet ownership was good for our health. I heard it lowered blood pressure, prevented heart attacks, and otherwise improved our quality of life. But is it true?

Finding good evidence to support ...