# Let's talk dog injuries



## Lamarsh (Aug 19, 2014)

waterfowlhunter83 said:


> If you hunt around cow pastures, watch out for barbed wire. First hunt last year my DD was chasing down a crippled goose and got tagged by some barbed wire. She needed some stitches, worse part was the 2 week layoff she had to endure. She didn't like being left at home when I would go out and hunt.


I'll piggy back on that comment and note to also watch out when you're hunting in country that used to be used for public ranching. Not sure if we have that here in Michigan, but where I elk and grouse hunt out in Colorado, there are TONS of old public ranching lands where folks ran wire fences for their own grazing areas, and those fences still exist, but are all rickety and are hard to see. I've never ran my dog out there, but I can see it being a potential issue.


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## Shotgun Kennel (Feb 9, 2007)

I have an article which describes ortho issues with dogs spayed or neutered before 12-18 months. It was a very well done study. We give a copy of the article to all of our puppy buyers and ask them to have their vet read it if they recommend early spay or neutering.


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## Lamarsh (Aug 19, 2014)

Shotgun Kennel said:


> I have an article which describes ortho issues with dogs spayed or neutered before 12-18 months. It was a very well done study. We give a copy of the article to all of our puppy buyers and ask them to have their vet read it if they recommend early spay or neutering.


Do you have a copy of that article to send as a PDF via email? I'd like to check that out.


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## GamebirdPreserve (Nov 21, 2006)

Shotgun Kennel scanned his copy as a JPEG to me. Sorry, I do not know how to make it better quality. Hopefully you are able to read it here? Also below is the link with the 164 scientific references that link SPAY/NEUTERING to various diseases as mentioned in the last paragraph of the above article. 

http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.theriogenology.org/resource/resmgr/Docs/spay-neuter_basis.pdf


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## Shotgun Kennel (Feb 9, 2007)

Lamarsh said:


> Do you have a copy of that article to send as a PDF via email? I'd like to check that out.


PM me your email address and I'll send it to you as a jpeg. I scanned it.


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## Lamarsh (Aug 19, 2014)

Shotgun Kennel said:


> PM me your email address and I'll send it to you as a jpeg. I scanned it.


GameBirdPreserve just posted it in the JPEG format you sent to him. I got it. I read the article. Thank you! Interesting stuff, basically what we've been talking about. I'm passing it on to my mom, who is my dog's vet. She recommends spay/neuter to pet dogs no earlier than 8 months, but for any dog with an active lifestyle such as a hunting dog she said to wait until at least 1 year.


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## MandJ (Oct 10, 2012)

Most recent versions I have seen are out to 18- 24 mos.


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## thetreestandguy (Dec 16, 2005)

Very interesting stuff about spay/neuter. I don't recall the exact timing but according to all this our Draht was definitely spayed too young, under a year just not sure how much under.

Fast forward and she blew out an ACL a couple years back, lets call it at 4. Completely recovered from surgery and immediately blew the other out. It's been a year since the last one and now that poor dogs bones creak like mine! Almost every time she gets up after a long nap I can hear both knees crack. I know that sound all too well, had two ACL's and a total knee done. My understanding is that as a human when you get the ACL done it's inevitable that your going to arthritic symptoms sooner or later. Got a bad feeling about those knees getting dodgy in the future even if the surgeries hold up.


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## Lamarsh (Aug 19, 2014)

thetreestandguy said:


> Very interesting stuff about spay/neuter. I don't recall the exact timing but according to all this our Draht was definitely spayed too young, under a year just not sure how much under.


I don't think you should be too quick to blame that on the timing of neuter/spay as long as it wasn't done earlier than 8 months. My mom, who's a vet, won't do any of those surgeries if the dog is under 8 months, unless there are circumstances that would require it for the dog's health. 

Nonetheless, the way I see it, what is the harm in waiting until the dog is at least one year? That should be how we should be looking at this IMO. If you have a male, of course, he'll start marking, and the red rocket is going to come out a bunch, but that's what dudes do. If you have a female, you might have to deal with one cycle, but is that really the end of the world? 

I think most vets aren't ready to jump to the conclusion that spays/neuterings should never be done before the dog is 1 year of age, and there's probably a good reason for that, but with the studies out there that suggest that waiting until at least one year COULD be beneficial, taken in conjunction with the usual circumstance that not much harm or inconvenience will be done by waiting, why not just wait?


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## BIGSP (Sep 16, 2004)

There never will be great evidence proving that waiting will benefit dogs. In order to do so would require a massive amount of time and energy and dogs that would be have to be randomized into studies. They could go back and do a prospective study to look at all dogs and when they were or weren't spayed/neutered and the incidence of knee injuries. Again for time consuming and expensive.


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## MandJ (Oct 10, 2012)

I think the big thing, for most sporting dogs is the growth issue. Alot of evidence pointing to hip dispasia, CCL/ACL problems. The average dog doesn't generally have these issues. Narrows the pool even more on research. Not alot of lap dogs and couch dogs blowing ligements. The benefits of waiting is a little speculative, but the increased rate of early fixing is not.


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## birdhntr (Jan 25, 2014)

I read that over feeding large breed dogs causes many of these issues when they are young and they grow to fast this affect medium to small breeds as well


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## Back woods (Jul 30, 2003)

I was running a dog in PA the morning after a night of wet driving snow. The snow clung to the side of trees and stumps. The dog not being able to see the stump ran smack into it at full speed. It ruptured his aorta and he was dead within five minutes.

I have only had two pointers with acl injuries. One I felt was my fault from not properly conditioning the dog before running hard a week straight. He had been living in the kennel for a couple months. The other I was running a dog in Wisconsin on the pine barrens. They burn these grounds to keep them from over growing. Some of the stumps continue to burn and smolder until a 6 to 8 inch diameter hole about a foot deep is left behind. I watched as the dogs hind leg fell into one of these holes. She was injured immediately.


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## BIGSP (Sep 16, 2004)

Bruce, you've had 2 out of probably 100's of dogs. I've had three with 2 dogs both early spayed females. I bet your dogs are all intact! Not to mention you probably run dogs a thousand times more than me and you've only had 2 injuries. This helps me confirm my feelings that early spay neuter can be a proud or sporting dogs.


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## MandJ (Oct 10, 2012)

If just about pregnancy, some vet's are doing vasectomy and tubal ligation (tied) as for cancer, generally have time on that, don't remember years, but seems like 6-8.


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## Lamarsh (Aug 19, 2014)

MandJ said:


> Not alot of lap dogs and couch dogs blowing ligements.


That has not been my observation at all. Of the three ACL tears I've known of just this year, none of them were sporting dogs, just pets, and one was a tiny little lap dog no bigger than 8 lbs.


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