Critique-Reviews of Chapters Three and Four
Chapter Three, “Forms and Mechanisms of Deafness”; pages 40 – 52: Omitted by the author in the sweeping survey of causes of deafness was research based quantitative indication of comparative prevalence of the kinds of deafness, other than old-age, hereditary and human caused harm. Subjective ranking was implied later that could be used in focusing research and money where the greatest numbers of dogs and their people would likely benefit. Subjective adjectives, gleaned from the text, seemed to imply that the primary quantitative form of dog-deafness was old-age deafness (presbycusis- see Chapter five for details), on the logically plausible belief that any dog that survived long enough (including the fully hearing dogs) will eventually experience a loss of hearing acuity and probably comprehension as it approaches death. Possibly old-age deafness seemed not worth treating in most dogs dying of old age.
Second in prevalence-numbers if the author’s text was understood correctly, probably were the dogs experiencing “hereditary deafness”, usually genetic, detectable by about age five weeks –identified in the text in the AKC registered breeds, e.g. the Dalmatians with 30 percent.
By 2011 the reports of geneticists, see page 41, indicated that all forms of mammals carry genetic deafness genes, which theoretically must become prominent in the sub-populations that experience severe inbreeding as is done, for example for the AKC breeds of Table 4.1. Allegedly, the inbreeding risks were escalated by “boutique-breeding” for flashy dog-coats (often with lots of white) such as the double dapple Dachshunds, all-white Great-Danes, double merle collies, flashy Chihuahuas and so forth. According to implications of the scientific data, almost all dogs who displayed hereditary deafness did so because of human decisions leading to their birth or perhaps extending back for as much as hundreds of years, e.g. Dalmatians.
Third, in prevalence of deaf dogs in the US population, according to the authors’ comments, seemingly were those who were made deaf by human physical action, including inflicting prolonged excessively loud noise such as kennel noise or gunshot sounds on the dogs.
The other causes as described by the author, seemed to be mainly low probability events limited to few dogs and rare circumstances that most ordinary people will not experience.
Cures by medication and surgery of deafness in dogs in 2011 were apparently limited to deafness caused by obstructions (so called conductivity barriers preventing mechanical vibrations-sound from reaching the inner-ear cochlear elements); see page 52. Inherited deafness was said to be almost never of the obstruction sorts; Cavalier King Charles spaniels being an exception.
The perhaps nearly 20 other forms of dog deafness were likely to be permanent- incurable with affordable (as much as $60,000 per case) technology, in 2011. Categorization of the possible forms and causes of dog deafness was generally well done. Several were further detailed in Chapters Four (Hereditary) and Five (Long term). Unfortunately the same can’t be said about the book’s harsh[i] views about behavior of dogs deaf because of poor breeding decisions, seemingly mostly by humans for the AKC registered breeds or inflicted by humans.
With the understanding that although tens of millions of dollars were possibly spent since 1980 studying the many ways dogs can become deaf, the results seemingly mostly reduced the risks that medical treatment of dogs will cause some to become temporarily or permanently deaf.
Deaf dog-behavior: According to the text, apparently according to the author’s experience and data ONLY dogs who become deaf from inherited deafness OR damage inflicted by humans were dangerous to humans, other animals and themselves: page 40, first paragraph and 52, last paragraph. And on page 45, first full paragraph, the text appeared to advocate that the dog parents as well as all uni-ear and bi-ear deaf puppies ought to be removed from the potential breeding population, as is most conclusively done if euthanized (killed) or certainly neutered to eliminate any more potentially dangerous deaf puppies. From the text, it seemed that dog deafness from any of the other numerous origins never caused dogs to be dangerous to others and themselves.
PERCEPTION- including Modalities redundant-complementary to human-like hearing, page 41, “... When both ears of an animal lose all auditory function it will obviously not respond to auditory stimuli unless it instead detects the stimulus or its source through its other sensory modalities such as vibration, vision, or touch. ...” That was believed to be the first known place where the author listed specific “other sensory modalities.” The second mention was at the top of page 84. It struck the reviewers as remarkable that animals lose all auditory response [i.e. response to mechanical vibrations – sound] unless they detect through other modalities vibration, i.e. sound. Logically, it seemed that perhaps inadvertently the author had said that an animal can respond to sound received in the usual manner by its inner ears-cochlea OR-AND via the “other sensory modalities” as strongly, perhaps conclusively, indicated by testimony of many reliable deaf dogs observer-owners in recent years and described by Dr S Coren, 2004. Also, the text in two places[ii] observed that even puppies before their ears opened responded to strong (loud) mechanical vibrations (sound). Sound in general is a mechanical vibration; thus detecting mechanical vibrations, including the touch of pressure waves on hairs, skin or whiskers and on body flexures such as ankles are technically complementary modalities of detecting mechanical vibrations (sound); ref S Coren 2004.
In contrast, vision[iii] relies on detecting electromagnetic vibrations (light) rather than mechanical vibrations (sound) and by using a completely different mechanism (electromagnetic instead of mechanical) achieves redundant[iv] protection against common-mode failure in the vital function of panoramic geolocation (vision). Notably, conventional bi-ear hearing was reported by owners of blind dogs as a clearly “default” modality with smell (olfactory) of many blind dogs for three-dimensional geolocation in their environments after the onset of blindness of various sorts. Thus in terms of dog physiological systems redundancy-hierarchy, it is likely that the other complementary modes of detecting mechanical vibration (sound) identified by Dr S Coren are among those generally referred to in the reviewed text. Page 50, first paragraph and at other places in the book, the text raised the possibility based on recent scientific data that over time many dogs can obtain or recover some useful hearing as reported by many owners – by adaptation of other modalities and-or conceivably with plastic partial reorganization of the brain and associated nerves.
Although page 41 referred to (Strain, 2004) in suggesting that the ratio of uni-ear to bi-ear deaf puppies in a litter ranged from about 2:1 to 4:1, from Table 4.1 (Strain, 2011):
Ratio uni/bi deafness by breed: Table 4.1, page 57
Dalmatians ~ 3
Border Collies ~5
Aussie cattle dog ~5
Aussie stump-tail ~2
JR Terrier ~7
Data at lsu.edu/deafness/incidenc.htm downloaded 2010 indicated ratios ranging roughly from about 3:1 to 8:1 for statistically significant sample sizes. There was no obvious explanation for the later decreases.
Chapter Four, Hereditary Deafness: Page 53, although the text didn’t offer statistics of the number of deaf dogs per the kinds of deafness listed in Chapters 3 and 5, the first sentence of Chapter 4 asserted that inherited deafness taking place promptly following birth was the most common cause of deafness and then stated - that no later onset of hereditary deafness was known to that time. As noted by a skeptical reviewer, all dogs that survive long enough to die of old age probably become partly or entirely deaf (presbycusis) by the time they die?; i.e. both hearing and geriatric deafness were inherited.
Data via the Internet supported a belief that inherited deafness was the most common cause of deafness (other than old-age) among Dalmatians despite an official Breed Club policy of euthanizing-killing all deaf puppies. Dalmatians, the text mentioned were the main focus of dog-deafness research for decades before other breeds were closely studied.
Putting Box 4.1 and Table 4.1 in the Chapter “Hereditary Deafness was misleading because the cuases of the deafness of each breed population were not rported and may have included physical damage by humans, medical injury, etc: – an editorial deficiency at least. In fact the deficiency was indicated on Page 53, 2nd paragraph that referred to a list of 92 dog breeds said to exhibit ‘congenital’ – i.e. at birth deafness - Box 4.1 of page 54, with the cautionary text note that , “...the deafness was not shown to be hereditary in most of the breeds.” In contrast to that warning, the header text in the box asserted that although ‘... Dogs of all breeds can become deaf from a variety of causes but breeds with white pigmentation are most affected...” which ordinary readers since pigment related deafness were typically heritable, were likely to understand that practically the Box was a list of the breeds with heritable deafness. That header text’s apparent misdirection “twist” was typical of seen by reviewers as typical of marketing.
Further, in a possible marketing misdirection, simply listing breed names without an indication that deafness prevalence varied enormously among them, tends to lead even professionals to recall the list as the known hereditary deafness breeds. The omission of the percentage of prevalence of deafness for each breed carried the impression that ALL –every breed were equally likely to birth puppies (congenital deafness) who would grow up to be dangerous to others and themselves. Technical integrity and clarity were expected (rather than what seemed to be marketing) in expensive books on scientific topics when the principal author-professor listed was internationally prestigious in the field.
Particularly Table 4.1 with its alleged rate-prevalence of deafness in selected breeds ought be viewed with great caution. The reported percentages were susceptible to easy technical manipulation upward or downward during biased selection of dogs of each breed for BAER testing. Making the alleged rate-prevalences potentially useless were the omission of both descriptions of the sources and selection procedures for choosing each breed, and descriptions of the statistical procedure used for merging reports of disparate and potentially incompatible BAER test sites. These doubts applied to ALL breeds, including the Dalmatians. Surprisingly in view of the author's apparent reliance on the DCA sponsor's Red Book for information about behavior of deaf and-or hearing abused untrained unsocialized Dalmatian dogs, he apparently was unaware of or chose to omit description to the sources of the initial BAER tested Dalmatians, described on pages 366-367 in "The Official Book of the Dalmatian", by the DCA, (undated publication but about 1996.); see Amazon.com. Contrary to the impression presented in many reports, the DCA reported officially that the BAER testing took place at many locations, by various people, and presumably were somehow merged into the Figure 4.1 alleged total of over 5,000 Dalmatians, which an innocent reader might believe were all tested under the direction of the author in a standard BAER test facility and dog kennels, etc at LSU? In retrospect, in view of these concerns, it no longer seemed surprsing to the reviewers that as remarked in the book it seemed people of some breeds chose NOT to place their information about deafness of their breeds in the hands of other people or organizations.
Page 54, 4th and 5th lines from the bottom of the page, the text mentioned that by 1974 it was already reported that loud noises evoked behavioral responses before the ear channels opened, i.e. despite total conduction deafness, thus one or more of the modalities compensating for deafness (of the human preferred modality) were perhaps functioning promptly following birth. There was an implication that some of the compensatory modalities were biologically more primitive (simple) than human-like hearing, and a researcher of evolution might speculate that simple modes preceded the evolution of the delicate human-like sensitive complex inner ear and ear-channels systems.
Aggregate (overall) US dog-deafness: According to the book’s information, page 55, about 2.6 dogs per 10 thousand domestic dogs, US-wide, were reported from many veterinary hospitals as experiencing deafness [sic presumably mostly or all bi-ear deaf] from any-all causes (with the likely exception of most old-age deafness of formerly hearing dogs.) With about 77 million domestic dogs in the US, according to surveys, the result implied that about 14, 000 deaf dogs were being cared for in the US. Over 3,000 people at any given moment in recent years were usually members of the Yahoo group aiding deaf dogs’ owners – perhaps approaching nearly 20 percent of the human families owning deaf dogs. Data reported on the Internet regarding frequency of deafness among AKC registered breeds implied that the prevalence of deafness among mutts (non-AKC breeds) was extremely low, possibly far less than 1 per ten thousand.
A reviewer observed that the new book’s 2011 estimate of 2.6 per ten thousand was lower than the midpoint of an earlier published range of deafness estimates; i.e. with the passage of time and possibly more study the numbers of deaf (of all causes) dogs seemingly decreased. The book seemed of the view still that the estimates were too low although these reviewers were of the opinion that the latest estimate might be too high because of the omission of the generic mutts from the surveyed dogs.
http://www.lsu.edu/deafness/genetics.htm; downloaded 2010; (… reported to be 2.56 to 6.5 cases per 10,000 dogs seen at veterinary school teaching hospitals,…) Actual-real values were almost certainly less, because of absence from the totals of chronically healthy mutts and registered dogs that would not have been brought to veterinary hospitals, which probably created what statisticians call a "selection bias," - namely the known omission of part of the baseline group of "all" dogs of the US.
As of 2012, we were unable to obtain credible statistics to discern, within the overall estimated about 14,000 US bi-ear deaf dogs, how many were deaf from inherited deafness, human physically caused dog deafness, medical misadventures, and so forth - even for the Dalmatians. If for a rough estimate, we assume 2 uni-deaf per bi-ear deaf dogs, the total might be in excess of 42,000 deaf dogs, or with 4 uni-s per bi-ear deaf then a total over 70,000.
Page 57, Table 4.1, the heading of the right-most column, “Totally Deaf” was incorrect since the data there were the sums of one-ear deaf and bi (two) ear deaf, i.e. the “total number.” That error might seem trivial, but comparison of the statistics in the table also revealed two rather extra-ordinary examples of long standing confusion created by featuress of Dr Strain’s several reports of , at each date over s3everal years of the “latest” breed deafness statistics; this" time data" about English Setters and the Jack Russell Terriers attracted scrutiny of reviewers. Regrettably Dr Strain, so far as we could learn, never publicly described the scientific and experimental basis of the breed statistics and thus left its understanding to informed statistics and mathematics speculation based on the work of other scientists.
A peculiarly amazing aspect of the data in the earlier reports was that when chronologically time-wise sequential tables of data were compared, it was apparent that as more and more dogs of each breed were tested, each breed’s reported deafness showed significant, indeed dramatic percentage DECREASES – i.e. BAER testing appeared to decrease or cure deafness.
For example, by increasing the number of tested English Setters from 700 (previous LSU Web report) to 3660 (the book) - the reported percentages of unideaf decreased by 3.5 and bi-ear deaf decreased by 0.7 (e.g. changed as though from 1.7% to 0.7%). Thus with that rate of improvement in deafness by testing dogs, if a total of 5,000 E-Setters were tested for direct comparison to the Dalmatians data, the corresponding Setter population deafness statistics would further decrease to 1.7 % unideaf and 0.44% bi-ear deaf. Physics of the BAER equipment as described in the book offered no basis for believing that BAER testing can directly improve the percentage of deafness in each bree UNLESS each detected deaf dog were killed as part of the regime. A publicly available version of the Dalmatian "Red Book", 1994 revealed as probable that the Board of Governors was aware of a likelihood that pathologicly "fear-aggressive" Dalmatians might be among those deaf dogs sent to be BAER tested.
A naïve reader plausibly might speculate that the deafness rate of the surviving portion of the Breeds was improved by put to sleep-PTS (killing) those BAER (gold-standard) diagnosed deaf as seemed to be advocated by the Dalmatian Club of America’s publicly Web-posted policy and who referenced and funded some of his research.
The corresponding data for the Jack Russell Terriers implied that by BAER testing an eventual total of 5,000 dogs (about 4,000 increase from the nearly 1,000 mentioned in the Table), the JR Terriers could be rendered 100 percent bi-ear hearing. The reviewers concluded that the format and presentation of deafness data by Dr Strain, not only in the book, but previously were potentially extremely misleading and susceptible to misunderstanding and misuse by persons for purposes such as pursuit of profits at the expense of the lives of thousands of deaf dogs per year and eventually billions of dollars from owners unnecessarily frightened, i.e. the business case.
Our reviewers after studying the author's released data of a similar sort concluded that the probable situation was that the tests administered by Dr Strain occurred were performed essentially as described and the data reported to the public with reasonable accuracy represented real events. It was deemed likely that an unusual but potentially mathematically and statistically acceptable sort of biased sampling procedure was used and that omission of public disclosure of the sampling procedures unnecessarily damaged the appearance of integrity and competence that the data and he deserve.
Page 64 has interesting information regarding what seemed to be a unique sort of heritable deafness in Dobermans, as discussed in another chapter of the book. [Admittedly the book was expensive for so few pages, but repeating information in several chapters was often more confusing than useful.]
Page 65, “Pointers”: the text provided valuable background demonstrating that intense inbreeding for adverse behaviors such as anxiety can yield dogs with undesirable behavior who are also deaf (a correlation)- - and insight that extraordinary human intervention can produce examples per the text’s ill-advised numerous attribution of dangerous behavior to ALL deaf dogs; (‘all’ because the text rarely caveated that the warnings were only valid for hereditary and human abuse caused dog-deafness). Private interviews with owners of Dalmatians about 2011 revealed profound dismay over the difficulties caused roughly in the 1980s through 1990s for the breed by the puppy-mill excessive inbreeding that marketed and dispersed Crazy Dals (of whom probably roughly 30 to 50 percent were deaf). No proof was found that the fad-peak of Dalmatians approaching 15th to 6th[?] popularity in the US was caused by the Disney 101 Dalmatian movies. Further, research on English Cockers inbreeding triggered aggression, as reported by Dr Serpell supported the near certainty that extreme inbreeding of dogs (for any reason, such as flashy coats) can yield dogs whose breeders or owners condemn and dispose of as aggressive: [Podberscek, A.L. & Serpell, J.A. Environmental influences on the expression of aggressive behaviour in English Cocker Spaniels. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 52: 215-227, 1997. downloaded 17Jan2012; research.vet.upenn.edu/Publications/tabid/1918/Default.aspx]
Other scientific text of the chapter may prove useful to professional scientific genetics and dog deafness researchers. The topic is complex and profoundly nonlinear. The “bottom line” seems to be the conclusion that excessive inbreeding, especially for valuable marketable dog-coat “flashy” colors such as double dapple, double merle, and harlequin, with lots of white will yield and indeed escalate the numbers of deaf and also blind dogs in the future. The process was technically a positive feedback circuit-system of causes and effects, which in other industries were often dangerous and therefore were by design avoided or minimized- rarely ignorantly dangerously exploited.
[i] Downloaded 08 January, 2012: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cato_the_Elder: “In his last years he was known for strenuously urging his countrymen to the Third Punic War and the destruction of Carthage.... he kept repeating the cry: "Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam." (Moreover, I advise that Carthage must be destroyed.[30]) (The expression was also at times phrased compactly "Carthago delenda est" or "delenda Carthago").”
[ii] Page 54; 3d line: re response to loud noises (sound pressure wave induced acceleration) before ears open. See also page 115, lines 6,7 and page 116. [Also page 47, 48 re evolution of acceleration sense ability (or the reverse) from hearing biology, and page 64 re Doberman “diseases”.]
[iii] In Syndromic versus non-syndromic deafness: A time-correlation was mentioned of progressive retinal atrophy (PRA) in dogs, like RP of humans, with maybe a systemic gene causing PRA in dogs and RP in humans (Tuntivanich et al., 2009). “Old-age” deafness is broadly correlated in many breeds with various forms of canine PRA, although a shared causation is not known. Dystrophic aspects of PRA are thought by some to resemble the dystrophic events associated with some events of pigment related heritable deafness.
[iv] Dog multiple abilities to sense electromagnetic vibrations were by 2011 reported to include the following: 1) Rods and cones detection for vision, 2) Post-tapetum lucidum nerve layer that detects light in the 480 nm band, for circadian rhythm control and possibly other use, 3) per S Coren, 2004, puppies were reported (and we observed) using infrared vibration detection with their muzzles to find their mother’s nipples, and 4) adult dogs (blind as well as ordinary) and puppies sensing infrared from the sun, to locate warm areas.
[Please go to the TOP of the page, under "Book Reviews" to reach the next Weeblycritique-review of the book's other Chapters or use the Links: Chapters 1 and2 ; Chapters 5,6 and 7 ; Chapter 8 and Notes ; Major Behavior Flaws ; Consequences ]
Chapter Three, “Forms and Mechanisms of Deafness”; pages 40 – 52: Omitted by the author in the sweeping survey of causes of deafness was research based quantitative indication of comparative prevalence of the kinds of deafness, other than old-age, hereditary and human caused harm. Subjective ranking was implied later that could be used in focusing research and money where the greatest numbers of dogs and their people would likely benefit. Subjective adjectives, gleaned from the text, seemed to imply that the primary quantitative form of dog-deafness was old-age deafness (presbycusis- see Chapter five for details), on the logically plausible belief that any dog that survived long enough (including the fully hearing dogs) will eventually experience a loss of hearing acuity and probably comprehension as it approaches death. Possibly old-age deafness seemed not worth treating in most dogs dying of old age.
Second in prevalence-numbers if the author’s text was understood correctly, probably were the dogs experiencing “hereditary deafness”, usually genetic, detectable by about age five weeks –identified in the text in the AKC registered breeds, e.g. the Dalmatians with 30 percent.
By 2011 the reports of geneticists, see page 41, indicated that all forms of mammals carry genetic deafness genes, which theoretically must become prominent in the sub-populations that experience severe inbreeding as is done, for example for the AKC breeds of Table 4.1. Allegedly, the inbreeding risks were escalated by “boutique-breeding” for flashy dog-coats (often with lots of white) such as the double dapple Dachshunds, all-white Great-Danes, double merle collies, flashy Chihuahuas and so forth. According to implications of the scientific data, almost all dogs who displayed hereditary deafness did so because of human decisions leading to their birth or perhaps extending back for as much as hundreds of years, e.g. Dalmatians.
Third, in prevalence of deaf dogs in the US population, according to the authors’ comments, seemingly were those who were made deaf by human physical action, including inflicting prolonged excessively loud noise such as kennel noise or gunshot sounds on the dogs.
The other causes as described by the author, seemed to be mainly low probability events limited to few dogs and rare circumstances that most ordinary people will not experience.
Cures by medication and surgery of deafness in dogs in 2011 were apparently limited to deafness caused by obstructions (so called conductivity barriers preventing mechanical vibrations-sound from reaching the inner-ear cochlear elements); see page 52. Inherited deafness was said to be almost never of the obstruction sorts; Cavalier King Charles spaniels being an exception.
The perhaps nearly 20 other forms of dog deafness were likely to be permanent- incurable with affordable (as much as $60,000 per case) technology, in 2011. Categorization of the possible forms and causes of dog deafness was generally well done. Several were further detailed in Chapters Four (Hereditary) and Five (Long term). Unfortunately the same can’t be said about the book’s harsh[i] views about behavior of dogs deaf because of poor breeding decisions, seemingly mostly by humans for the AKC registered breeds or inflicted by humans.
With the understanding that although tens of millions of dollars were possibly spent since 1980 studying the many ways dogs can become deaf, the results seemingly mostly reduced the risks that medical treatment of dogs will cause some to become temporarily or permanently deaf.
Deaf dog-behavior: According to the text, apparently according to the author’s experience and data ONLY dogs who become deaf from inherited deafness OR damage inflicted by humans were dangerous to humans, other animals and themselves: page 40, first paragraph and 52, last paragraph. And on page 45, first full paragraph, the text appeared to advocate that the dog parents as well as all uni-ear and bi-ear deaf puppies ought to be removed from the potential breeding population, as is most conclusively done if euthanized (killed) or certainly neutered to eliminate any more potentially dangerous deaf puppies. From the text, it seemed that dog deafness from any of the other numerous origins never caused dogs to be dangerous to others and themselves.
PERCEPTION- including Modalities redundant-complementary to human-like hearing, page 41, “... When both ears of an animal lose all auditory function it will obviously not respond to auditory stimuli unless it instead detects the stimulus or its source through its other sensory modalities such as vibration, vision, or touch. ...” That was believed to be the first known place where the author listed specific “other sensory modalities.” The second mention was at the top of page 84. It struck the reviewers as remarkable that animals lose all auditory response [i.e. response to mechanical vibrations – sound] unless they detect through other modalities vibration, i.e. sound. Logically, it seemed that perhaps inadvertently the author had said that an animal can respond to sound received in the usual manner by its inner ears-cochlea OR-AND via the “other sensory modalities” as strongly, perhaps conclusively, indicated by testimony of many reliable deaf dogs observer-owners in recent years and described by Dr S Coren, 2004. Also, the text in two places[ii] observed that even puppies before their ears opened responded to strong (loud) mechanical vibrations (sound). Sound in general is a mechanical vibration; thus detecting mechanical vibrations, including the touch of pressure waves on hairs, skin or whiskers and on body flexures such as ankles are technically complementary modalities of detecting mechanical vibrations (sound); ref S Coren 2004.
In contrast, vision[iii] relies on detecting electromagnetic vibrations (light) rather than mechanical vibrations (sound) and by using a completely different mechanism (electromagnetic instead of mechanical) achieves redundant[iv] protection against common-mode failure in the vital function of panoramic geolocation (vision). Notably, conventional bi-ear hearing was reported by owners of blind dogs as a clearly “default” modality with smell (olfactory) of many blind dogs for three-dimensional geolocation in their environments after the onset of blindness of various sorts. Thus in terms of dog physiological systems redundancy-hierarchy, it is likely that the other complementary modes of detecting mechanical vibration (sound) identified by Dr S Coren are among those generally referred to in the reviewed text. Page 50, first paragraph and at other places in the book, the text raised the possibility based on recent scientific data that over time many dogs can obtain or recover some useful hearing as reported by many owners – by adaptation of other modalities and-or conceivably with plastic partial reorganization of the brain and associated nerves.
Although page 41 referred to (Strain, 2004) in suggesting that the ratio of uni-ear to bi-ear deaf puppies in a litter ranged from about 2:1 to 4:1, from Table 4.1 (Strain, 2011):
Ratio uni/bi deafness by breed: Table 4.1, page 57
Dalmatians ~ 3
Border Collies ~5
Aussie cattle dog ~5
Aussie stump-tail ~2
JR Terrier ~7
Data at lsu.edu/deafness/incidenc.htm downloaded 2010 indicated ratios ranging roughly from about 3:1 to 8:1 for statistically significant sample sizes. There was no obvious explanation for the later decreases.
Chapter Four, Hereditary Deafness: Page 53, although the text didn’t offer statistics of the number of deaf dogs per the kinds of deafness listed in Chapters 3 and 5, the first sentence of Chapter 4 asserted that inherited deafness taking place promptly following birth was the most common cause of deafness and then stated - that no later onset of hereditary deafness was known to that time. As noted by a skeptical reviewer, all dogs that survive long enough to die of old age probably become partly or entirely deaf (presbycusis) by the time they die?; i.e. both hearing and geriatric deafness were inherited.
Data via the Internet supported a belief that inherited deafness was the most common cause of deafness (other than old-age) among Dalmatians despite an official Breed Club policy of euthanizing-killing all deaf puppies. Dalmatians, the text mentioned were the main focus of dog-deafness research for decades before other breeds were closely studied.
Putting Box 4.1 and Table 4.1 in the Chapter “Hereditary Deafness was misleading because the cuases of the deafness of each breed population were not rported and may have included physical damage by humans, medical injury, etc: – an editorial deficiency at least. In fact the deficiency was indicated on Page 53, 2nd paragraph that referred to a list of 92 dog breeds said to exhibit ‘congenital’ – i.e. at birth deafness - Box 4.1 of page 54, with the cautionary text note that , “...the deafness was not shown to be hereditary in most of the breeds.” In contrast to that warning, the header text in the box asserted that although ‘... Dogs of all breeds can become deaf from a variety of causes but breeds with white pigmentation are most affected...” which ordinary readers since pigment related deafness were typically heritable, were likely to understand that practically the Box was a list of the breeds with heritable deafness. That header text’s apparent misdirection “twist” was typical of seen by reviewers as typical of marketing.
Further, in a possible marketing misdirection, simply listing breed names without an indication that deafness prevalence varied enormously among them, tends to lead even professionals to recall the list as the known hereditary deafness breeds. The omission of the percentage of prevalence of deafness for each breed carried the impression that ALL –every breed were equally likely to birth puppies (congenital deafness) who would grow up to be dangerous to others and themselves. Technical integrity and clarity were expected (rather than what seemed to be marketing) in expensive books on scientific topics when the principal author-professor listed was internationally prestigious in the field.
Particularly Table 4.1 with its alleged rate-prevalence of deafness in selected breeds ought be viewed with great caution. The reported percentages were susceptible to easy technical manipulation upward or downward during biased selection of dogs of each breed for BAER testing. Making the alleged rate-prevalences potentially useless were the omission of both descriptions of the sources and selection procedures for choosing each breed, and descriptions of the statistical procedure used for merging reports of disparate and potentially incompatible BAER test sites. These doubts applied to ALL breeds, including the Dalmatians. Surprisingly in view of the author's apparent reliance on the DCA sponsor's Red Book for information about behavior of deaf and-or hearing abused untrained unsocialized Dalmatian dogs, he apparently was unaware of or chose to omit description to the sources of the initial BAER tested Dalmatians, described on pages 366-367 in "The Official Book of the Dalmatian", by the DCA, (undated publication but about 1996.); see Amazon.com. Contrary to the impression presented in many reports, the DCA reported officially that the BAER testing took place at many locations, by various people, and presumably were somehow merged into the Figure 4.1 alleged total of over 5,000 Dalmatians, which an innocent reader might believe were all tested under the direction of the author in a standard BAER test facility and dog kennels, etc at LSU? In retrospect, in view of these concerns, it no longer seemed surprsing to the reviewers that as remarked in the book it seemed people of some breeds chose NOT to place their information about deafness of their breeds in the hands of other people or organizations.
Page 54, 4th and 5th lines from the bottom of the page, the text mentioned that by 1974 it was already reported that loud noises evoked behavioral responses before the ear channels opened, i.e. despite total conduction deafness, thus one or more of the modalities compensating for deafness (of the human preferred modality) were perhaps functioning promptly following birth. There was an implication that some of the compensatory modalities were biologically more primitive (simple) than human-like hearing, and a researcher of evolution might speculate that simple modes preceded the evolution of the delicate human-like sensitive complex inner ear and ear-channels systems.
Aggregate (overall) US dog-deafness: According to the book’s information, page 55, about 2.6 dogs per 10 thousand domestic dogs, US-wide, were reported from many veterinary hospitals as experiencing deafness [sic presumably mostly or all bi-ear deaf] from any-all causes (with the likely exception of most old-age deafness of formerly hearing dogs.) With about 77 million domestic dogs in the US, according to surveys, the result implied that about 14, 000 deaf dogs were being cared for in the US. Over 3,000 people at any given moment in recent years were usually members of the Yahoo group aiding deaf dogs’ owners – perhaps approaching nearly 20 percent of the human families owning deaf dogs. Data reported on the Internet regarding frequency of deafness among AKC registered breeds implied that the prevalence of deafness among mutts (non-AKC breeds) was extremely low, possibly far less than 1 per ten thousand.
A reviewer observed that the new book’s 2011 estimate of 2.6 per ten thousand was lower than the midpoint of an earlier published range of deafness estimates; i.e. with the passage of time and possibly more study the numbers of deaf (of all causes) dogs seemingly decreased. The book seemed of the view still that the estimates were too low although these reviewers were of the opinion that the latest estimate might be too high because of the omission of the generic mutts from the surveyed dogs.
http://www.lsu.edu/deafness/genetics.htm; downloaded 2010; (… reported to be 2.56 to 6.5 cases per 10,000 dogs seen at veterinary school teaching hospitals,…) Actual-real values were almost certainly less, because of absence from the totals of chronically healthy mutts and registered dogs that would not have been brought to veterinary hospitals, which probably created what statisticians call a "selection bias," - namely the known omission of part of the baseline group of "all" dogs of the US.
As of 2012, we were unable to obtain credible statistics to discern, within the overall estimated about 14,000 US bi-ear deaf dogs, how many were deaf from inherited deafness, human physically caused dog deafness, medical misadventures, and so forth - even for the Dalmatians. If for a rough estimate, we assume 2 uni-deaf per bi-ear deaf dogs, the total might be in excess of 42,000 deaf dogs, or with 4 uni-s per bi-ear deaf then a total over 70,000.
Page 57, Table 4.1, the heading of the right-most column, “Totally Deaf” was incorrect since the data there were the sums of one-ear deaf and bi (two) ear deaf, i.e. the “total number.” That error might seem trivial, but comparison of the statistics in the table also revealed two rather extra-ordinary examples of long standing confusion created by featuress of Dr Strain’s several reports of , at each date over s3everal years of the “latest” breed deafness statistics; this" time data" about English Setters and the Jack Russell Terriers attracted scrutiny of reviewers. Regrettably Dr Strain, so far as we could learn, never publicly described the scientific and experimental basis of the breed statistics and thus left its understanding to informed statistics and mathematics speculation based on the work of other scientists.
A peculiarly amazing aspect of the data in the earlier reports was that when chronologically time-wise sequential tables of data were compared, it was apparent that as more and more dogs of each breed were tested, each breed’s reported deafness showed significant, indeed dramatic percentage DECREASES – i.e. BAER testing appeared to decrease or cure deafness.
For example, by increasing the number of tested English Setters from 700 (previous LSU Web report) to 3660 (the book) - the reported percentages of unideaf decreased by 3.5 and bi-ear deaf decreased by 0.7 (e.g. changed as though from 1.7% to 0.7%). Thus with that rate of improvement in deafness by testing dogs, if a total of 5,000 E-Setters were tested for direct comparison to the Dalmatians data, the corresponding Setter population deafness statistics would further decrease to 1.7 % unideaf and 0.44% bi-ear deaf. Physics of the BAER equipment as described in the book offered no basis for believing that BAER testing can directly improve the percentage of deafness in each bree UNLESS each detected deaf dog were killed as part of the regime. A publicly available version of the Dalmatian "Red Book", 1994 revealed as probable that the Board of Governors was aware of a likelihood that pathologicly "fear-aggressive" Dalmatians might be among those deaf dogs sent to be BAER tested.
A naïve reader plausibly might speculate that the deafness rate of the surviving portion of the Breeds was improved by put to sleep-PTS (killing) those BAER (gold-standard) diagnosed deaf as seemed to be advocated by the Dalmatian Club of America’s publicly Web-posted policy and who referenced and funded some of his research.
The corresponding data for the Jack Russell Terriers implied that by BAER testing an eventual total of 5,000 dogs (about 4,000 increase from the nearly 1,000 mentioned in the Table), the JR Terriers could be rendered 100 percent bi-ear hearing. The reviewers concluded that the format and presentation of deafness data by Dr Strain, not only in the book, but previously were potentially extremely misleading and susceptible to misunderstanding and misuse by persons for purposes such as pursuit of profits at the expense of the lives of thousands of deaf dogs per year and eventually billions of dollars from owners unnecessarily frightened, i.e. the business case.
Our reviewers after studying the author's released data of a similar sort concluded that the probable situation was that the tests administered by Dr Strain occurred were performed essentially as described and the data reported to the public with reasonable accuracy represented real events. It was deemed likely that an unusual but potentially mathematically and statistically acceptable sort of biased sampling procedure was used and that omission of public disclosure of the sampling procedures unnecessarily damaged the appearance of integrity and competence that the data and he deserve.
Page 64 has interesting information regarding what seemed to be a unique sort of heritable deafness in Dobermans, as discussed in another chapter of the book. [Admittedly the book was expensive for so few pages, but repeating information in several chapters was often more confusing than useful.]
Page 65, “Pointers”: the text provided valuable background demonstrating that intense inbreeding for adverse behaviors such as anxiety can yield dogs with undesirable behavior who are also deaf (a correlation)- - and insight that extraordinary human intervention can produce examples per the text’s ill-advised numerous attribution of dangerous behavior to ALL deaf dogs; (‘all’ because the text rarely caveated that the warnings were only valid for hereditary and human abuse caused dog-deafness). Private interviews with owners of Dalmatians about 2011 revealed profound dismay over the difficulties caused roughly in the 1980s through 1990s for the breed by the puppy-mill excessive inbreeding that marketed and dispersed Crazy Dals (of whom probably roughly 30 to 50 percent were deaf). No proof was found that the fad-peak of Dalmatians approaching 15th to 6th[?] popularity in the US was caused by the Disney 101 Dalmatian movies. Further, research on English Cockers inbreeding triggered aggression, as reported by Dr Serpell supported the near certainty that extreme inbreeding of dogs (for any reason, such as flashy coats) can yield dogs whose breeders or owners condemn and dispose of as aggressive: [Podberscek, A.L. & Serpell, J.A. Environmental influences on the expression of aggressive behaviour in English Cocker Spaniels. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 52: 215-227, 1997. downloaded 17Jan2012; research.vet.upenn.edu/Publications/tabid/1918/Default.aspx]
Other scientific text of the chapter may prove useful to professional scientific genetics and dog deafness researchers. The topic is complex and profoundly nonlinear. The “bottom line” seems to be the conclusion that excessive inbreeding, especially for valuable marketable dog-coat “flashy” colors such as double dapple, double merle, and harlequin, with lots of white will yield and indeed escalate the numbers of deaf and also blind dogs in the future. The process was technically a positive feedback circuit-system of causes and effects, which in other industries were often dangerous and therefore were by design avoided or minimized- rarely ignorantly dangerously exploited.
[i] Downloaded 08 January, 2012: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cato_the_Elder: “In his last years he was known for strenuously urging his countrymen to the Third Punic War and the destruction of Carthage.... he kept repeating the cry: "Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam." (Moreover, I advise that Carthage must be destroyed.[30]) (The expression was also at times phrased compactly "Carthago delenda est" or "delenda Carthago").”
[ii] Page 54; 3d line: re response to loud noises (sound pressure wave induced acceleration) before ears open. See also page 115, lines 6,7 and page 116. [Also page 47, 48 re evolution of acceleration sense ability (or the reverse) from hearing biology, and page 64 re Doberman “diseases”.]
[iii] In Syndromic versus non-syndromic deafness: A time-correlation was mentioned of progressive retinal atrophy (PRA) in dogs, like RP of humans, with maybe a systemic gene causing PRA in dogs and RP in humans (Tuntivanich et al., 2009). “Old-age” deafness is broadly correlated in many breeds with various forms of canine PRA, although a shared causation is not known. Dystrophic aspects of PRA are thought by some to resemble the dystrophic events associated with some events of pigment related heritable deafness.
[iv] Dog multiple abilities to sense electromagnetic vibrations were by 2011 reported to include the following: 1) Rods and cones detection for vision, 2) Post-tapetum lucidum nerve layer that detects light in the 480 nm band, for circadian rhythm control and possibly other use, 3) per S Coren, 2004, puppies were reported (and we observed) using infrared vibration detection with their muzzles to find their mother’s nipples, and 4) adult dogs (blind as well as ordinary) and puppies sensing infrared from the sun, to locate warm areas.
[Please go to the TOP of the page, under "Book Reviews" to reach the next Weeblycritique-review of the book's other Chapters or use the Links: Chapters 1 and2 ; Chapters 5,6 and 7 ; Chapter 8 and Notes ; Major Behavior Flaws ; Consequences ]