REWARD $2000 - German Shepherd desperately needs kidney donor - Page 3

Update: Orso has made it to New York and is now on dialysis. His owner drove straight through for 12 hours to get him there. He is really dedicated to his dog.

And, yes, it is New York and not Illinois. There are very, very few places where a dog can get dialysis done. Although there is a dialysis machine in Illinois, it's broken and won't be fixed for at least a month.

"The problem is many, if not most, of the owners of those dogs are probably doing something with them that would preclude allowing a kidney to be taken. Most dogs of that type breeding are not simply pets."

Surprisingly, many and possibly most of the Kraftwerk K9 pups end up as pets. Also, I don't know of any activity that would preclude a dog from donating a kidney. A dog with one kidney functions completely normally and can do SAR, SchH, you name it.

It's worth emphasizing again that an unrelated dog will *not* work for kidney donation. Although the blood test for a match covers a few things, it doesn't cover most things. You simply can't test for everything. An unrelated dog, even if he matches on the tested things, will not match for most of the other things. This is why his kidney will very likely be rejected. Kidney transplants with unrelated dogs have been tried and they have been a disaster. The best bet here is the most closely related dog who matches on the things they test for. Because he is related, he is much more likely to also match on many of the things they don’t test for.

Oddly, it's very different with cats. With cats, an unrelated donor works fine. But cats have immune systems that are very different from those of dogs.

Orso still needs as many people as possible with related dogs to have their dogs tested!

i would assume she meant training or working that maybe dont have time to let the dog
rehab from the surgery,not a job that would prevent it

Susan, I wondered about the New York thing...I knew there was a dialysis machine in IL! Makes more sense now.

I said initially when I prompted Alex to post on the forum and not just the classifieds, that many many Kraftwerk dogs are sold as pets. With their reputation, few knowledgeable working dog people are going to buy from them.

However, if it's not a Kraftwerk dog and is closely related, many of these people are working these dogs or breeding them and so the downtime and risk involved in removing a major organ is simply not feasible.

If a dog is retired, finished titling, or is just a pet, then removing a kidney is easier than if a dog is actively competing or breeding, etc. As much as people would want to help this poor dog, it is not without risk to their dog, and of course you'd want to minimize that risk to your own dog...having enough down time to fully recover is part of that. While dogs can live just as humans w/only one kidney, there are activities that are riskier any time you have only one of something you are designed to have 2 of! As I said in another thread, I have 2 friends w/only one kidney, and they have to be extremely careful of injury from contact sports. For breeding, one kidney is unacceptable due to the extra strain during pregnancy.

Has anyone else stepped up w/a relative yet? Just Vonissk? I did send Alex directly the list of all Orso's siblings and half siblings. I hope he's able to make contact. The other thing I suggested that hasn't been done (I'm assuming a drive to NY is the reason) is to put a thread up w/the big names of the dogs who are related- Metin, Pike, etc. Those are the names people will click on to see what this is all about.

Best of luck and hope something favorable happens soon!

Regarding the risks of donation - yes, any surgery has risks, but they are quite low for kidney removal when done by a highly skilled surgeon. Certainly the downtime would be a problem for someone with a working dog.

As far as pregnancy is concerned, the results from human kidney donation are interesting here:

An abstract of research on this subject appeared in Transplantation 62 (12) 1934-1936, Dec 1996, regarding the risks of pregnancy after a living kidney donation: "Potential female donors frequently ask whether unilateral nephrectomy [removal of one kidney] will impair future childbearing capabilities. To address this question, we surveyed 220 women who underwent donor nephrectomy between 1985 and 1992. Of the 144 women who responded, 33 became pregnant after donation for a total of 45 pregnancies. Seventy-five percent of the pregnancies were carried to term without difficulty. Complications incurred during gestation included miscarriage (13.3%), preeclampsia (4.4%), gestational hypertension(4.4%), proteinuria (4.4%), and tubal pregnancy (2.2%). Four of the 45 pregnancies (excluding miscarriages) required preterm hospitalization, resulting in an overall morbidity of 8.8%. There were no pregnancy-related deaths, and no fetal abnormalities were reported. Problems with persistent hypertension, proteinuria, or changes in renal function were not noted. None of the above complications exceeded what has been noted for the general population. Infertility was a problem in 8.3% (3/36) of our respondents, compared with a worldwide incidence of 16.7%. Based on these results, we conclude that donor nephrectomy is not detrimental to the prenatal course or outcome of future pregnancies (emphasis added)."

Violent contact would definitely need to be avoided after kidney donation (for example, if the dog was going to be hit very hard in the kidney area or slammed violently to the ground). (Not such a great idea with two kidneys, either, but, sadly, a real risk in things like police dog work.)

I do agree that the chance of someone with a sport dog agreeing to have their dog donate a kidney is about zip.

The problem with posting the big names is that we're going pretty far back to distant relatives at that point. The Kraftwerk K9 dogs seem to be the best chance, since they are at least half-siblings and most are pets.

No additional relatives yet. I'm looking into the siblings and half-siblings, since Orso's owner has crashed after the very long drive to get his dog to dialysis. He also has very little Internet access right now.

I disagree that the big names are far back. He's a Metin grandson. There are lots of Metin grandsons. I have a Metin grand daughter. There are lots of them around. Pike too. Lots of Pike progeny. You can always narrow from there, but isn't it wise to get the greatest pool you can? Vonissk's dog is only a relative through their great grandsire...so posting for Metin grandkids would be closer than what you have already...can't hurt, IMO.

Or just post for sons/daughters of Ursus. Most people care more about their own dogs than reading something because someone needs help. SO, my thinking was that if you posted names that LOTS of people know b/c they're in their own dogs ped, you would get more people reading the thread than asking for help...just my cyincal way of thinking...

Getting pregnant w/only one kidney and hoping it will be fine (which it usually is) is a bit different than intentionally removing a kidney from a brood bitch. While risks are always inherent in pregnancy (my own almost killed my kidneys and damaged my liver), my point was that owners of extremely high quality breeding females are not going to willingly put their bitch at risk, or future pups at risk, although the risk is not super high.

The ideal thing would be for a fellow Kraftwerk dog owner to come forward w/a pet sibling or half sibling. There really is no point in putting another dog through any kind of surgery and removing an organ if it doesn't have a very good chance at success.

At this point, I'm sort of replying just to keep this thread at the top. It is obvious this dog is much loved.

"Most people care more about their own dogs than reading something because someone needs help."
 
That's why the post title begins with "REWARD $2000." It's a pretty effective way to get someone's attention.

"The ideal thing would be for a fellow Kraftwerk dog owner to come forward w/a pet sibling or half sibling. There really is no point in putting another dog through any kind of surgery and removing an organ if it doesn't have a very good chance at success."

Exactly. And that's why a wider search to grandsires etc. won't help. Remember, there's no test for dogs that insures a good match, only a match with respect to a few things. This means that the closeness of the relationship between the donor and recipient dogs must be relied on to insure a good match. Also, the screening test for the donor dog (which Orso's owner will pay for) costs about $600. So screening even 50 dogs would cost $30,000. Our efforts are focused on finding and contacting the owners of Orso's Kraftwerk siblings and half-siblings.

Once again, the procedure is very safe for the donor dog when done by a skilled surgeon, and the donor dog will be fully functional afterward.

Reward gets people's attention if they're money hungry. I personally would click on a link that had my dog's parents names in it way before a link that said "reward." Yes, it says that the dog need a kidney...but of the people that will click on this thread, how many will own related dogs? I think you need to do it the other way- find related dogs and THEN beg for a kidney. Right now, you're getting lots of "I'd love to help but I don't have a dog of those lines," instead of everyone who opens the thread owning a possible match or knowing someone who does, and THEN pulling at their heart string w/Orso's story. But that's just me.

Like I told Alex, the first thing I would've done is to put a thread out with each sibling and half sibling's name, asking the owner to step forward. Put the dogs on the database that are most likely to match. I sent them to Alex yesterday. I bet someone will know someone who has one if the owners themselves don't find it. I don't know what it would hurt at this point!!! I am not comfortable doing it; he's not my dog....I was ok w/adding his pedigree, but I won't overstep my bounds that much w/out permission.

And you are missing my point. So far, all they have is a possible donor with a great grandfather in common. That's not so great, chance-wise. Looking for Metin grandkids is not "widening"; it's potentially "narrowing" especially if you happen across one who has Metin through the same sire/dam, etc.  If you are familiar with working lines, you know that there are some big names/highly titled dogs in Orso's pedigree that many people on this board know. Ursus was bred other places than Kraftwerk. He has other offspring whose names don't necessarily end with "vom Kraftwerk." Also, let's not forget the bottom. There are some big names in there as well. It's not about looking for similar grandparents at all; it's about using those big names to find the dogs most closely related, and it's much easier, IMO, to do that via famous names that are only 2-3 gens away than keep looking for Kraftwerk dogs knowing how many dogs that place has and goes through.

That's what I was trying to get at.

That's also the reason when I uploaded his pedigree, I put NEEDS NEW KIDNEY on there so it would catch people's attention who were intentionally looking at related dogs.

And you are missing my point--siblings and half-siblings who are pets are the best bet, and that's where the search efforts are concentrated. A Metin grandson who is a distant relative won't be nearly as good.

I've tracked down and contacted the owner of one of the sibling/half-sibling dogs--no interest, and the dog has some medical issues anyway. I've got an email out to another owner--no response yet.

Posting each Kraftwerk sibling and half-sibling by name might help track down the owners, however--worth a try.

By the way, do you know what became of V-Ursus aus dem Furstentum Lippe? Kraftwerk used him quite a bit for stud and went on and on about what a great dog he was, and then he just vanished from their breeding program. Is he still alive? Retired somewhere? (He's too old to donate a kidney, so I'm just curious.)

I would like to thank everybody who has been trying to help us and support us in this very difficult time for us. Orso is currently receiving his first dialysis treatment in New York. We are in desperate need to locate as many related dogs as we possibly can. If anybody can think of a way of figuring out how to contact owners of Orso's siblings (here is the list of them http://www.pedigreedatabase.com/gsd/siblings/637013.html) it would help us tremendously. Thank you in advance

Orso's family
Our contact information is:
Alex Gavrilov
ag@softtrendinc.com or (847) 858-1220.