For over nine years, 3,000 Golden Retrievers and the Morris Animal Foundation have been on a mission. They have been participating in the Golden Retriever Lifetime Study, the largest and most comprehensive prospective canine health study ever undertaken by veterinary medicine in the United States. Each year with the help of veterinarians and dog owners, the Morris Animal Foundation collects health, environmental and behavioral data on over 3,000 enrolled Golden Retrievers, affectionately known as “Heroes.” Their purpose is to identify the nutritional, environmental, lifestyle and genetic risk factors for cancer and other diseases in dogs.
All this month the Morris Animal Foundation have shared what scientists have been learning from the data collected by these Golden Heroes. For example a study funded by the Foundation could be a real game changer for dogs suffering from urinary tract infections by developing a minimally invasive biotherapeutic procedure that could replace antibiotics as a treatment for some UTIs. To learn more about how this study could not only help improve dogs’ bladder health while also addressing the growing problem of antibiotic resistance, read the Morris Animal Foundation’s blog post, “Using Probiotics to Treat UTIs in Dogs.”
The Golden Retriever Lifetime Study is also being used to study tick-borne illnesses in dogs. Sign up to receive the Morris Animal Foundation’s “Tick-Borne Diseases White Pages,” to learn more about the seven biggest canine tick-borne diseases in the United States, as well as prevention strategies to keep ticks away from your pups, and what to do if you find one on your dog. In fact since 1963 the Foundation has invested over $400,000 into 22 studies focusing on tick-borne diseases, examining everything from improved diagnosis, to preventives, to how climate change can affect tick-borne diseases.
Funding from the Morris Animal Foundation is also helping scientists to understand the aging process in dogs, as discussed by SkeptVet. A team at Ohio State University is using the information gleaned from the Golden Retriever Lifetime Study to develop nonsurgical treatments for dogs’ aching backs using shockwave therapy. These are just a few of the projects that are being funded by the Foundation using data from the Golden Retriever Lifetime Study to improve canine health for ALL dogs. To see a more in-depth list of studies covering everything from obesity, to bloat, to dementia, to genetics, to cancer, visit the Morris Animal Foundation’s blog post, “Data Mining – The Golden Retriever Lifetime Study.”
You can support these and future research projects by donating to the Morris Animal Foundation. In celebration of National Dog Day, longtime, generous Foundation donors from Eagle River, Alaska, have issued the Denali Double Dog Dare matching gift challenge. They will match all gifts to support canine health research, up to a total of $75,000. What better way to thank the Hero Golden Retrievers enrolled in this study, while honoring your special pup friends, by celebrating National Dog Day with a DONATION today!
