00:35S1
On Vision Australia Radio, you're listening to the Seeing Eye dog show with me, your host, Harriet Moffat. Today I'm joined by seeing eye dog vet team member, Doctor Ashe Mooney, who's going to talk to us about waterborne parasites. These are a bit more common in winter months and cooler months. So we're going to be talking about those parasites and what they mean for our dog's health. Then I'm going to be playing a repeat from Doctor Nicola Cotner, the manager of reproduction and veterinary services, talking about the breeding strategy for a Seeing Eye Dog. So how we create future generations of seeing eye dogs. Without further ado, here is my first interview with Doctor Ashe. So I would like to talk a little bit about some water-borne parasites - but I think probably a good place to start, especially for us non-science people, is: what is a parasite?
01:31S2
So a parasite is a generic term for really any organism that can colonise the body that may or may not, you know, need to be there. And parasites can involve worms, which is often what we hear about. But you can also think of outside parasites. So things like fleas and ticks, there's other things like amoeba that can also be parasites. So it's a pretty broad term that encompasses a lot of bugs that can be either inside or outside of the body.
01:59S1
If we're talking about waterborne parasites, what type of parasites might they be?
02:04S2
So, a lot of parasites that are in the water, especially, in the kind of colder winter months where there's more rain, there's more kind of idle water on the ground, can be things like giardia, which is a common diarrhoea parasite in dogs and cats, and can also end up in humans.
02:22S1
Unlike, say, ticks that you were talking about before, those are kind of microscopic type parasites. Is that correct? Yeah.
02:28S2
You can't see them with the naked eye. But you can see them under a microscope pretty easily. So if you were to get a sample of a puddle, for example, and put it under a microscope, it would be quite easy to tell if it was in there. The waterborne parasites are often more common in the cooler winter months, especially after long periods of rain. You might also get them a lot near stagnant water, like the places where you see a lot of algae growing and mosquitoes and things like that, and certainly more mosquitoes. Mosquitoes are a way that parasites can be transferred. They like to transfer it through blood, so more heavy mosquito areas can also lead to a higher parasite burden.
The main thing to know about parasites is that most of them can be prevented and treated with regular flea and warming products that you are meant to do regularly. Whatever product it is, it just depends on the brand in terms of how often you do it. But there are some parasites like giardia, that cannot be prevented with medication and just have to be prevented by avoiding the areas where they're more so.
03:29S1
I suppose that's kind of the case of like if you see your your dog drinking at a slightly festive looking puddle, maybe pull them away.
03:37S2
Yeah, you certainly don't want your dog drinking at a pretty gross puddle. Or often in Melbourne, if if you go to a dog park regularly, sometimes those dog parks will have some sort of social media, and they'll let you know if there's been a recent gastro outbreak. Typically, if you hear of a gastro outbreak happening at a dog park, it is often more of a parasite related kind of burden. Sometimes it can be a virus passed between the animals, or it could be a bacteria living in the water as well. But a lot of the times it is a parasite based gastro issue.
04:09S1
So what are the symptoms of a parasite like giardia?
04:12S2
Most often you'll see... either some vomiting, diarrhea, which can be ranging from, you know, very loose, watery diarrhea to something that's a bit more like mucus, which can be pretty disgusting to, to think about. But it's important to inspect your animal's feces every time they go, just to make sure that nothing is out of the normal for your own animal. Some animals, especially if they have a quite robust immune system, won't show any signs other than being a bit off their food. Or maybe they might look a little bit bloated or have more flatulence in the home, especially really smelly flatulence. If that's a drastic change from their normal, that might be an indication that maybe something like that is occurring.
04:57S1
And something like diarrhea cannot cause, um, blood in the stools as well.
05:00S2
Yes, it certainly can cause blood in the schools. Blood in the stools can happen for a number of reasons. It can be from the parasite kind of doing things to the intestinal lining. It could be from the dog going to the toilet so much that they're starting to strain and everything is getting quite irritated inside. So there's, there's a number of reasons why you might see blood in the stool. And even if you don't see blood in the stool, but your animal is feeling unwell, not themselves, it's always better to make sure that you go to the vet right away.
05:30S1
So, I suppose obviously you're going to be working with your vet for this, but how are parasites like that treated?
05:37S2
Most of the time they're treated with specific anti-parasite medications. And the type of medication really just depends on the actual parasite. So you know, if you've been a Covid conspiracy theorist and you've been hearing a lot about ivermectin, which is a common anti parasite treatment, I would not recommend just giving that to your animal because that only works against specific parasites. It's really important to check in with your vet and make sure you use a product that is appropriate for your animal, especially as there are some anti parasite treatments that are really not okay to give to certain dog breeds. There are certain dog breeds that have quite severe reactions to them.
And that's not something I'll get into in detail, but it is important to always speak with your veterinarian about which drug to use. And I guess the biggest thing with any sort of diarrhoea or vomiting, any gastro based disease, is that you need to maintain really good hand hygiene because you never know if it's something that can be passed on to you.
06:36S1
That was going to be my next question. Can conduct with parasites kind of pass them on to dogs, people, other animals? And in the case of Giardia, that is one of those ones, isn't it?
06:45S2
Yeah. So Giardia can be passed on to people. It's actually often found in swimming pools that a lot of young children go into. So something to watch out for as well. Can also get giardia from other sources, not just animals. But the most important thing is maintain good hand hygiene. If you are immunosuppressed for any reason, maybe it's better that you don't handle your animals feces or anything like that while they're on well, and somebody else in your household deals with it. And also, if you have young children, it can be quite hard. Sometimes they're, you know, licking the dog or things like that.
And even if your dog looks clean to the naked eye, there could be microscopic particles somewhere on your dog's coat. So make sure you give your dog a really good bath once they've recovered, and also still maintain washing your hands after every single time you interact with your animal just to stay nice and safe.
07:36S1
I mean, we love dogs, but thinking about that kind of particular stuff doesn't make them as appealing to us to sit and kiss and cuddle, does it?
07:44S2
No. And as of that, I actually no longer kiss other animals because it is quite easy to get these diseases. And I have gotten things like parasites from animals before. And the unfortunate thing is that if you go to your human GP and you tell them that your animal has a parasite, sometimes they won't be like, Oh, you must have it too. And they might not necessarily decide to treat you until you yourself are quite unwell. And I've had times where I've gone in knowing that I've contracted something from an animal and I've just been told to wash my hands better, which isn't the nicest thing to hear when you, you know, have really severe gastro, and you're getting it from an occupational hazard.
But it is really, really important to maintain good hand hygiene. And I do advise against kissing or rubbing your face in animals that you don't know personally.
08:36S1
You're listening to the Seeing Eye Dogs Show on Vision Australia Radio. I hope you found that interview with Ashe interesting. Or hopefully, good to know. Although maybe not the most glamorous of topics. It's really important that we keep our dogs in top tip condition. And that does include keeping them parasite free.
Now I'm going to play my next interview, which is from the archives from Doctor Nicola Cotton, manager of veterinary and reproduction at Seeing Dogs. Are we going to be talking about the breeding program strategy? Thank you for listening. Hi, Jenny. Thank you for joining me on the show today.
09:12S3
Hi, Harriet. Thanks for having me.
09:14S1
So just to start off, what is your role at Seeing Eye Dogs?
09:18S3
My role is a veterinary and reproduction manager, so I oversee the health of the dogs in all parts of the program. And my team also includes our bananas puppy center attendants and our breeding team.
09:32S1
So we kind of do have our own obviously breeding program at Seeing Eye Dogs. It's not just kind of, you know, finding dogs and then training them up. What is the kind of process for the selection of breeding dogs?
09:45S3
The process for selecting breeding dogs is quite involved. And it really starts almost at the time that we are planning a meeting. So when we are planning a mating, we will know from the pedigrees of those parents and the breed of those parents, whether or not it's a litter, that we would have great value in selecting breeding stock from. As an example, we have excellent dogs in our breeding colony, and those dogs breed other excellent dogs when they produce puppies. But if we keep selecting from litters where they already have parents in the breeding colony, then all of our dogs in the breeding colony will start to become very closely related to one another.
So sometimes when we are breeding a litter, we know already that to select from that litter might mean that we actually need to retire another dog in the breeding colony. So in those cases, sometimes we know that that litter is most likely going to be excellent. Working dogs and they're destined for the training program. We're also looking towards selecting more Labradors and golden retrievers as our breeding stock. And then our cross-bred Labradors and crossed with golden retrievers are the ones that tend to be very successful for training. If we are trying to make improvements through genetic selection, it's much more rapid to do this. If you're breeding with dogs that are pure Labradors or pure golden retrievers, because of the way that the genetic combinations work, and what else might be valuable for us to know when we're making selections at the time of choosing a mating pairing is what that pedigree is in relation to the rest of our colony.
So maintaining genetic diversity is really important. And so we may know if we're using, for example, a dog from another seeing eye dog guide dog school or assistance dog school that as the sire for the litter, then that is going to bring a lot of good genetic diversity into our colony. So we might actually then be looking particularly at that letter to select from in saying that, obviously we need to see how the dogs develop through the program. So then we also have regular meetings with the puppy development team to get feedback on how the puppies are progressing, and then we keep a close eye on the ones that are progressing particularly well based on the temperament assessments that the puppy development trainers do.
And then we'll also be keeping a close eye on their health, of course. So there will be times during puppy development where we have found that a puppy has a health condition. That means it's not appropriate to use that dog for breeding, so that dog might then no longer be in contention for selection for breeding.
12:16S1
And that's even things like, say, having more than average ear infections, that type of thing, right? It's not just, you know, it's not necessarily anything drastic in terms of improving the colony.
12:26S3
Yeah. That's right. We know that there's a heritable component behind things like skin and ear problems. So if we are seeing that a puppy is having lots of ear or skin problems repeatedly, then we'll often try to investigate that through the Seeing Eye Dog Clinic so we can make sure that we're ruling anything else out that could be contributing.
12:46S1
So when you are looking, were you and the breeding team are looking at picking those pairings for matings, other than what you've kind of already mentioned about the genetic diversity, how do you pick, you know, the best dam and sire for each other and for the litter?
13:02S3
It's a great question, and there's a lot that goes into this. And the breeding team, we get together about every 4 to 6 months to make plans for the next six months. What we need to look at when we have a female and we're planning which stud to use to produce puppies, we need to firstly make sure that there are no clashes on their genetic testing. So we test for a variety of single gene disorders. And dogs in the breeding colony might be carriers for those genes. The way that the inheritance pattern works with those is it's recessive. So both. Parents would need to be carriers in order for any puppies to be produced with the condition, so we can safely breed if one of the parents is a carrier, but we can't breed a carrier to a carrier, so that's the first thing we cross-check when we are deciding which stud and which female to meet together, then we will have a shorter list of studs.
Once we've cross-checked the DNA, then we will look at breed. So we're making sure that throughout the year we're producing a sort of mixed supply of different dog types, and that includes breed. So obviously we want to make sure that there's different breed types available for our clients who have different preferences, different needs. So we will look at what our previous litters have been and make sure that we're not producing only six months worth of pure Labradors. We make sure that there's a variety coming through, so then we may rule out or rule in certain studs due to the breed combination that the puppies would be. Then we will look at the pedigrees. So we need to make sure that those two parents are not closely related.
So then we're able to actually use our database, the International Working Dog Registry, to tell us what the coefficient of inbreeding between those two parents is. We can make sure that it's very, very low. And that will give us an even shorter list of studs to choose from. And then what we need to do is look at how often those studs have been used in the previous 6 to 12 months. We want to make sure that we are not falling into the trap of what's called the popular sire effect. That's where you have a really popular sire. So a stud dog that's performing really well, producing great puppies. If you start using that stud dog too much, that can cause problems down the track, because then in future years, all your letters are going to be half siblings of one another.
So then we'll look at stud use rule in our outset, and studs, if they've been used many times recently, and then we'll be down to a short list of studs. And that's when we look at the particular traits of those parents. So health and behavior and what we'll do is then try to match them up so that they balance out their strengths and less strength...
15:39S1
Which they all have. They all have less stress.
15:42S3
I know that you disagree with me with Iris, but there is no such thing as the absolute perfect dog. So we do have to make sure that where the female maybe is not as strong in a certain aspect, we're using a stud that is performing really well in that aspect.
15:57S1
And then from from there as well. So I know, I know there's a bit of kind of, I think people who haven't been involved in breeding aren't necessarily aware of this because I get a lot of questions about Iris, you know, also when she can have puppies and it's kind of like, we don't get to kind of pick that. Is that is that the case?
16:14S3
Yes. So we're at the mercy of Mother Nature a lot of the time in terms of when our females will come into season. So on average in our breeding colony, they have eight months in between each season, but it really varies from as low as six up to almost over 12 months. So some dogs, not very many, will only cycle about once a year. And what we do is we track when their seasons have been, and so we can anticipate who's due to come into season in the next couple of months. But sometimes Mother Nature doesn't play ball and there'll be some peaks and troughs. That means sometimes we have to skip some seasons when some bitches, when they're in season, because we just don't have the capacity, and the puppy centre and the puppy program, and then other times we'll have some lulls. Yeah.
16:59S1
So sometimes it feels like there's kind of like seven all in once.
17:03S3
It does happen some time about it. Sometimes we say just no one else coming to season, but I think they hear us and then something happens.
17:12S1
To try and prolong their working duties a little bit longer. So can you please explain a bit about the overall breeding strategy?
17:21S3
Yeah. So essentially in one sentence the strategy is to improve the success rate. But there's a lot that will go in behind that. So we're really targeting the health and behavior traits or characteristics that caused the most releases of dogs from our program. And that are also heritable. So we're going to have the most success in improving success rate if we make choices around breeding based on conditions that are highly heritable, other conditions or other traits or characteristics or behaviors can be influenced by environmental factors. So the experiences of the puppies as they grow up, the environment, even nutrition in some cases, fortunately for us, we're covered on that respect. But we know that in things like hip and elbow dysplasia, nutrition can have an impact as well as heritability.
We also want to know what's important for clients. So really trying to capture as much client feedback as possible and make sure there isn't anything that's occurring after graduation that's causing problems for clients that we could actually improve through breeding. So really seeking as much client feedback as possible. We also include in our strategy the goal or target to breed only from purpose bred dogs. So if we are obtaining dogs from. Another organisation or if we are obtaining genetic material, we are making sure that that is from dogs that have been bred over many generations to serve a purpose, such as being a dog guide or an assistance dog. And then we also strategically collaborate with a lot of other organisations. So that really helps us in maintaining our genetic diversity as well and improving our stock.
18:59S1
It's quite interesting, especially that you said, you know, some of the traits are more and less heritable. And that's not just health is that that's also even kind of behavior or sorry, not behavior temperament that is heritable.
19:09S3
That's right. Yes. So heritability is essentially the amount of variation that you'll see across. If you're looking at a group of dogs and you're looking at let's pick a temperament trait of harness sensitivity. There'll be variation in in that group of dogs as to how sensitive to the harness handle they are. And that means whether or not they drop their back or their hindquarters down when the harness handle touches them, we don't want them to do that. We want them to not mind the harness handle touching them. So if we're looking at the group of dogs and there's a lot of variation in that group of dogs, the heritability of harness sensitivity is what tells us what percentage of that variation between the individuals is caused by their genes, and what percentage is caused by other things.
Harness sensitivity is one of the more heritable temperament traits, so that means that you will be able to adjust it, but not as successfully as other temperament traits by using training methods and management methods. So the higher the heritability of a trait, the more likely or the faster you can influence it through breeding because less of it is impacted by the environment.
20:24S1
So because you can train them to be more comfortable, but if it's more heritable, then it's harder to do so.
20:28S3
Yes, and you might be less successful. One example I like to use is like coat color that is wholly heritable. So if you breed a Labrador, you cannot train that yellow Labrador to become a black Labrador. It doesn't matter what amount of training you do, what environment is exposed to what nutrition it has, it will always have that coat color. So that is total heritability.
20:50S1
I mean, some of them do try when they go to, you know, somewhere with enough mud. But at the end of the day, yes.
20:56S3
No permanent change their genetics.
20:59S1
So how does the strategy meet the evolving needs of various types of clients? Like you said, it's not kind of tight. There's like there's types of dogs in in breed, but there's also other kind of types of dogs.
21:10S3
Yeah, that's really true. So obviously a lot of societal change occurs every couple of years. And over the past few decades in particular, we've seen a lot of people moving into like smaller apartments and there's like higher housing density. So we need to make sure that our dogs are more comfortable living in smaller housing areas and living in more, I guess, high density suburbs. So we may need to make sure that we're breeding dogs and training dogs that are able to cope well in a busy environment. So we need to sort of, I guess, forecast trends of what's going to happen with society. And that's a longer term view. We also want to make sure that our dogs are really good canine citizens. So that means that they're really responsive to their handler. They are going to be well-behaved and polite in public spaces. And that's also something that we can sort of breed towards over time as well.
We also know that over the next, I guess, few decades, the amount of people in Australia that will be looking for a seeing eye dog is going to increase. So part of our strategy is how do we actually make sure we have enough dogs to provide to all of our clients. So that's less about the qualities of the dogs necessarily, but also making sure that we're future proofing our breeding strategy so that we can produce more dogs in the future.
22:34S1
Which, like you said, is kind of the population syndrome would block something like that.
22:38S3
That type of thing. Exactly.
22:40S1
So how can breeding produce and maintain a colony of dogs suited to lots of different clients? So, you know, clients who come from a different range of, you know, countries, sorry, not countries can part of the country lifestyles. And, you know, even having kind of different personality traits and what they want in a dog for example.
22:58S3
Yeah, that is a good question because every single person is so different. Everyone has really different preferences, needs different lifestyle. So we just need to make sure when we're breeding that we are breeding a variety of dog types. And so if we sort of looking at broader types, you can look at size of dog as a type. So we want to make sure that there is a variety of size of dog, a variety also of coat colors and variety of breed types. But then also if we're looking at, I guess, a kind of generalisation of a temperamental aspect, you can have dogs at a more higher energy, and you can have dogs that are more lower energy.
And you can imagine that with people's different lifestyle, there would be some lifestyle suited to a really high energy dog that needs to do a lot of work. Maybe take the client to five different meetings and five different locations five days a week, and there will be other clients who live a lifestyle where the dog would be taking them to 1 or 2 locations every day, and in between that, the dog is expected to be a nice, polite companion in the office or in the social activities that the client is doing that day, sporting whatever it may be. So we need to make sure that we are providing like a variety of type of dogs. And energy is just one example of that.
24:12S1
So you'll probably pick a pairing that you have. I guess you can predict as much as possible that they're going to be, I guess, a lower energy type of dog and, and more kind of laid back. And then you'll pick another different pairing where you have the expectation that they're going to be more energetic, more confident and outgoing. And yes, exactly.
24:33S3
Right. Exactly. I have a personal preference out of a pet dog to have low energy because I like to go out, go for a walk, go for a run. But then at home, I really like to just have a nice napping dog so I can go about my household chores. So I really understand that there are really, really clear differences in preference of dog types for pet dogs, but that's definitely going to translate even more strongly across to a working dog.
24:58S1
So yeah, that is one of the things that I've been asked a few times in the supermarket. I've been told, oh, why don't you use Kelpies for seeing eye? Because they're really smart. And I kind of picture a kelpie in an office environment, having lived with one at one point. And I'm picturing that dog in the office environment just gives me a little bit of a heebie jeebies. I just think that it would be not a happy dog.
25:21S3
I think that the Kelpie would give you about five minutes for each meeting, until it was asking you to go somewhere else and do something else to engage it. So Kelpies versus maybe greyhounds is a good comparison of different kind of energy levels of different dogs. Obviously we're only working with two breeds, but there's still variation within that. So we just want to make sure we're providing all different types of dog at the end.
25:45S1
And there's Iris putting in her $0.02 as per the usual, is there anything else that you think would be interesting to know that you'd like to share about the breeding program and breeding program strategy?
25:57S3
I guess, one of the most exciting things that we're doing at the moment is a lot of collaboration and cooperation with other organisations. So at the moment, we are part of the Oceanic Breeding Cooperative, which is overseen by Assistance Dogs International. And it's basically a structured way that we can collaborate with other organisations that breed assistance and dog guides. And what that means is we actually have a communal breeding colony that's shared between the organisations that are part of the breeding cooperative. And so some of the dogs in our breeding colony are actually OBC for short. Oceanic breeding cooperative are actually part of the OBC breeding colony.
So while we will be looking after them, doing their matings, pregnancy care, looking after them while they give birth and the litter, some of those puppies are actually going to go to those other organisations. And then those dogs may then go on to become part of that shared breeding colony. So that's really exciting because it allows us to access different genetic material and also just gives us access to more dogs. So the more dogs you have access to, the more likely you're going to be able to have a higher proportion of excellent dogs to pick from for breeding.
27:09S1
So it kind of means that instead of having the pool of studs that you can keep in your colony, you have kind of access to a larger number.
27:17S3
That's exactly what it means. So then when you're trying to make those decisions, like I mentioned earlier, every time you are cross-checking something, you're narrowing down the list. But imagine if you had at the end of that list, you had 30 to choose from instead of only 4 or 5. Yeah. Then you're going to be able to really make the best decision for those mating pairings.
27:35S1
Well, that's, it's really exciting. I think the clients will probably start to really kind of feel like, but it's a bit of a slow change some of these things, isn't it? Because the OBC is reasonably recent in our...
27:45S3
Yeah, we've been part of the OBC now for 2 or 3 years, and we've just had the first breeding graduates, you could say come through. So it is definitely a long term goal, and it's something that will continue to build over the next few years. And also in the last few months, we've had the first lot of frozen semen from America, from the American Breeding Cooperative was shipped over to Australia, and we recently had a Leda that was born and it was signed by stud that actually lives in America. So now we're able to expand our horizons even further by being part of the OBC.
28:21S1
Well, it's very exciting. So thank you for coming on the show and talking to me about the breeding program strategy.
28:26S3
Thanks for having me, Harriet.
28:35S1
You've been listening to the Seeing Eye Dogs Show on Vision Australia Radio. I hope you enjoyed my interviews with Doctor Ashe talking about parasites, and with Doctor Nicola talking about our breeding strategy at seeing eye dogs. If you'd like to find out more about seeing eye dogs, the work we do, or how you can help, head to our website at SCD dot Virgin australia.org. Don't forget to tune in! Same time next week for another episode of the Seeing Eye Dogs Show. Or head to your preferred podcast provider for other episodes of The Seeing Eye Dog Show and other Great Vision Australia radio shows.
