The only dogs with a breed-specific genetic defect affecting the way their urine forms are Dalmatians. The defect results in some Dalmatians forming a type of urinary stone known as "urates." In other Dalmatians, the defect never becomes active stone disease. Undiagnosed, untreated and with owners unaware of early warning symptoms, the slowly enlarging stones can ultimately produce in afflicted Dalmatians a seemingly instantaneous, unannounced life-threatening obstruction of the normal urinary stream. The DCA presentation will explain just how simple it is to prevent active Dalmatian stone disease or to treat Dalmatians with active stone disease from ever reaching emergency obstruction!

State-of-the-art knowledge from veterinarian experts in canine stone disease has made euthanizing obstructed Dalmatians thankfully obsolete! Ongoing professional seminars, journal and textbook publications by stone disease specialists now enable any owner to block the inborn Dalmatian defect from becoming active disease, aborting the ominous specter of obstruction and of expensive emergency life-saving surgery. Dalmatians today can be protected by a simple, easy program of prevention especially anti-stone diets and anti-stone drugs. Prevention is the all-embracive breedwide goal of the lecture.

An innovative two-projector, two-screen-image lecture is scheduled for the 2006 DCA national specialty. The multi-projector show will enable anyone in the audience to:

• Examine dogs' urinary anatomy to understand how a stone obstructs males vs bitches;
  
• See actual Dalmatian stones including types other than just the breed-specific urates;
  
• Know of differential diagnoses before a Dalmatian is treated correctly;
  
• Consider possibilities why some Dalmatians have active disease while others do not;
  
• Understand why and which foods mandate "anti-stone" diets for effective prevention;
  
• Conjecture if active stone disease prohibits using the Dalmatian to breed;
  
• Discover how easily to monitor your Dalmatians in order to abort early symptoms.

 

SAMPLE OF MULTI-IMAGE GRAPHICS: COMPARING DIAGNOSTIC URINARY CRYSTALS SEEN DURING ROUTINE URINALYSES

Pathologic crystals are early warnings when seen through a vet's office microscope. They generally are well in advance of life-threatening obstruction. Crystals in the urine are early stages of the stone forming process. They usually and slowly "grow up" to full-size adult stones if untreated. An experienced, knowledgeable vet can differentiate between Dalmatian-specific urate crystals (left) vs those Dalmatians forming non-breed-specific minerals such as calcium oxalate (right). Correct identification is essential in order to tailor treatment against the specific mineral each dog is precipitating out in the urine. Calcium oxalate is increasing throughout canine stone disease, closing in on infection stones as number one. It is third place in the types-of-stones reported for Dalmatians by vet stone specialists.

Carroll H. Weiss, the guest speaker, was Director of the DCA Study Group on Urinary Stones for 11 years from 1991 to 2002 for which he was honored last year as a DCA Lifetime Member. He is Emeritus Adjunct Professor of Dermatology at the U. Miami Medical School and will be "translating" highly technical medical jargon to understandable terms for owners of Dalmatians with stone disease. He also is one such owner and therefore has more than just detached scholarly knowledge of how frightening urinary obstruction and emergency surgery can be…and avoidable today.

With the elaborate multi-projector multi-screen-image presentation, the room must necessarily be darkened so it is essential to be seated, please, before the lecture begins. The talk takes approximately two hours. Any change in the tentative date, time and location will be confirmed in the finalized 2006 DCA program. Please put aside the tentative date and time for this important event!

Tentative date: Sunday Evening, April 30th Time: 8:00 PM (please be seated promptly at 8:00 PM) Tentative place: Canterbury Hall