BWErick

Hello, I just had a few questions about this disease.
But first:
My boy Casey (10 moths old) cut one of his ears on a plant in the back yard while digging the other day while we were out of the house. There were blood drops all over our backyard, so we assume it bleed for quite a while :/ we took him to an animal hospital and it turned out that though the cut was very small, he had opened a vessel in his ear.
Now for my questions. Are cuts like that harder to heal? Does the continuous bleeding mean vWD? If he did have vWD, would it be a difficult life for my Casey?

Sorry for the lengthy post, I'm just a little worried.

His bleeding is under control now. The vet cauterized the cut, but a strong head shake undid that very quickly. Now he is bandaged up and tape is keeping his (natural) ear elevated. He also has a cone on and is thoroughly pissed because of it
Also: I'm going to get him health tested as soon as we get the cut healed up.

the_discowhore

Ears are notorious for bleeding a LOT when they get cut, so your boy may not actually have vWD- the only way to know for sure is to get the DNA test done through VetGen.

There are 3 possible results from this test; clear, carrier or affected.
Clear means he has no copies of the gene, and does not have the disease
Carrier means he has 1 copy of the gene, so he is carrying it, but does not have the disease
Affected means he has 2 copies of the gene, and therefore has vWD.

To complicate things further, dogs that are vWD affected may not be clinically affected (i.e. they have the disease but have no symptoms). There is no test for clinically/not clinically affected, and dogs can change from not clinically affected to clinically affected at any stage in their life.

Once you know the results, if he does turn out to be affected, you can put precautionary measures in place such as using a vet clinic that stocks plasma and ensuring some is on hand for any surgery he has. This makes treatment more expensive. I have heard that further complications can arise if you dog has liver disease and is vWD affected, so I would be screening yearly for liver disease.

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BWErick

Thank you for pointing me towards VetGen, and for your information.

I'm glad that though it is a complication, it can be dealt with. That's what I was most worried about

DogsR4Life

Do you keep him outside while your gone? They tend to get into things to entertain themselves, you might find yourself taking more frequent visits to the vet! Have you thought of crate training him?

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BWErick

He is crate trained, but we like to leave him outside every now and then. We do both pretty evenly. We even leave him inside sometimes. He's not destructive at all (though he does get into the trash)