A mysterious new disease may be emerging in canines. This past February, dogs from two different Florida animal shelters were stricken with an unidentified illness. The illness came on suddenly and in the case of the Miami-Dade Animal Shelter, resulted in the violent death of the dogs; their lungs and abdomens full of bloody fluid.
The Director of Animal Services at the Miami-Dade Animal Shelter, Dr. Sara Pizano, believes the fatalities are the result of a new disease. “It’s not a normal infectious disease for a shelter – it’s well beyond that so we think we’re looking at a new emerging disease.” Officials are unsure as to whether or not the illness is a mutation of an existing disease or a new pathogen altogether.
While the mysterious new illness has afflicted dogs in Florida, it may only be a matter of time before the disease spreads to other areas. Social pressure to spay and neuter along with new mandatory spay/neuter laws have left many animal shelters without dogs and puppies to adopt out, forcing them to import dogs from out of state.
Mystery Disease Killing Dogs In South Florida
The historic New England "gentleman's sleigh dog," Arthur Walden's Chinook, is about to embark on a new phase of its development that probably carries great risk for the survival of the population. According to Director Patti Richards of the Chinook Club of America, enough Chinooks are now enrolled in The American Kennel Club's "Foundation Stock Service" and enough members in the CCA's membership rolls for Chinooks to enter the AKC Miscellaneous Class at almost any time. (CCA's FAQ page gives January 2008 as the expected date of entry, so perhaps the move is already considered overdue by AKC.)
If that sounds at first like good news for Chinooks -- it might not be. The Chinook has been registered with the United Kennel Club, America's century-old alternative registry for coonhounds and other minority breeds, since the 1990s. Since the population was rescued from the collapse of Perry Greene Kennels (where it was closely held as a one-man "breed") in 1981 when it numbered only eleven closely-related, highly-inbred individuals, its survival has been somewhat touch-and-go. Beset with reproductive problems, eye disease, and a chronic seizuring syndrome, obviously the Chinook is not without serious problems already. A cross-breeding scheme was inaugurated with the cooperation of UKC in the hope of broadening the genetic base of the Chinook and reducing inbreeding. But COIs remain high, thirty to fifty percent for "purebred" individuals and fifteen to twenty even for the "Chinook cross" lines.
Yet AKC and its chosen "Parent Club" for the Chinook, the CCA, propose to discard the cross bloodlines as incompatible with the purity of the AKC stud book. This issue has seriously divided Chinook breeders, to such an extent that twenty-five breeders of Chinook "purebreds" stayed out of CCA and the FSS in protest at the way things were being done. Rumour has it that AKC and CCA propose to exclude permanently the protestors as well as those with Cross dogs.
Thus the move to AKC Miscellaneous status (and probably to full AKC recognition a year or two thereafter) will not only mean a deep divide in the Chinook gene pool, it will also mean the entry into AKC's closed stud book world of a dangerously inbred population that already has serious genetic issues. There it can only become yet more inbred, with yet more serious problems. It seems probable that, once full AKC status has been achieved for the Chinook, the UKC population would be likely to decline from both lack of interest and loss of numbers.
Unless something should happen to change the situation radically, it looks like a colourful and picturesque American sled dog breed is now being irrevocably set on the path to death by genetic genocide.