Dr. Andy Roark and Dr. Adam Boyko discuss the rapid advances being made in canine genetic testing. They talk about what health conditions might be detected, what impact that could have on both medical management programs and breeding programs and how genetic screening could potentially add years to the lives of dogs in the future.
This episode has been sponsored by Embark.
LINKS
Embark Veterinary: embarkvet.com/vets
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ABOUT OUR GUEST
Dr. Adam Boyko is Chief Science Officer at Embark Veterinary and associate professor in Biomedical Sciences at the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine, focused on the genomic investigation of dogs. Adam’s research has addressed fundamental questions of dog evolution and history, disease and trait mapping, and advancing genomic tools for canine research. Adam has coauthored over 40 peer-reviewed scientific papers, including research in Nature, Science, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science and is a member of the Board of Trustees for the Morris Animal Foundation. He is a graduate of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and received an MS in Computer Science and a PhD in Biology from Purdue University before his postdoctoral work at Cornell and Stanford.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
This podcast transcript is made possible thanks to a generous gift from Banfield Pet Hospital, which is striving to increase accessibility and inclusivity across the veterinary profession. Click here to learn more about Equity, Inclusion & Diversity at Banfield.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Welcome everybody to The Cone of Shame Veterinary podcast. I am your host, Dr. Andy Roark. Guys, I’m talking about canine genetic testing today. What can we learn? How is it valuable? Is it possible that we can lengthen the life span of dogs through genetic testing? Should we be talking to our clients about this? Should we be talking about patted on our puppy visits? What are the medical benefits and is this really useful in modern veterinary medicine? Guys, Dr. Adam Boyko is here to talk about it. This episode is made possible ad-free by my friends at Embark. Let’s get into this episode.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter:
(Singing) This is your show, we’re glad you’re here, we want to help you in your veterinary career. Welcome to the Cone of Shame with Dr. Andy Roark.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Welcome to the podcast. Dr. Adam Boyko, how are you?
Dr. Adam Boyko:
Great. How are you doing, Andy?
Dr. Andy Roark:
I am fanfreakingtastic. Thank you for being here. You are the Chief Science Officer at Embark Veterinary and associate professor in biomedical sciences at the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine. I’m super happy to talk to you. I have got a number of questions about genetic screening, genomics in general, the future interface of those fields and veterinary medicine and taking care of pets. And I am super thrilled that you would take time to talk to me about that and help me get my head around it a bit.
Dr. Adam Boyko:
Yeah. Happy to be here to talk about it. It’s a really exciting time for canine genetics.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Awesome. So let me tell you where I’m coming from and what I hope we can do in our conversation. I want to understand the potential for genetics and how it might actually affect patient treatment in the future. I need an understanding of this process, I need an understanding of the potential for where it might go and I’d also like to get my head around how it could be used today, if that makes sense. Yeah. What are the practical tools for me now? So again, I am waiting into this and I want to be informed and aware of what resources and opportunities are out there.
Dr. Adam Boyko:
Yeah, it’s a really fast moving field. The dog genome was first sequenced in 2005 and dog DNA testing has been going on at least as long just doing single marker tests if you suspect that a dog had a certain genetic defect or a trait you wanted to breed for, but now it’s really come into where we can do genome-wide analyses for just over 100 bucks maybe, and you can get a much picture of what your dog’s not only breed mixes, which a lot of people are interested in, but a panel of health screening tests, trait tests that breeders might be interested in.
Dr. Adam Boyko:
The health tests a lot of times are actionable. They give you useful information about what to look out for or what kinds of food or training a dog could use, what risk is predisposed for. But it’s still a growing field. I mean, there’s lots of things that we know are genetic or partially genetics that there aren’t tests for yet because the research still needs to be done. And so that’s what my research focuses on is being able to disentangle some of these complicated genetic conditions, but we’re learning more and more about dog health and dog genetics and tests are getting more and more powerful every year.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. So talk to me about that a little bit. My experience with genetics as a veterinarian has largely been in breed testing. I had a client yesterday who her little dog came in and I said, “That’s a cute little chocolate lab.” And as I got closer, I was like, “That’s not a chocolate lab.” And she said, “Well, we don’t know what it is but we just sent off the test to find out. I’ll let you know.” And so that is the number one way that I in practice have come into contact with genetic testing. So can you start there and just basically talk about how that opened the field up, and then that’s just the tip of the iceberg today. So walk me through the progression in what we’re able to determine and how it comes together.
Dr. Adam Boyko:
Yeah. Yeah. So the most sophisticated DNA test now are testing for over 200 different mutations that underlie health conditions. And so a lot of these mutations are recessive forms of blindness, multi-drug sensitivity is a big one. There’s a lot of bleeding disorders or other disorders of metabolism, things like disc disease, a whole litany of degenerative myopathy. There’s lots of tests that are highly predictive of future health outcomes. And many of them you can actually like change the diet of the dog, or if the dog is predisposed for bleeding disorder, you’d want to know that before you did an elective surgery or if the dog had some traumatic accident to treat the dog properly.
Dr. Andy Roark:
So walk me through the process from the time that the pet owner takes a genetic sample all the way through we get some results back. Walk me through the science of that at a 101 level explainer, if you don’t mind.
Dr. Adam Boyko:
Sure. So it’s a simple cheek swab, swabs the dog cheeks, gets the saliva all up in the swab. It gets put in a tube with [inaudible 00:05:54] solution, shipped off with a prepaid envelope to the lab, the barcode gets read, it gets put in this automated DNA extraction process, then the DNA is washed through a chip. And so that allows us to read which variants the dog has, what its genotypes are. On our it’s 230,000, 240,000 different mutations that are being looked at of which hundreds of them are known to be important for different traits and health conditions and others of them we use just because the data’s really valuable for understanding breed mix in breeding relatives for novel research discoveries.
Dr. Adam Boyko:
Anyway, all that data gets uploaded to the cloud, it gets analyzed and then an email gets sent out to the owner saying, “Hey, log into your account. You’ve got results for your dog.” Or an email that says, “Hey, we wanted to let you know before you logged in that your dog did show that it has a genetic risk factor and this is what it means. And if you need to have a consult with a veterinary geneticist we’d schedule a consult and we can take care of that or talk to your veterinarian. Or do you want to send a copy to your vet?”
Dr. Andy Roark:
What are the most common genetic risk factors that you see coming out of these canine samples?
Dr. Adam Boyko:
So multidrug sensitivity is a big one, and a lot of people if you have a Collie or a hunting dog you know that there’s a likelihood of that happening. But a lot of people with mixed breed dogs don’t even realize that’s a possibility that their dog has that ancestry. IVDD slip discs, it’s particularly common in some kinds of mixed breed dogs and people don’t always know to look for that. And if they know that the dog’s predisposed you can take care to make sure that there’s less stress on the back of the dog, less jumping up on beds and things like that. We do see a lot of propensity for things like Collie eye anomaly, and other kind, PRA, PLL, different kinds of blindness, bleeding disorders are another big one and HUU. So kidney and bladder stone are a common one. And that one’s really expensive, completely preventable if you get them on the right eye.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Exactly. Right. I mean, how often do we have these dogs, and we’re speaking specifically about canine today, but how often do we have these dogs and they get recurrent urinary tract infections again and stones before finally we say, “Hey, this is a pattern, we should address it.” As opposed to, “We just knew it right up front.” What’s the turnaround time on these tests.
Dr. Adam Boyko:
It’s about two to three weeks from when we get the sample back.
Dr. Andy Roark:
When do most people do it? Are you seeing mostly puppies early? I mean, that to me, from a medical standpoint, is there a downside to not getting this dog at eight, 10, 14 weeks and go ahead and getting the information?
Dr. Adam Boyko:
No, absolutely not. So the sooner the better because that’s the sooner you can take action if there is something actionable and it’s the sooner you find out what breeds are in the dog or verify that the breeder said it was a Schnoodle and it actually is a Schnoodle because we see a lot of those issues going on. And I think it’s the heel prick that infants are given in most hospitals these days where you might as well do that screening right away. Most of the time it comes up clear, right? But if a quarter of time the dog shows this factor for something you want to know about that and know what to look out for, know what you can do to avoid it.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Well, it makes sense to me as an onboarding new puppy, part of you’re checking is go ahead, “Hey, we want to get to know you and do a physical exam, get your vaccines up to date.” We rely so much on vaccination to get pets into the clinic, especially as puppies and kittens. And you go, “That’s not who we are. That’s not what we’re trying to do.” Our long term success shouldn’t be tied to, “This person’s due for vaccines in three weeks and so we’ll see you back.” That’s not where we’re trying to go. I see veterinarians as information brokers and consultants and advisors. And I’m a big fan of diagnostics to help guide our healthcare. And so these things all click together in my mind.
Dr. Adam Boyko:
Right. And I think genetics is one of the most important pieces of information a veterinarian can have at their fingertips and being able to get them that information effectively so that it’s flagged, that they can see, hey, this dog has higher risk of this or a lower risk of that, so that they know what kinds of diagnostics to do and optimize that.
Dr. Andy Roark:
What do you think drives the decision to get these done by most pet owners? Is it still the best selling point just so to get pet owners on board? Is it still, “Hey, let’s investigate the breed here,” or do you feel like more people are starting to talk successfully about the value of genetic screening as a medical test? If you had to give me a percentage of, hey, let’s find out what the breed is, versus, hey, let’s do this from a medical standpoint and for preventative healthcare for your pet, where are we? Is it 90/10 or have we moved more towards, hey, there’s a reason beyond just wouldn’t it be need to know?
Dr. Adam Boyko:
Yeah. So definitely when we started out, it was 90/10 for pet owners. Breeders it’s different, right? Breeders know that they want to test because they want to avoid carrier crosses. In some cases there’s traits that they’re really interested in too, but they already know which breed their dogs are, but they’re doing the genetic testing for other reasons. But for pet owners, when we started doing this testing back in 2016, it was easily 90/10. It was, I really need the most accurate test possible so I know which breeds are in my dog and I can trust it. And it’s nice to get this health thing on the side, but I don’t really know what to do with it. In some cases people were like, “I don’t want to find out if my dog is going to die.” I’m like, “Well, every dog’s going to die, right?” But that’s not what-
Dr. Andy Roark:
That’s not the eight week puppy visit conversation I want to have, Adam.
Dr. Adam Boyko:
No, that’s not the eight week puppy visit conversation. And it’s definitely true, most people are testing puppies right now. They get the dog and they test the dog and I think that’s great, but now it’s moved much closer to 50/50 where people are like, “Yeah. I do want to know what the breeds are in the dog, but I really think it’s important to do this genetic stream because it’s cheap insurance basically.” I might as well make sure the information under their vet too. And it’d be great to have vets offering in the clinic so that it’s not a matter of, “I was doing my research on Amazon and deciding which test I wanted to buy.”
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. Okay. So a couple questions come out of this. So I can 100% see breeders driving this, that makes total sense to me. Are there things that are different? I asked you what the most common things were that people look for or that you are finding. Are there things that are different that breeders are really specifically looking for that caused them to really push this science or push these tests forward? If so, what are those things? I’m assuming IVDD, for example if you’re a dachshund breeder. But is it breed specific? Are flags for hip dysplasia, things like that people are looking for in their breeding programs? Help me understand that.
Dr. Adam Boyko:
Yeah. So I mean, hip dysplasia in particular is one that we’re very interested in. There have been a few research papers out but they’re all breed specific and they haven’t really been validated in larger annuals. So there’s not really effective testing yet. All the breeders have been doing phenotypic testing, x-rays, PennHIP scores, things like that. And in some cases have been able to reduce the prevalence of the disease, but different breeds have different genetic concerns for what they’re going for and breeders in general have very different needs than what customers are looking for.
Dr. Adam Boyko:
So one new thing about the technology that the vet uses is we’re able to identify how related two dogs are. And so for pet owners, they’re really interested in this relative finder, right. They want to know are the parents of my dog, are the cousins of my dog out there, are there little mates of my dog out there. I mean, there’s so many stories on YouTube of literally they got separated during a hurricane and that get reunited and they recognize each other of course, right?
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, of course. Yeah.
Dr. Adam Boyko:
But there’s often stories of there was something wrong with my dog, I didn’t know what was going on and then I found relatives of my dog and now I’ve figured it out, right? Because most people don’t know the family medical history of the dog. Now all of sudden you have that opportunity that if something weird is happening for your dog, or you want to know my dog’s itching all the time, a lot of times these things are familial and even if we don’t know the specific genetics you can get inside the relatives. On the flip side, the breeders already know who the relatives are. What they’re looking for is high quality potential that are closely related, right? So they’re trying to find a match for their dogs. And so it’s the same genetics, but it has to be packaged in a different way to serve the use.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. The relatedness is super cool. And that totally makes sense from… I love responsible breeders that do planning that put a lot of thought into their lines and maintaining their lines and doing breeding that makes sense. And that’s good and positive for the breed. And this seems like a real tool to them. I got to tell you, the idea that I can get excited about is, yeah we do PennHIP and it’s an imprecise science in a lot of ways. And we’re doing OFA x-rays and stuff on hips. Just imagine if you had that information in a 14 week old puppy as opposed to a one year old dog or a two years old. You know what I mean? After this dog has already had litters and things like that. I go, “This is a significant way to impact breed health and again, responsible breeding, things like that.”
Dr. Adam Boyko:
And you can think even more expansively, right? I mean, at least there is PennHIP, eventually you are getting a phenotype from the animal, right? But something like cancer risk. I mean, you’re not finding out that the golden retriever developed lymphoma until it’s eight years old and it’s already been bred.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Right, yeah.
Dr. Adam Boyko:
But you could get a cancer risk score or a cancer breeding value, and actually start reducing the prevalence of cancer in different breeds. And this is animal genetics 101 or maybe 201. We’ve been doing it in cattle for two decades. And it’ll work the same way in dogs, but nobody’s gotten the big database of dogs to do it because you have lots of money vested in cattle. You have people who own a million head cattle and you don’t have anybody who owns a million head of dog. So you don’t-
Dr. Andy Roark:
My wife would if she could.
Dr. Adam Boyko:
That’s [inaudible 00:16:49].
Dr. Andy Roark:
No, no. And you’re right, that is ridiculously exciting, I like a lot. So when you think about the longevity of our pets, I mean, what if we come up with markers for just long lifespans? You know what I mean? We have these dogs that just tend to live and live. Are there flags for that where we say, this is a… I mean, ultimately avoidance of cancer is part of that, but we all see the Chihuahuas that hit 20 and 21 years old. Is there a genetic marker for that type of longevity? Is there something like that where we could say, “Yes, we are breeding dogs to increase their life fit.” I don’t know. I can get carried away.
Dr. Adam Boyko:
My goal for my scientific career is to make it so that dogs start living long cats, right?
Dr. Andy Roark:
That’s a cool groove. The cat people don’t like that. That’s not going to be popular with the cat people.
Dr. Adam Boyko:
No. Well, I’m not doing it by trying to shorten cats lives, but I definitely want dogs to live as long as cats do. And what we’re seeing already is that inbreeding plays a big role in dogs. And most people don’t know how inbred their dog…
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. Talk to me more about that. I’m surprised to hear you say that.
Dr. Adam Boyko:
Yeah. So if you look at the genetics and obviously purebred dogs are generally more inbred than mix breeded dogs are, but you do have backyard litters that are highly inbred, right? So it doesn’t matter whether you’re mixed breeded or your pure bred, if you are inbred we see that the lifespan on average is two to three years than an outbreak dog after controlling for body size and other things. We see that while you’re alive, you’re less likely to be in good or excellent health. And we have litter, they tend to be smaller [inaudible 00:18:28].
Dr. Adam Boyko:
We see this huge signature of inbreeding depression, just in normal dogs that are testing with this genetic test. And so that really should motivate breeders to try to reduce in breeding in their lines. And it really should, I think be a flag to veterinarians and to researchers to attention to in breeding, right? Like these dogs are more likely to have certain kinds of disorders down the line because of that. And so we’re starting to really prioritize that research. What specifically are these dogs getting, and how actionable can we give insights on that and how can we improve dog health by reducing inbreeding?
Dr. Andy Roark:
So I just want to make sure I got this. Are you saying that conceivably in the near term, we could get to the point where I can test a puppy and figure out how inbred this dog is and relatedly what the expected health status of this dog based on that level of inbreeding might be?
Dr. Adam Boyko:
Yeah. So you can test with Embark today and you’ll find out what the inbreeding level of the dog is. And it’s at a genetic level. In many cases it’s much higher than what you would hear from the breeder based on the pedigree because the breeder pedigree goes five or maybe 10 generations, but a lot of the inbreeding is happening because well, this breed was founded six different individuals 100 years ago. And so back then the problems arose.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Well, and I guess my thought is how often have you been standing in the treatment room and you’ve got your staff there and there’s somebody who comes in and they bring in with their puppies and they say, “I got it from this breeder.” And the staff goes, and we talk about puppy meals or backyard breeders or things. And again, those are loaded terms and I’m not trying to pass judgment. I have seen very small operations that do wonderful by their pets. You know what I mean? And by the genetic health of their pets, and I’ve seen larger operations that maybe don’t, but this always has been so hard to quantify and people can say, “I don’t know about those guys.” But you don’t really have any markers of what is the product that they’re putting out and their puppies are just as adorable as the other people’s puppies.
Dr. Adam Boyko:
People think they’re buying a F1 Labradoodle, and then they test and they find out it’s a highly inbred Labradoodle, or maybe not even a Labradoodle, maybe it’s a Golden Cockadoodle or something like that. And we’ve even come across cases where the breeder sold a dog as one breed mix, like Maltipoo and then sold the sibling as a different breed mix, like a Schnoodle. Actually the dog was some mix of Coton and something else, right? It wasn’t even either one of the things. But it was clearly the breeder was just selling to saying what’s going to get the most money out of that particular customer, right? And so you, this is helping uncover fraud.
Dr. Adam Boyko:
And I mean, most breeders are breeding what they say they’re breeding and they’re doing genetic testing because they’re doing it for the health of their lines and for the health of their breed. So I’m not trying to make breeders sound bad, but this is definitely a way to get unscrupulous breeders outed much more quickly than previously.
Dr. Adam Boyko:
I mean, we had stories where breeders would pass along, these are the genetic tests that the breed club recommends and here’s the results. It was free of all of these genetic defects, but really the maybe it was a Doberman breeder and there were six different defects that had to test for, and it didn’t want to have to deal with it. So it just kept Siberian Husky but they would always swab the Siberian Husky and send in that sample and of course it’s going to be free of all the Doberman things. So now that you’re actually doing comprehensive testing, you’re actually seeing, oh, wait, this didn’t come from a Doberman and, oh, wait, we’ve seen this genetic signature before and all that stuff. So now a lot of the fraud that goes on can’t happen anymore.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, that’s fascinating. Talk to me a bit about the reporting, what it looks like when this information comes back, it comes back generally to the pet owner, I’m assuming. How are the veterinarians integrated into the process? Is there extra information that veterinarians might access beyond what pet owners have? Is it that comprehensive forum? Can the pet owners put so the veterinarian also receives that information? Talk to me about how this comes back and appears in people’s hands.
Dr. Adam Boyko:
Right. So the core embark product is direct to the consumer. So the customer buys it, swabs or dog, and then shares the results with the veterinarian. So you have a PDF that reported highlights the things that the dog might be at risk for and then also list all the stuff that the dog was tested for and what’s the genetic weight for the dog and in human years, how old is the dog based in this genetics, and all that stuff. What we’re starting to do now is actually selling directly to veterinarians and offering a vet first product where the vet gets to see in a way that works with their workflow, what it is. And we’re very much in a back and forth right now with the veterinarians that are starting to use that product and the veterinary advisory board, and we’re looking for people to try it out and tell us how well it’s working in their practice.
Dr. Andy Roark:
That’s cool. Yeah, I really like it. So with reporting coming back, what are the most common questions you get when people get their reports? I can tell you, I suspect the most common question is, “Are you serious? My dog is not this breed. This is not the right breed.” And I know, I’ve heard those things. Is that a common response that people get? Is that a thing in the past? What are the other questions that people come back with?
Dr. Adam Boyko:
I mean, so definitely, well, I would call it breed disbelief is one of the questions, like “Are you sure? Because the shelter said it was a ridgeless Rhodesian ridgeback and it came back as a lab mix and that doesn’t make sense to me or something like that.” And the flip side of it is 10 out of 10, best product ever. You [inaudible 00:24:36].
Dr. Adam Boyko:
So it’s very much whether we agreed with what they thought. And looking at the dog, you can’t tell. People show me pictures of dogs I’m like, I can’t tell from the picture, you got to look at the genetics to figure out what it is, because it’s really the genes mixed together. And a lot of these doodles when you cross back out. A Poodle is a Poodle because it’s got a curly coat and it’s got a wire coat put together. And so a lot of these crosses lose the curly coat and keep the wire coat maybe. And they look exactly like a terrier mix, right? People are like, “But you didn’t get any Terrier in there.” You’re saying that it’s some cocked do mix or something like that. Well, how the genetics works, I can actually point to where on chromosome 13 and where on chromosome 32, all of these things, exactly how it’s genetics predicts and that breed remix explains it, but they don’t see it that way.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I imagine that is the customer service hell of doing K9 genetics.
Dr. Adam Boyko:
Yeah. The customer service team is highly trained for looking at all of this stuff because they get those questions so often I. And I remember a case with me, of course I have an office at Cornell and Cornell was fully remote for a year during the pandemic. And so I come back to my office after having been gone for like 14 months and I see there’s been this envelope shoved under my door and I open it up and it’s some guy who decided to write me 12 pages with pictures of their dog. And they’re like “This is clearly a purebred German Shepherd or at least 90% German Shepherd and you’ve got it like half German Shepherd and half Siberian Husky, which doesn’t make any sense whatsoever and da, da, da.”
Dr. Adam Boyko:
And I called the profile. I’m like, “Yeah, there’s nothing wrong with the DNA profile, it’s really clean. It definitely is.” I feel bad, I haven’t responded to this guy for eight months because I didn’t know. And so I write him an email that day and within two hours he writes me back. He’s like, “Actually, the dog [inaudible 00:26:29] now and it is pretty obvious that the dog is half Siberian Husky.”
Dr. Andy Roark:
That’s so great. Oh, man, that’s funny. I can see people taking it real seriously. Yeah. I mean I can see some of the genetic predisposition stuff coming back and really shocking people if they come back and say, “Man, my pet has genetic predisposition for these types of things.” I’m assuming that your embarked customer service is also pretty good at talking to people about what predisposition means and…
Dr. Adam Boyko:
Yes. Yeah. And we have to train veterinary geneticists too, that handle some of these calls when they’re forced actually. We’re not practicing on the dog, but we’re giving them clinically relevant information [inaudible 00:27:13] veterinarian.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I love that you do that. I mean that’s the fear of veterinarians, right? Is the pet owner goes and they get a genetic screen done on their own pet and it comes directly to them and then all of a sudden they’re my office on Monday going, “What is this?” I’m like, “I haven’t seen this. I have no idea.” And so having support for them is a thing of beauty.
Dr. Adam Boyko:
But I mean, some of the confusion is really simple stuff. Like, “Hey, my dog’s a carrier for two things. What does that mean? Do I need to look out for this?” And it’s like, “No, no, your dog’s a carrier for recessive disorder. So it’s not at risk for that based on that mutation.” And then also telling the breeders like, “Hey, it’s actually okay to breed carriers. In many cases, you want to do that to keep as much genetic diversity as you can in the line, just don’t breed them to other carriers.”
Dr. Andy Roark:
Are there interactions between genetic screening and pet insurance at this time? So for example, if a pet owner gets their puppy and does a genetic screen and he’s like, “I’m getting bet insurance on this is.” I mean, is that a problem? I’m honestly just curious, that doesn’t count as a diagnosis of a condition in my mind.
Dr. Adam Boyko:
It certainly doesn’t count as a diagnosis. I think that you should insure regardless [crosstalk 00:28:24]
Dr. Andy Roark:
Mine as well. Yeah.
Dr. Adam Boyko:
All of the genetic conditions you can test for, but she’s still got diabetes, which is really expensive and I just got a $2000 refund from [inaudible 00:28:32]. So it’s very worthwhile for me that I got pet insurance when she was little before any of this happened. To me, I think more about the flip side of it, where pet insurance companies are really hesitant. Some cases won’t insure dogs of certain breeds. And in fact, it’s probably not that every dog of that breed is uninsurable but you distinguish between the dogs that are insurable or not. And so I actually hope that genetic testing obviously it should create healthier bred dogs, but it also should expand the number of dogs that should be insurable over time and create more demand for insurable healthy dogs.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. That’s fascinating. I have to sit with that a little bit. I mean, it’s the interaction between those two, it’s all predicting the future, isn’t it?
Dr. Adam Boyko:
[inaudible 00:29:25]. Pet insurance companies, they’ve been really distinguished between different kinds of mixed breed dogs. It’s a mixed breed dog that’s small, medium, or large or whatever. The health conditions and overall health of the dog might be very different depending on which specific breeds are in that mix, as well as which specific genes that mixed breed dog carries. And so we’re really in the dark ages still of providing personalized care particularly for dogs.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I love that you’re doing this, I love that it’s moving fast. And this is something I’ve been interested in for years and every time I check in, I go, oh, wow, this is significantly farther along than it was.
Dr. Adam Boyko:
Yeah. I mean, testing is getting better. So there’s more and more data, there’s more and more, really bright, talented scientists that are looking at the data. And so that’s been accelerant for a discovery and so you can really make genetic testing more valuable.
Dr. Andy Roark:
If this was something that I wanted to talk more about in my practice and I wanted to say, “Hey, maybe think about this with some puppy kits and running it possibly through our practice and facilitating that for pet owners.” How can I go about getting my staff trained? Are there resources out there, are there information? What is the fastest way to get my team up to speed to have these conversations or to feel comfortable talking about this? Because people always struggle to advocate for things that they themselves don’t understand or don’t feel comfortable talking about.
Dr. Adam Boyko:
Right. So I recommend going to the embarkvet.com website. It’s separated out for owners, for breeders and for veterinarians. And the veterinarian link will give you know, information about how to offer it in your practice, educational tools for understanding what the test does and how to interpret certain response. When you’re screening for 200 things, it’s not like we expect everybody to know what all 200 conditions are. And most of them frankly are pretty rare. They’re only found in one or a handful of breeds, but there’s certainly enough common conditions out there, it’s completely worth doing the screening. In terms of getting value for the dollar, it’s probably much more higher value than other kinds of screenings that we already do as veterinarians.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. I love your commitment to expanding the life span of dogs. I think that is fanfreakingtastic. I love that you’re doing it. I love that you’re new things and acquiring data and helping to set standards and unpack these health problems that we can actually do something about, that is amazing. I just want to say thank you for your work you’re doing, thanks for doing this.
Dr. Adam Boyko:
Thanks, Andy.
Dr. Andy Roark:
My pleasure. So for those who want to go check out and learn more, I’ll put the link in the show notes down to the Embark website and you guys can get any information there. Adam, do you have any other tips, tricks, pearls, anything that people should take away from this conversation if they’re excited, interested, what advice would you give for that person who says “This is new to me and I’m really interested in it.”
Dr. Adam Boyko:
I would say go do it. People love the DNA test results. If you go on Amazon and look at the reviews, so many people are so happy that they did it. If you have trouble getting your dog to sit still and get enough saliva on the swab, wave a treat in front of the dog’s nose. Don’t give it the treat until after you’ve swabbed it. It gets the juices and that’s going to maximize the DNA yield.
Dr. Andy Roark:
There you go.
Dr. Adam Boyko:
That’s a little secret.
Dr. Andy Roark:
That’s awesome. That’s a nice little practical tip. That’s what I need. Adam Boyko, thank you so much for being here. Guys, take care, have a wonderful weekend or a wonderful week. It’s Friday when we’re recording and so my mind is on the weekend. I’m going to have a wonderful weekend. Whenever you’re listening to this, take care of yourself. See you, guys. See you, Adam. And that is our episode. Guys, I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you got something out of it. Man that gave me a lot to think about. This is why I wanted to do this episode. I just had not really thought about what genetic testing could do for the lifespan of our canine patients. This was fun. Gang, thanks for being here, thanks for checking it out. Take care of yourselves. Thanks again to Embark for making this episode possible. Guys, I will talk to you next week.
Editor: Dustin Bays
www.baysbrass.com
@Bays4Bays Twitter/Instagram
