Tragedy in April - on borzoi sudden death

I hope my next post will be far more positive, as I am sitting in a hotel room writing this at the borzoi national. Several of the Sea Shanty puppies are here and I hope I have something to brag about with them, even if it’s just bragging about how infinitely kissable they are.

On April 5th, the sire of the Sea Shanties litter passed away from sudden death.

GCH Satara’s The Desired Effect JC DJ - Photo by Danielle Snyder

And then, 2 weeks later (April 18), my beloved baby girl Selkie, passed away of sudden death too.

Rezance Satara Song Of The Sea

Selkie was her sire’s mini-me in so many ways. Both had such incredibly dazzling temperaments, loved their toys, and both were found in their respective yards in the morning. Just gone.

Both had their hearts donated to the necropsy study with lung tissue sent for DNA sequencing. The small silver lining here is that being a direct line of father and daughter will aid researchers. If there is some gene(s) that causes this, maybe these two beautiful souls can help the researchers find it.

I am now back at home (I keep drafting this post because it really, really sucks to write this). Sudden death was something Danielle and I had talked about a lot when we were picking studs to use with Cheyenne. I would say “What about this dog?” and she would tell me exactly where, and how far back sudden death occurred in that pedigree. It really is everywhere, but we can make careful decisions to try to breed away from it. But all we have to go on is the pedigrees, and the honesty of our fellow breeders. Another incredibly hard lesson I learned from this first litter was that you can do your absolute best to stack the cards in your favor, make responsible decisions for these beautiful lives you bring into the world, and at the end of the day it’s still all a roll of the dice. A leap of faith.

I think I am through the darkest part of my grief but it still hurts like hell if I think about her for more than a few seconds. Something I learned at the borzoi national was that this level of depression isn’t unique, which was comforting. It helped me feel validated. It also helped me immensely to hear about how breeders have been able to move on from this, continue breeding, and continue breeding away from it, to the best of our ability. I honestly did consider calling it quits. Everyone said that anyone who has been in the breed long enough will experience this eventually. For some, that looks like 40 years and one incident. For me, it was 8 years in, and my first little girl.

Our immediate plan is to holter test every sibling of B and Selkie ASAP, then work our way through extended relatives. So far, Arabella and Shanty’s holters have been fine. We’re going to keep everyone testing, at least yearly. I don’t know if we’re going to breed on from them— if we do, it won’t be until they are at least 6 years of age. Thankfully there is plenty of time to figure that out. If any of them have abnormalities, we can start them on antiarrhythmic medication. If there is any regret in my system, it’s that I didn’t holter Selkie earlier and perhaps have the chance to start her on Solatol to prevent this tragedy.

I have no blame in my system for Danielle, who has only ever been honest and supportive of me and our puppy people. I told her that if she breeds again, I still would happily buy puppies from her. She gave me all of the information that she had, and we did our very best to set everyone up for success.

What is Sudden Death?

Anyone looking into borzoi should be aware of sudden death. What we are witnessing here is a fatal cardiac arrhythmia. A dog can be living their normal life, looking fine one moment, and then out like a light the next. It is a quick way to go, but terribly traumatic for their people. I am currently working on a page for the Borzoi Health and Welfare Foundation that better explains sudden death, what we know, and what we don’t know. I will update this post when that goes live. I am not a cardiologist, and this is fairly new to me, but I have been listening and taking notes from people who have been studying this for decades.

There are many reasons that can cause a dog to very suddenly die. Electrical problems with the heart do not make themselves known on necropsy. A dog who dies of an arrhythmia will most likely look totally normal on the inside. This was the case with both Brexit and Selkie. And this is why necropsies are so important!

There are THREE borzoi specific cardiac studies and I hope beyond all hope that we will make progress in testing, identifying, and preventing this within my lifetime. We have a holter study with Dr. Gelzer at UPenn, an echocardiogram study with Texas A&M University, and a sudden death heart necropsy study with Dr. Kelly at Penn State.

I want to make it clear that this isn’t something someone should expect when looking into the breed, but rather something very important to ask about with their prospective breeders. It is horrible, traumatic, soul shattering to experience. And while we have yet to find a pedigree that doesn’t have sudden death in it, somewhere, the truth is that most borzoi will not succumb to this terrible disease. I hope that this doesn’t scare people away from the breed but rather inspire people to further research cardiac health in dogs. I believe strongly in transparency. If I didn’t know about sudden death when I found Selkie in my yard, I would likely be in a much darker place. So it is my hope that someone reading this can better prepare themselves.

If you are planning on getting a borzoi, a very important question to ask your breeder is “where does sudden death happen in the pedigree?”
They hopefully will be able to tell you. Or, if they don’t know, they may say “Let me ask some of the breeders of these dogs” and get back to you. Some may tell you that a dog did die unexpectedly, but a necropsy wasn’t preformed so they couldn’t definitively say that it was a fatal arrhythmia. Some write if off as a dog running into a tree or the fence. Personally, I put more trust in folks who are willing to tell me all the ugly truths so that I can make informed decisions.

And god forbid, if this happens to you, if you find your beloved borzoi unexpectedly dead, have a plan. Make sure everyone in the home knows that plan. Study up on canine CPR now— I know of one borzoi who was revived from sudden death this way, and I tried my hardest with Selkie but I couldn’t revive her. If you would like to help further research and maybe prevent this from happening one day, please visit Valentine’s Fund via the Borzoi Health And Welfare Foundation to access information on how to donate tissues. Call your vet in advance to find out if they will perform necropsies, or even just tissue collection/shipping for the study. Not all vets will do this, as I found out the hard way.