Canine Health Foundation Celebrates 30 years

Stephanie Montgomery, CEO of the AKC Canine Health Foundation, joins host Laura Reeves to catch up on what the powerful non-profit has done and continues to do for all dogs.

Montgomery, an Airedale fancier, joined CHF as the CEO in 2023, but “I was able to kind of blend my passion for science and dogs and started volunteering for the Canine Health Foundation as a scientific reviewer. And then I always say I'm a failed volunteer because now I'm working here.

“We are celebrating our 30th year anniversary this year, founded in 1995. And what I was so impressed by was that folks had this vision. So what we do is we fundraise, right? And we distribute that money. To fund the best research that will advance the health of all dogs. So we do that through awarding grants to researchers that tend to be at veterinary schools. And when we evaluate those grants, we wanna find the most cutting-edge research that's going to have the biggest impact on dogs, and that's what we've done for 30 years.

Canine Health Foundation helped fund the work conducted at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center that identified the canine genome. This is the basis for all ensuing DNA testing since 2004.

“Prior to 1995 when CHF started, there was no dog genome,” Montgomery said. “The human genome had only been completed two years prior and it was pivotal. It changed the way that we could look at genetic testing and evolution of dogs and develop tools in veterinary medicine.

CHF’s contribution to ground breaking science continues to this day with research at hundreds of Universities, including studies into mitral valve disease that impacts millions of dogs.

“I'm so happy to see the work being done because mitral valve disease is so common in all of the dogs,” Montgomery noted. “I'm a pathologist and the number of older dogs that don't have some mitral valve disease is really next to none. They all have it and we understand so little about it, even though it's so common. And so I'm so excited that we have new studies going that help us understand the physiology of how this disease develops. It will help us identify targets for future therapies. We also have studies on how to best diagnose and monitor progression so maybe we can make a difference and impact all these dogs that have mitral valve disease.”