Tag archives: soft tissue

Nothing brightens the schedule like seeing an 11:20am slot given to Mrs. Doe who is bringing in a three-day old litter for assessment, tails and dewclaws.  The whole clinic reminds you all morning that puppies are coming in.  Then the magic hour arrives and in comes Mrs. Doe with a laundry basket covered in a towel that is making a surprising level of grunts and squeals.  Wow! Thirteen little fuzzballs in varied states of activity from litter-surfing to dreamless slumber that makes you a little jealous.  You go through the exam; each one is fully formed with no gross congenital defects.  While prepping your tools for dewclaw removal and tail docking, Mrs. Doe asks that you save the remnants so she can have the litter tested with Paw Print Genetics for known disease-causing mutations in this breed.  Hmmm, what does this entail?

Typically, we recommend to clients who choose to submit cheek swabs to wait until they begin weening the pups off mom. This allows them to separate the puppies from their mother to reduce possible contamination by the mother’s milk that may remain in the puppies’ mouths.  Given that testing takes ...

Last week I attended the Purina Sporting Dog Summit in Gray Summit, Mo., at the Purina Event Center, which is part of the larger Purina Farms that is open to the public year-round and provides free family entertainment and education. The theme of the summit was “achieving a performance edge” and it featured some of the best trainers and handlers of high-performance sporting dogs from across the country, as well as media representatives.

Just to be in the same room with these trainers and handlers was an honor. The sheer amount of dog knowledge in that room, across all venues, was astounding. As a hunter and hunt-test fan, to meet and talk with the biggest names in the retriever and pointing-dog worlds was overwhelming – trying not to sound like a star-struck idiot was even more of a challenge. Here’s just a glimpse of the people in attendance:

Tom Dokken: Owner of Dokken’s Oak Ridge Kennels, the largest gun dog training kennel in the upper half of the US, and Dokken Dog Supply, Tom invented the popular Dokken Deadfowl Trainer and has been training gundogs for more than 30 years.

Danny Farmer: Elected to the Retriever Hall of Fame in ...