Health: Highly Aggressive Bone Cancer (Part 3)
By Jennifer Stoeckl, MAT - Dire Wolf Project CEO, Aug. 18, 2023
For the last two days, we have been discussing Boss’s tragic passing from a highly aggressive form of bone cancer at only 8 years old.
Yesterday, I shared some statistics with you about the incidence rates of cancer within the breed. I also broke down the common ancestry that might pinpoint to where the cancer could be traced.
(After that last email, an owner came forward with another cancer case we hadn’t previously recorded. I updated the health database to reflect this new information. The dog was from the same line.)
Today, I want to share some thoughts on how the breed might move forward from here as we work to eliminate these incidences of aggressive cancer from the breed.
Each time we talk about canine health issues, it is important for me to remind you that Dire Wolf Project breeders are different. We do NOT subscribe to the “wait-to-breed” or “prevention” model of dog breeding. In 2019, I wrote a detailed book on the reasons for this called “Dire Wolf Project: Creating an Extraordinary Dog Breed”. But briefly, no one can “prevent” health disease from happening in a breeding population. Health issues will arise if the circumstances within the dog’s genetics are there coupled with any environmental factors that need to be present for the disease to manifest.
Some advocates for the “prevention” breeding model believe that “waiting to breed” until the dog is a certain age is the only way to make sure the dog’s within the breed are healthy before breeding them.
This emotional line of thinking is not logical.
There is no specific age when we have waited enough time to be sure the dog is completely free of all genetic diseases.
These cancer cases from this year are a perfect illustration of this.
Boss acquired this aggressive form of cancer at 8 years old.
But “wait to breed” or “prevention” model advocates would chastise Lois for not waiting until Boss was 8 years old to find out if he was completely healthy.
Hindsight is 20/20, right?
Should we “wait to breed” all of our dogs until they are at least 8 years old to make certain they don’t have any devastating health issues?
This is an impossibility. There is no way we would be able to create a new breed of dog within this timeframe.
I can hear the opposition now…
“We aren’t saying you have to wait THAT long. Two years is good enough to catch the majority of health issues.”
But it wouldn’t have caught this cancer trend.
Nor the hypothyroidism trend that occurs on average from 2.5 to 3 years old.
“Well, then you should wait until 3 years to make sure your breeding dogs are free of hypothyroidism, at least.”
And… that’s my point.
There is NO perfect time.
The required “wait time” will always change because different terrible diseases facing the breed will have onsets at different ages.
If I wait until 3 years to breed all of my dogs, then one of them may show hypothyroidism at 3.5 years.
It’s a never-ending cycle of waiting… for a 2-3% chance one of our breeding dogs will have the serious health issue we are targeting.
Instead, we should STOP admonishing breeders for having bred a dog that later developed a serious health issue.
That’s life.
In every living population.
Everywhere.
Around the world.
And throughout time.
Think of wild animals… such as wolves. Wild wolves get cancer, too.
They don’t stop to think to themselves, “Gee, I should probably wait to breed in order to make sure I am 100% healthy before producing offspring.”
No.
That’s silly.
They breed when they feel the urge and deal with the health issue when it arises.
Yet… wild born wolves now living in captive luxury, despite their large size, regularly live between 16-18 years old.
There is no question.
Nature’s breeding plan is superior to our feeble human attempts.
The Dire Wolf Project aims to mimic nature’s breeding plan (or as Lois describes it, God’s Breeding Plan™) in as much as humanly possible.
We have made it our mission to study nature’s superior breed sustainability record in order to produce a population that rivals the overall health in wild wolves living in captivity, without resorting to mixing in wolf content.
It is a lofty goal.
So, where do we go from here?
What can be done to drop this recent cancer occurrence rate within the breed moving forward?
First of all, a reminder.
There are only TWO ways to KNOW for certain where a health issue resides within the genetics: DNA or trial mating.
While DNA testing now identifies around 250 canine genetic diseases, highly aggressive forms of bone cancer are not among them. DNA testing is not an option to help us eradicate this disease from the breed.
Trial mating (Going Through the Looking Glass™ as Lois describes it) is the only other option we have to completely eradicate a health disease from our breed.
Unfortunately, in this case, these cancer incidences are too aggressive and occur at such an older age to be a proper candidate for trial mating.
As a last ditch effort, we could look at eliminating the entire line from the breed. We have identified where we believe the cancer originates, at least in as much as we have been able to determine. Perhaps its possible to just eliminate all dogs associated with this line.
This, too, would not be an option.
Nadine was an integral part of the breed, producing many diverse litters, including several first generation crossbreed litters. She bred with a giant Alaskan Malamute, an Irish Wolfhound mix, and a German Shepherd Dog. These have all developed into the breed we know today, mixing and matching the best dogs in each litter, generation after generation. Scrapping Nadine’s contribution from the breed would mean ending the breed entirely for a 2% reported cancer incidence rate.
That hardly seems to be the answer to this problem.
That means we won’t be able to completely eradicate this devastating issue from the breed.
This makes perfect sense, though.
It turns out every mammal population on Earth is plagued with cancer as one cause of death. This is especially evidenced in zoos where animals have the opportunity to live lives free from natural disasters, fatal accidents, and predation.
A study led by the University of Southern Denmark in 2011 found that over a quarter of captive bat-eared foxes, clouded leopards, and red wolves living in zoos died of cancer.*
That’s quite a high incidence rate compared to what has been reported so far in our breed.
But no need to lose hope.
There are certain breeding practices we can employ that break down any genetic components that are contributing factors to an increased cancer incidence.
The first step is to identify the line or lines in which the cancer seems to be most prominent.
We have an idea where the pedigree leads, so…
- We can diversify this line, diluting the inbreeding as much as possible without losing valuable genetic diversity or temperament conformity.
- Find older dogs coming from this line still intact who did not develop cancer and breed them into the breed to unrelated ancestry.
- Turn the generations, breeding the dogs farthest away and most genetically diverse from the affected line.
Lois often uses baking to illustrate this. If we put too much sugar into the cake batter, we can dilute it by increasing the other ingredients. Crossing out of this line to mix a less sugary batter.
Lois also describes heavy outcrossing as allowing the disease to settle back down into the muck and mire at the bottom of the pond… leaving fresh water to rise to the surface.
Outcrossing does NOT eliminate the disease from the breed, but it does make it much less prominent by mixing up the genes responsible.
From time to time, a dog may lose the lottery of life and inherit the necessary genetic components to develop this highly aggressive form of bone cancer.
Just as in all mammal populations, cancer will pop up from time to time.
But by doing what we can, perhaps we can stop it from becoming much more prominent and even reduce the number of incidences as soon as possible.
The dogs already born have received their genetic predisposition.
We urge all owners to be aware of the symptoms of bone cancer.
Please let us know right away if your vet finds anything like this.
The more information we have, the better we can deal with the issue moving forward.
As of today, tumors/cancer is the #2 most prominent health issue in the breed at a 2% reported incidence rate over the last ten years. (Hypothyroidism being #1 at 3%.)
If you have any questions about this, please let me know. I am always happy to help you sift through the complicated topic of canine health diseases.
If you missed it yesterday, here is the link to our comprehensive health database. I have updated all of the numbers to reflect the newest information coming out today, so it should be as accurate and current as possible.
https://direwolfproject.com/direwolf-dogs/our-health-foundation/health-database/
Enjoy your weekend.
Give a hug to your furry one from me.
Talk with you again on Monday.
REFERENCES
Jennifer Stoeckl is the co-founder of the Dire Wolf Project, founder of the DireWolf Guardians American Dirus Dog Training Program, and owner/operator of DireWolf Dogs of Vallecito. She lives in the beautiful inland northwest among the Ponderosa pine forests with her pack of American Dirus dogs.
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