Good morning all. Was trying to think of a topic for the day and came up with a past experience to pick your brains over.It was a long time in the past, but nobody I have spoken to has ever come across it before. As we have posters here from other countries, I wondered if perhaphs it was a problem that had cropped up abroad. Anyway, here we go with the details.
I had a litter of 11 Wolfhound puppies born, to an imported bitch (Norway)
At birth they looked normal, but within a very short space of time, it became apparent that the pups had something wrong with their front legs, or so it seemed.
It was physically impossible for them to bring their front legs forward, it was almost as if their little legs were strapped to their sides. They could not be manually manipulated either. They sucked from mum, simply by hanging on with their mouths. We were refered to to an orthepeidic (sp) surgeon, who described it as "the shoulder blades were the wrong way around" All but two of the pups were affected, and were pts. The remaining two male pups, were kept here until they were old enough to be castrated and then found pet homes. I kept tabs on them all their life and no problems arose. I spoke to the breeder of the bitch, and she had never come across anything like it before in her line, and it had cetainly never ben seen in this country. Anyone any ideas what it was?

Were the two surviving pups ever able to walk??? Sad situation. :(
I've heard of something like this, and I can't remember where/when I heard about "backwards shoulders". A study was being performed on Rotties??? I'll have to dig and see.

Yes the two remaining pups were perfectly normal, no problems with shoulder blades or anything else, but I had them castrated before finding homes for them, as I didnt want to take the chance of them being used. Any "digging" that you can come up with would be very welcome. Thank you,

An very large leap of the imagination, but was the dam in Norway when that Russian power station blew up. I believe that their were a number of malformed animals born after that if fact I think there still are. Jackie

Oh Jackie, what an interesting but horrific thought!!! I dont know when the blow up was, but the pups were born almost 7 years ago

April 26th 1986 (Chernobyl)

ty beany xxx

Hi Phil, forgot to tell you, but I did a bit of digging after you showed me those wierd photo of the pups. Complete blank on dogs, but I found a couple of possibilities in humans. Were the affected pups all females? Did you notice any other abnormalities (rest of the forelimbs esp. exta digits, shortening etc, immobile necks, abnormal ear positions)?

Hi sis, thank you for looking. Mixed sex puppies. All had front legs shorter than back legs. Very pronounced sternums, and spines starting to twist, no extra toes, but one or two had very long necks.

Hi Phil, I'm guessing at some form of Sprengel's deformity (maybe familial - Corno's disease) plus or minus Klippel-Feil syndrome. But I'm not putting any money on it :-)!

Sharon, ty so much, never heard of either of those two, Im going to search now. xxx

Sharon, Ive just been on Google and typed in "Cornos disease in Canines," and it gave me a page in Portugese which was then translated. Fascinating stuff!!

Hi Phil, found the page. Its talking about uterine "cornos" (horns?) not Dr Renzo Corno of the disease, but interesting stuff all the same :-)