Ivermectin is a wonderful drug which is used in many products to eliminate parasites from dogs, horses and other animals.
Problem is, many English Shepherds are highly allergic to it.. In fact they are so allergic that it can cause death.
I know of at least 2 dogs from Ringo’s family that died after a treatment of ivermection. One was his sire, Augtu, who died several days after a treatment for heartworms. One of his sisters also died from a dose of ivermectin.
Karen Cline, another English Shepherd breeder, sent me a link to a site with more information about this problem in English Shepherds.
Please visit this site. http://www.busteralert.org
The most interesting thing to me was that dogs with this genetic problem also may be sensitive to other drugs.. which may kill them. Information about this can also be found at the above website.
Karen had a life experience with drug interactions which eventually caused the death of an English Shepherd. I hope she will share her experience with us.
Check out the website of the University of Washington for information about this condition and available testing to determine if your dog has the MDR1 mutation…
http://www.vetmed.wsu.edu/depts-VCPL/
You can never know too much!
The experience Lynda mentioned was the death of my sister’s dog, Wildfire. Wildfire died in May 2006 a week after a diagnosis of Parvo. Wildfire was eleven months old at the time. She is a neice of Lynda’s Ringo, having been born to Libby (littermate to Ringo) by Rott’s Boo. We are not yet sure if Wildfire’s death might be related to the MDR1 gene defect (which causes the sensitivity to Ivermectin and other drugs), but I am very suspicious at this point. I’ve asked my sister to write something about what happened to her. Wildfire has Butcher’s Augie on top and bottom of her pedigree… Augie’s grand-daugher Susie Q (Wildfire’s grand-dam) is mutant/normal – as are many other dogs of that lineage. Given that result along with Augtu’s death two days after being treated with Ivermectin leads us to the possibility that Wildfire had the MDR1 gene defect… and since she had Augie on top and bottom, there is a chance that she may have been mutant/mutant. There is, however, only one dog in the breed known to me at this time that is mutant/mutant. Wildfire’s pedigree is here: http://www.concharty.com/page7.htmlWhat I *can* say for sure is that Wildfire’s diagnosis of parvo and her later symptoms did not match. The early symptoms were like parvo – but as things progressed, her symptoms went way far astray of the usual parvo symptoms. A consultation with a canine infectious disease specialist at Oklahoma State University confirmed that the symptoms and the diagnosis do not make sense by themselves.When I first read the account of Buster’s death at http://www.busteralert.org, I recognized that it sounded very similar to what was described to me as Wildfire declined during the last week of her life.Renee has now found the list of drugs given to Wildfire and she’s going to review it with the list of drugs known to cause reactions.I’ve sent off the DNA from my English Shepherds to be tested for the MDR1 gene defect, but have not yet received the results. The University of California Davis is currently doing a study where they will test English Shepherds free of charge. I have Wildfire’s sister and my son has her brother, so we have two full siblings being tested in additon to Libby and Sir (my unrelated stud). I am going to encourage the owner of Wildfire’s sire to have him checked as well.More information on the testing being done by UC Davis is here: http://www.vgl.ucdavis.edu/research/canine/projects/mdr1/Jan Hilborn, another ES breeder, has put up a web page for dogs that have been tested along with their results. She only posts dogs if given permission by the owner… so there may be many more dogs that have been tested. Jan’s MDR1 web site is http://www.caledoniamission.org/pedigrees/mdr1.htmlMore to follow as we get more information….
By the way, here is Wildfire’s page: http://www.concharty.com/Wildfire.html She was not only beautiful, she was as perfect a dog as I’ve ever known. She is missed terribly by Renee, Andy and the kids as well as the rest of the family.