How to Contact the BTCA Health and Genetics Committee
The BTCA Health Committee has a new email: BTCOAHealth@gmail.com
Please use the new email above to submit questions to the BTCA Health Committee.
For the last 50 years Marg Pough, our Health Chair, has received thousands of health questions, and because of connections with the Cornell College of Veterinary Medicine, was able to advise people. Historically, these questions have come by phone calls, by email, and now more frequently by messages and messenger. The volume and multiple methods of receiving meant that questions could get buried and sometimes lost in the gobs of other things that arrive.
Marg is not getting younger. We now have a larger health committee that includes three veterinarians. As always information about owners, breeders, and individual dogs is confidential. The release of identification information is the owner’s option.
When you are asking a question remember that your own veterinarian knows your dog and should always be your first call. However, when consulting the health committee, there are certain things you can do that will help you, your dog, your veterinarian, and the committee.
- Describe the signs you are seeing. Provide the results of any workups your veterinarian has done.
- Keep a log that should include: age of onset, how long the condition been occurring, any treatment, diet changes and any improvements or decline.
- WRITE IT DOWN. It helps you remember, it helps your veterinarian and it helps anyone the committee consults with.
We cannot diagnose your dog, but we have a network of knowledge and of people we can consult with. We can only make suggestions.
If a disorder is new to Border Terriers we will continue to let the membership know. We are in the planning stages of a new General Health Survey, and are discussing the possibility of an OPEN Health Database where owners can enter information on their own dogs.
