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closeControl for urban and rural dogs?
Posted by rspringwater on 16 Sep 2019 at 22:01 GMT
Was your study controlled for urban and rural dogs? My observation is that UC Davis is located where its clinic would be seeing a local population of rural dogs combined with urban dogs that would have been referred to UC Davis for specialist treatment. If the practice of leaving dogs intact skews toward rural dogs, you could be looking at a population of healthy rural dogs and a much sicker population of urban referral dogs. The more sedentary urban lifestyle, and possibly exposure to environmental contamination, could be contributing to the disease profile you are attributing to spay-neuter procedures. It seems to me that it would be easy to check the database used for any geographic biases in the population.
RE: Control for urban and rural dogs?
blhart replied to rspringwater on 19 Sep 2019 at 23:41 GMT
Our clients are either self referred or referred by veterinarian. I doubt one could explain such huge differences on geography. We have publications on two other breeds (and many more pending) and the same joint disorders show up.