Bloat

[Guest TBSFlame]

I remember walking my friend's mare who was in colic. Vet said "don't let her lay down" and my friend ran next door to horse people to get a shot of something to give her. I am walking this mare and thinking "right, if she wants to lay down I am going to stop her?" Fortunately I kept her walking and shot worked and she was ok. It is a frightening experience.

I had a mare that was due to give birth that went colic. She got vet treatment and I spent the night at the stable walking her. It was very scary. I have never seen an animal sweat so much. She got okay and gave birth a few days later to a healthy colt.

[ahicks51]

IIRC, (and I did NOT re-read the above referenced link yet, I haven't read it since it first came out,) the Purdue study was done exclusively with Danes since the condition seems most prevalent in that breed.

 

No. Eleven breeds were examined. The number of great danes comes in at third.

 

However, in terms of risk with respect to GVD, they did come in first in the study.

 

From:

 

http://www.vet.purdue.edu/epi/pups.htm

 

Newfoundlands: 298

Irish setters: 264

Great danes: 216

Collies: 198

Irish wolfhounds: 183

Saint Bernards: 176

Standard poodles: 135

Bloodhounds: 126

Rottweilers: 113

Akitas: 111

Weimaraners: 100

 

Unfortunately I seem to recall that the majority of the dogs were fed from raised feeders, meaning the test group wasn't 50/50. to me/us, it was like doing a study with 15 red cars and 5 white cars and then saying red cars crash more often. Sure they do when there are more of them! um, duh?

 

And yet, with the most comprehensive study on record, involving five years of research data on bloat-prone dogs, in a peer-reviewed journal article, somehow the statisticians involved managed to overlook this, along with the peer review, and the editors- and should be willfully ignored?

 

This is from the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, not the Billy Joe Jimbob's Backyard Breeder's Collective, after all. Lies, damned lies, and statistics aside, maybe the people that studied this for five years in several hundred animals might know what they're talking about.