Photo by Ellen Bonacarti, who passed away last week. We will miss her, her contribution to the breed, and her fantastic photos.

Our plans for the next year or so include a really big push on the cystinuria project in the hopes that we can finally make some progress on this long-standing problem for intact male Deerhounds. Here is what is in the works:

Health Survey for DNA Samples

For the last 15 years, we have been offering free Nitroprusside (NP) testing at the specialty health clinics in exchange for a blood sample from the tested dog. Now it’s time to use those blood samples! However, to do that we need health updates on those dogs so we know whether or not any ever formed stones or crystals. If so, we can use that DNA knowing it was an affected dog; if not, as a possible control.

So, if you ever have had your dog’s urine NP tested at a specialty, expect to hear from us with a short – PROMISE! – health survey so we can find out the cystinuria status of your dog. Now we know that health surveys are not everyone’s favorite thing to do, especially around the holiday season, but we are begging you to just take care of it and send it back so we can use your dog’s DNA. The more DNA we can use, the greater our chances of finding that dang mutation. So PLEASE—just get it done. Do not make us send you eight emails— just get it done!

You will have the option to just reply to the email, which comes back to me, or if you want to reply confidentially, there will be a SurveyMonkey link that you can use where the results go straight to Penn.

NP Test

Speaking of the NP test, we have made progress on the replacement test, which will actually quantify the amount of cystine (and other amino acids) in the urine. This improved test will give us a lot more information for the research. We are hoping to have that system up and running early next year.

Send Us Samples!

We are still looking for samples from dogs that have formed stones as well as older dogs that have not formed stones. Our saliva kits are easy to use and inexpensive to mail. For more information, go to https://deerhoundhealth.org/samples-needed/cystinuria-samples/

For more information on the cystinuria study, go to https://deerhoundhealth.org/research/cystinuria-research/

And, as always, if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact us.

Miranda Levin