| SOME DRUGS CAN BE DANGEROUS TO MANY AUSTRALIAN
SHEPHERDS
There are certain
foods such as chocolate, grapes and raisins, and onions that should not be fed to dogs.
Also avoid anti freeze, and cocoa chips used for landscaping. The following
link gives more info about poisonous substances. http://dogs.about.com/cs/disableddogs/a/poison_food.htm
The following e-mail, copied in red, from C. A. Sharp is quite informative about drugs
that are potentially dangerous to dogs that carry a specific gene . Please check out
the links to learn more about the gene and the dogs that may carry it. We have not
had problems with this gene, but we do avoid the drugs to keep our dogs safe. We could
test our dogs, but avoiding the drugs has not been a problem. One thing I have
learned is that not all vets are aware of the list or do not think Aussies are among those
breeds that have reactions to them.
Shirley Kasserman
Permission to forward or reprint granted.
I was recently contacted by someone asking whether a dog could have an MDR1
reaction due to eating feces from Ivermectin-treated livestock. I wasn't
sure about that, so I checked with Dr. Katrina Mealy at Washington State
University. Dr. Mealy is the
scientist who discovered the MDR1 gene.
She told me that Ivermectin and the related drug, selamectin, were shed in
feces of treated animals in active form. She went on to say that .they have
had a number of reports on dogs that had ingested enough feces to have
serious to fatal MDR1 reactions.
If you have Aussies or dogs of any other MDR1 breed who are prone to poop
eating and may have access to excrement from livestock, it would be wise to
do whatever you can to prevent them from doing so.
If you do not know the MDR1 status of your Aussies, I *strongly* recommend
that you get them screened. Fully a third of Aussies have at least one copy
of the mutation. Test kits are available from WSU:
http://www.vetmed.wsu.edu/depts-VCPL/
Even one copy may cause some level of reaction with some drugs. Ivermectin
and similar drugs are not the only ones that can cause reactions. For an
extensive list of MDR1 reactive drugs, including alternate brand names, see:
http://www.busteralert.org/
CA
________________________________
C.A. Sharp
Pres. Australian Shepherd Health &
Genetics Institute, Inc.
All Aussies All Genes All the Time
http://www.ashgi.org
Editor, Double Helix Network News
|
