This week I look at the 3,000 Golden Retrievers who are on the front line of the fight against cancer, as well as the scientists who are putting on the largest cancer study of its kind.

 

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn: 

[0:50] Tim introduces his sister 

[2:05] The Golden Retriever Lifetime Study

[3:45] 60% of Golden Retrievers contract cancer

[7:25] The leadership behind the study

[10:42] Additional facts about the study

[13:06] What is a P.O.L.C. study?

[15:43] What was the study looking for?

[19:05] The cancers which were looked at

[21:28] More details on the Goldens 

[36:10] Stats which were not reported, but would be nice to know

[47:23] Final thoughts

 

 

In this episode…

This episode is all about the Golden Retriever Lifetime Study. While it was covered briefly in a previous episode (Five Pioneers in Canine Health), this episode will go deeper down the rabbit hole.

The Golden Retriever Lifetime Study is tracking the health of over 3,000 Golden Retrievers to determine genetic, environmental, and other risk factors that drive higher rates of cancer in Golden Retrievers.  

It’s being conducted by the Morris Animal Foundation at Colorado State University. For those not familiar, the Morris Animal Foundation has its roots all the way back to the Great Depression, when a Veterinarian named Dr. Mark Morris noticed a high number of cases of kidney disease in dogs.

He discovered that before the Depression, people fed their dogs table scraps - the same food they humans were eating.  

When the Depression came around, ever bite of food mattered, so people kept the table scraps for themselves, and fed their dogs dry and canned dog food made with low-quality meat byproducts.  

So Dr. Morris created his own dog food designed to treat kidney disease, and the results were effective.  Long story short, Dr. Morris expanded his dog food line over the years and used 0.5% royalty to build a foundation dedicated to science and research in support of animal health.

The Foundation was founded in 1948 and remains one of the largest and most highly respected animal health organizations in the world. 

It has invested more than $103 million toward 2,500+ studies that have led to significant breakthroughs in diagnostics, treatments, preventions and cures benefitting companion animals, horses, and wildlife worldwide.

Now technically, the study falls under the Canine Lifetime Health Project, which is run by the Foundation and matches owners and their dogs with clinical research studies. The Golden Retriever Lifetime Study is the first study actually conducted by the Foundation, through this Project.  

 

 

Leadership involved with the study

Tiffany Grunert, who is the President & CEO of Morris Animal Foundation.  She learned about the Foundation when her dog, Chewy, passed away and a friend donated to the Foundation in her honor.  She joined in a marketing capacity and then climbed the ranks to CEO.

Perhaps her biggest contribution to the study has been realigning the inner workings of the Foundation to ensure all departments are supporting it.  Thank you, Tiffany!

Ryan Welch is the Chief Development Officer, aka the guy responsible for raising money for the Foundation. Ryan joined the Foundation this year in 2019. Even though the study is largely funded, it’s clear he continues to raise not only for the Foundation but for the study itself (Tim himself donated through the website and it was very easy - here’s a link: donate here).

Janet Patterson Kane is the Chief Scientific Officer at the Foundation, and given her deep expertise in pathology. Janet was the first woman to be Chair of Veterinary Pathology at the University of Glasgow’s Veterinary School.

The next two leaders have been talked about on previous episodes of the Pawcast: 

Dr Rodney Page, who is the principal investigator on the study

And Missy Simpson, the epidemiologist working on the study design, and doing all the nerdy stuff to crunch the data and make sense of it.  

Another notable mention is David Haworth, who was CEO of the Foundation from 2011-2015 and led the Foundation to reach its enrollment targets for the 3,000 Goldens. He has a Golden himself, who should be about 6 if my math is correct.

There are certainly many other folks supporting the study now and who have contributed to it over the years, and of course some people are being left out. You can read all about them at Morris Animal Foundation’s GLRS, otherwise this will go on like an Oscar speech and we have 3,000 Goldens to talk about.

 

Sources:

1. Morris Animal Foundation
2. The Golden Retriever Lifetime Study: establishing an observational cohort study with translational relevance for human health, The Royal Society
3. Population characteristics of golden retriever lifetime study enrollees, Canine Genetics and Epidemiology

 

You can also hear directly from Dr. Missy Simpson, the Epidemiologist on the study, on the Fresh Scoop Podcast, which is a show put on by the Foundation itself.  Many of these notes here come from that episode.

Resources Mentioned on this episode

Sunny’s Goldens

Connect with Tim Berthold

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Sponsor for this episode

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