RugosaB

It looks like this threqd is at it's end, so I'm going to respond to this comment:

The people involved in this breed are amazing, and though I no longer show or breed (because of my car accident), I envsion always being somehow associated with them.
Why?
I got invovled with the breed about 17 years ago, and at the time the breed was afflicted with fanconi, a kidney disease. At the time, about 20% of the dogs got it (in other breeds, it's like less than 1%), when they were about 7. So breeding was done knowing to stay away from dogs whose linage ahowed it, but we had no test for it. It was kind of a crap shoot if puppies got it.

It's an awful disease. The kidney's job is to filter the blood, send the good stuff back to the body and the bad to the bladder. In fanconi, the kidney eventualy gets rid of everything. An anesthesiologist, who had an afflicted basenji, developed a protocol to start if a dog was diagnosed. ( the diagnosis was confirmed if there was glucose in the urine, but not in the blood and the dog was ALWAYS urinating). He eventually got it to the point that fanconi dogs were living years with the disease. For years we instructed all basenji owners to get a urine test strip, like diabetics use, to test the dog's urine for glucose, once a month. Glucose in the urine meant get a blood test because once in a great while basenjis are diabetic, but it usually meant fanconi.

His protocol was mainly giving the dog bicarbonate pills (baking soda), up to 30 a day. The dogs hated it so a lot of our time was in helping people figure out ways to get the tablets into the dogs. Because they are so smart, it was extremely difficult.
The dogs were in pain, and wasting away. The pain was in their muscles, something an anesthiologist knows about (sorry, I do not understand the details of that) It was described to me as the way our muscles feel after an extreme workout.

We had been accumulating money for years for an eventual test, and had pedigrees going back years, that showed which dogs were afflicted and which were clear.
Scientists told us to hold on to our money, they were not at a point yet that they even needed it yet.

BUT THEN, about 10 years ago, things started happening. (I may have this exact info wrong, but I heard that one group that contacted our breed was a group that was trying to work on fanconi in children. They said there were 300 known worldwide and since we had all those pedigrees with dogs who had it, showing bloodlines, our work could also help them - this is in parenthesis because I 'kind of' remember this story but would hate to say it is fact because it is fuzzy in my head) We knew it was hereditary, but that's all we knew.

Anyways, the scientists were ready for our money, to work on this, and they came up with a blood test that would determine if a particular dog was going to get fanconi and also told us if 2 dogs could be bred together to have puppies that did not carry the gene. I won't go into the gene, DNA, recessive info, but when we were sure it was a correct test, it made it pretty easy to produce puppies that would NEVER get fanconi!

Like I told the gal who got this, she made me smile, well, making these, while helping basenjis, makes me smile too!

I did have one dog that had it, before the test, and to think what she went through in a small way helped children, and I played a very very small part in that, is the reason I will always feel connected to this breed and those involved.

I will not make things for money but I'm thinking about making things for anyone who will donate a certain amount to our health endowment fund, or to the rescue program, with me paying the shipping, and this will be one of the items. Haven't talked yet to the lawyer, a gal very much involved in the whole thing, to see if there are any legal things I should know about.

I realize it's doubtful this will be read, but I wanted to read the story again!