Doodle Health Survey

[Stella]

After reading about the doodle that was just diagnosed with Addisons disease, there was some mention of a doodle health survey.  Knowing how many people are on this site, and how passionate everyone is about their doodles, I realised there would be a lot of potential data out there.  The question is, would enough people respond to make it worthwhile, what sort of information should we be collecting, how would we analyse that data, and what would we do with any relevent data that was collected?  What could be done to try and get as many people to respond as possible?  We would also want to make sure that this was done is as scientific way as possible and not for it to become a forum for people to target specific breeders (either for the good or bad).  I was thinking an e-mail survey, or through a site such as Survey Monkey, so that only global results are posted, and not individuals responses.

 

A few thoughts of the top of my head would be - type of doodle, age of doodle, where the doodle came from, info about the parents of that doodle (as much as is known), if the breeder did genetic testing and which conditions did they test for, general health problems that dog has had (ie: dietary/ digestive troubles etc), veterinary diagnosed conditions (epilepsy, addisons, dysplasia etc).  The age of the doodle when these conditions became apparent.  If you have a rescue doodle, you could still take part as we would still be interested in their health.

 

For the data to be actually useful, this would need to be something repeated at regular periods of time in order to see trends in health and illness of our doodles, say annually. 

 

So guys, what do you think??  A worthwhile project?  Or an awful lot of effort for nothing?  In order for this to be effective it would need to be carried out over a long period of time, really trying to follow our doodles right up to when they cross the rainbow bridge.  It would be a huge commitment for those trying to administrate over it!

[F, Calla & Luca]

I think it is a very worth while project. I agree with a confidential email approach. As I mentioned in a response on the other discussion, I think But a health questionnaire, with a promise of anonymity may be somewhat successful. It should be for only veterinary diagnosed disorders. There should be an emphasis that we hope this can lead to a betterment of the breeds. It would need to be limited to goldendoodle and labradoodle only since the other crosses are to few in number. I suppose, just because there is some assurance of background, it should be limited to dogs purchased from breeders since rescue dogs do not have enough background information. In order to get useful data it really needs to be carefully thought out. We also should, I think, get some of our more active breeders involved in the thinking. I don't know if a long term study is feasible but a beginning could be just to get a present moment in time overview.

[Adina P]

I'm not sure how Survey Monkey and Poll Daddy works and how you can extrapolate data.  But I'm not sure I'd want to exclude rescued doodles.  Might be a good comparison and we might find a significant difference between 'rescued' and 'from breeder' type doodles.  Although I guess if we allow rescued doodles it will have to be only those whose background was assured (i.e. no dogs that were 'guesses' to be LD's or GD's--we'd have to KNOW they were one or the other).

 

We could also ask about the breeder and whether the dog's parents had hip clearances, eye clearances, etc.  Would be interesting to see if there was a correlation between dogs who had certain testing and their likelihood of developing medical conditions or if it was totally irrelevant. 

[Linda and Murphy]

Adina, as long as accurate information is provided, they could be excluded/included for analysis. Sounds like a great research project. (Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine uses Survey Monkey)

[F, Calla & Luca]

Good point. But I think that we'd definitely need a way to separate things out.

[Adina P]

I think the main thing is how we will get people to respond.  If you don't typically respond to DK emails...what headline or lure would work to at least get you to READ the email?  I would definitely use Survey Monkey or Poll Daddy.  But more thoughts are welcome/wanted!

[F, Calla & Luca]

I think it would have to trumpet something about an individual's doodle's health and the betterment of the breed. Something to momentarily alarm people a little bit : )  But I would read the email anyway. We need some marketing gurus to tell us how to capture the attention of the people who would not ordinarily do so.

[Adina P]

Clark's usually pretty good about that.

[F, Calla & Luca]

The marketing you mean?

[Lynn D.]

Free iPod.  (or whatever can be rounded up) Keep the prize less than $50, etc. Or a donation to iDog (or winner's choice).

Survey Monkey is very widely used and very user friendly.

[F, Calla & Luca]

I'm not sure this is the kind of thing where giving a prize is a good idea. Somehow it might corrupt the process.

[Stella]

I thought about prizes too, but then if you are going to try and keep it annonymous prizes wouldn't work.  I would hope that DK members would complete the survey just for the love of the dogs!

[F, Calla & Luca]

I think anonymous as far as publishing the results is good. But the emailed results would be identifiable and there might be some follow up involved.