Health

HIP DYSPLASIA

As a large breed, the Spinone can be prone to hip dysplasia, and responsible breeding of only dogs with healthy hip joints is a very important part of prevention. Ask your breeder about the hips of the parent dogs before you commit to buying a puppy.

CEREBELLAR ATAXIA

Cerebellar Ataxia is a genetic disease which has been a serious problem for some Spinoni. This disease is inherited as an autosomal recessive gene, which means that both the sire and the dam must carry the abnormal gene for a puppy to be affected by the disease. Both parents carry the gene, but do not suffer from the disease, making it invisible until the puppies show symptoms. Not all puppies in the litter will be affected, but for those who are, the disease is 100% fatal, usually before they have reached one year of age. Of the remaining puppies in the litter, some will be carriers of the gene but not affected by the disease, and some will not be carriers at all.

At this time, there is no way to know which dogs are carriers unless they have produced an affected litter of puppies. However, this means some dogs have been proven to be carriers because they produced puppies that were affected. Your breeder should know whether the parent dogs can be traced back to any proven carrier of Cerebellar Ataxia. If your breeder can't answer this question, or if the parent dogs DO have CA in their pedigree, you may want to consider a different breeder or think very hard about taking on a puppy from those lines. Until we have a test to determine which dogs carry the recessive gene for this disease, breeding known carriers of Cerebellar Ataxia is likely to cause further problems in the breed instead of eradicating the disease. There is great hope that we will soon have more information about the gene.

EAR HEALTH

Spinoni have deep ear canals, and thus can tend to have problems unless their ears are regularly cleaned. A high quality diet can be very helpful in avoiding many health problems, and we feel that ear health can be greatly promoted by a good diet and weekly cleaning.

BLOAT

As with all deep chested dogs, Spinoni can suffer from bloat, or Gastric Dilation-Torsion Complex. Bloat is a life threatening swelling of the stomach caused by trapped gases or fluids, or both. It is a very serious problem that should immediately be treated by a veterinarian equipped for emergency surgery.

For more information about any of these health issues, use a search engine such as Google.com to search for topics by keyword, including the word "canine" in your search (Example: search for "canine bloat").