Vet World Vol.12 July-2019 Article-18
Research Article
Veterinary World, 12(7): 1046-1051
https://doi.org/10.14202/vetworld.2019.1046-1051
Health problems of Iraqi police dogs referred to Baghdad Veterinary Hospital during 2015-2017
2. Department of Small Animal, Baghdad Veterinary Hospital, Baghdad, Iraq.
Background and Aim: Police dogs in Iraq have been working mostly as explosive detectors since 2003. The health problems of these dogs are unique and have not been reported in literature. This investigation assessed the prevalence of health problems in Police dogs referred to Baghdad Veterinary Hospital during 2015-2017.
Materials and Methods: A total of 1220 police dogs that were referred to Baghdad Veterinary Hospital in 2015-2017 were studied. The dogs were mostly German Shepherd dogs (GSDs) or Belgian Malinois (BM), with an average age of 4.6 years. The dogs' health problems and some of their risk factors were studied.
Results: Congestive heart failure (CHF), babesiosis, various malignancies, and intestinal parasites were the most commonly diagnosed health problems, followed by general aging, bronchopneumonia, otitis, nutritional deficiencies, and anemia. GSDs were more prone to CHF, while BM had more diagnoses of malignancies. Age was associated with both health conditions.
Conclusion: The presence of health problems in these working dogs highlights the need for a stricter and more organized preventive schedule to keep the dogs healthy and efficient at old age. Keywords: health problems, Iraq, police dogs.
Keywords: health problems, Iraq, police dogs.
How to cite this article: Tamimi NSM, Wali AA (2019) Health problems of Iraqi police dogs referred to Baghdad Veterinary Hospital during 2015-2017, Veterinary World, 12(7): 1046-1051.
Received: 05-03-2019 Accepted: 06-06-2019 Published online: 16-07-2019
Corresponding author: Naqa Saleh Mahdi Tamimi E-mail: naqavet2018@gmail.com
DOI: 10.14202/vetworld.2019.1046-1051
Copyright: Tamimi NSM and Wali, et al. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http:// creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.