Our son wanted a dog and we decided that we wanted a German Shepherd. We had both had German Shepherds in the past and knew that they were good with kids and since he wanted to do 4-H that this would also be good for the dog and him. We did however find that it was not an easy task to find a good German Shepherd. When we started looking locally many of the places that we looked would not let us see either of the parents or where they were kept. We wanted to have an idea about temperament and also how well they were taken care of. We also had trouble finding anyone who offered any information on parents hips. (We had no idea at that time that we should be looking for elbows or other health problems.) We finally went to the internet and started looking and found Mattie. We drove from Indiana to almost West Virginia. We drove with our very impatient son and stayed the night before we picked her up in a hotel not far from the breeder we got her from. As you can see from their "first kiss picture" it was love at first sight!
We thought we had done everything right and it looked like Mattie had a great pedigree from what we knew. We were very careful to feed her only the foods that we were told. We made sure that she had all of her veterinarian checks and were very careful about not allowing her to jump during her first year since we wanted to give her every opportunity to live a very long healthy life with us! Our first hint that there could be a problem came at about one year old. She had a period of lameness in one of her legs. We saw the vet and he said this can happen in some German shepherds and he warned that it might happen again in another leg just randomly but would pass. He said usually German Shepherds outgrow this by age two. This did seem to pass by age two so we thought everything was fine.
She did however develop hip dysplasia and this cut her 4-H career short. She continued to perform at top level for our son with the modifications that the program allowed for veterans to ease the joint pain she was allowed to have mats for sits and downs as well as eliminating the down on recall since it was so hard to get up and down at the end. We controlled her weight more at the end and that definitely helped. It broke our hearts to cut out her extra treats but we knew it was best for her. When she started dragging her hind legs more and then one morning couldn't get up off the floor at all and we had to carry her to the vet is when we found out that she also had degenerative myelopathy (DM.) This is similar to ALS in humans. This was heartbreaking to watch a dog that we loved so much and that was so alive mentally slowly lose the use of her rear legs. A dog that had once competed in agility was now having to be either carried in a sling or use a dog wheel chair to potty.
We lost Mattie the day after Thanksgiving. I still have trouble talking about her without tearing up. We all know that we are going to out live our pets but they should be able to live the longest, healthiest lives possible. We know now that dogs can be checked before breeding for healthy hips and elbows to reduce the risk of having dogs with hip dysplasia and they can be screened for DM with a simple test to see if they are a carrier to determine how to responsibly breed. We also know now that there are very different hip and elbow ratings and that you should not just look at the parents but as many generations as you can. Just because parents have ratings doesn't mean that they are good enough ratings to breed healthy German Shepherds. We learned a very heart breaking lesson and have done extensive research on health, diet, temperament, as well as cosmetics of the dog. That is why we are so passionate about what we do! The health of the dog is priority!
