NY Times: A Warning for Dogs, and Their Best Friends, in Study of Fertility

NY Times Article By Jan Hoffman

For decades, generations of dogs have been bred, raised and trained as service animals for disabled people at a center in England: Labrador retrievers, golden retrievers, curly coat retrievers, Border collies and German shepherds. Scientists at the University of Nottingham realized that they had an ideal opportunity to study dog fertility — five types of purebreds, uniform conditions, one location, systematic record-keeping. So in 1988, they started annually testing the sires’ sperm.

In a study published Tuesday in Scientific Reports, they found declining sperm quality and other effects that they believe could be related to environmental causes. Over 26 years, motility, the progressive forward movement of sperm, dropped 30 percent in all five breeds. Although it has not reached a critical point — the dogs are still successfully impregnating — further decline in motility could eventually harm their ability to reproduce.

“The dogs who share our homes are exposed to similar contaminants as we are,” said Richard G. Lea, an associate professor of reproductive biology at the School of Veterinary Medicine and Science at the University of Nottingham. “So the dog is a sentinel for human exposure,” added Dr. Lea, the study’s principal investigator.

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Posted by chesliepickett on Aug 15 2016. Filed under Featured, Health & Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.