An open letter to all PWD Owners:

Dear Portuguese Water Dog Owner,

The Heart Committee of the Portuguese Water Dog Club of America (PWDCA), along with the Portuguese Water Dog Foundation, Inc. is asking for your help in eliminating a devastating genetic abnormality that affects our breed. This inherited disease, which always kills, is Juvenile Dilated Cardiomyopathy (JDCM).

As you may be aware, JDCM is a recessively inherited trait that causes sudden death in puppies anywhere from 5 weeks to 7 months of age. Both parents must carry the gene and pass it on to a puppy for it to be affected with the disease. The PWDCA and the Portuguese Water Dog Foundation (PWDF) are sponsoring research at the University of Pennsylvania to determine the underlying genetic cause of this disease and to develop a test in order to determine which dogs carry the defective gene. We are fortunate to have such a prestigious research institution as the University of Pennsylvania studying this disease in our breed but we need your help for them to be successful.

If you have had a PWD puppy die from JDCM or from any unidentified cause and not notified the PWDCA Heart Committee, we ask that you please do so. If you do not wish to share the information with the club, we ask that at the very least, you share it with the U of PA researchers. Their contact information is on the following pages. It is absolutely necessary to keep track of the carriers of this disease. By doing so, we can hopefully insure that future puppy deaths will be avoided. If you know of puppies who've died, please let a Heart Committee member know and we can pursue that information. Confidentiality will be honored upon request. As a Portuguese Water Dog owner, if your dog(s) has been identified as carrying the JDCM gene or is related to a dog that carries it, it is vital to provide your dog(s) DNA to the researchers. Blood from carriers and relatives of carriers is needed to find the JDCM gene among the thousands of genes located in the PWD genome. The more DNA the researchers have to work with, the greater become the chances of finding the defective gene.

The PWDCA Heart Committee strongly urges you to take the time to have blood samples from your dog submitted to the JDCM research project in order that the study may proceed as quickly as possible.  If your dog is a carrier, is related to one, or is related to a puppy who has died, all that is required of you is the time to take your dog to a veterinarian and the cost of drawing the blood sample. Your dog will not be harmed in any way while having the blood drawn. Should you be unable to cover the cost, the Portuguese Water Dog Foundation does have a limited amount of funds available to reimburse those dog owners in need of such funds. Please be assured that all information will be kept confidential by the University of Pennsylvania and will not be shared, without your permission, with the Heart Committee, the PWDF, or the PWDCA.  If you truly value your dog and the breed, this is how you can do your part to make a major difference for generations to come. 

Our goal is to eliminate this genetic defect from our breed.

It is critical to perform postmortem examinations on puppies who die suddenly!

Should your puppy die before the age of 7 months, as devastating as it is, please help us with this time sensitive task. Notify a PWDCA Heart Committee member immediately or call the primary researchers at the University of Pennsylvania.

Owner consent forms with tissue/blood sample submission instructions provide details concerning what to do and where to have your veterinarian send the needed samples:
Blood sample form
Tissue sample form

ALL information will be kept confidential.

Should you have any questions, please feel free to contact a PWDCA Heart Committee member or one of the researchers.  We encourage your participation and support in helping find a solution to this devastating disease.

Sincerely,

The PWDCA Heart Committee

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Last Edited: April 15, 2007