There’s lots of good news on the Scottie Health front:  eyes, hips, ears, skin, lungs…the things that can be a problem in so many other breeds just aren’t a concern with the Scotties we’ve known and bred.

A little internet research will yield several sites that go into this stuff in more detail, but here are a few key points:

VonWillebrand’s Disease (vWD) is essentially a bleeding disease, and can be screened out with genetic testing, as can Craniomandibular Osteopathy (CMO), which results in jaw and skull bone swelling.

Scottie Cramp (SC) is a much more complicated (and less serious) affair than vWD: in layman’s terms, it means that when the dog is excited or exercising, messages from its brain to its back end can get garbled, resulting in anything from a little hop in the gait to a full-on “cramp” that stops the dog until it passes (in seconds or minutes).  There is no genetic test for SC, and it has been estimated that up to 90% of Scotties have it.  However, in the vast majority of cases it is so mild that it is unnoticeable, and even the few serious cases aren’t painful for the dog.  This is the only real downside to the breed: there is a very slight chance that your dog might have a serious case of SC.  In 20 years we’ve bred over 250 puppies, and had only one such dog, Clementine, born in 2005.  Oddly enough, she only cramped when on a leash and around other dogs at the same time.  In the garden, off leash, and in the house, her mobility was normal, and she was a lovely-tempered charmer who made an excellent companion.  In her case, we took her back from the people who bought her, as they were avid walkers, and gave them a puppy from our next litter, and placed Clementine in a home with a big backyard which offered an alternative to walks.  Even so, we didn’t breed Clementine’s mother again, and we stopped using the stud we’d purchased service from.

Drowning may not seem like a breed-specific health issue, but pools are a big risk to Scotties – especially Scottie pups.  They love the water and they love swimming, but they’re notoriously bad at it.  Scots in the water must be closely supervised, and Scots in a pool or other abruptly deep water should be avoided at all costs.  If you have a pool or pond, it must be securely fenced in before you get a Scottie, and your family must be committed to keeping things secure.  We speak from experience on this: we sold a puppy to a family with a pool and pond, both fenced in, but their 10 week old puppy found a way in and drowned – this is heartbreaking for both owner and breeder.  Scottie drownings in pools are such a problem that the American Kennel Club sends a warning about them to everyone who registers a Scot.  Now, this doesn’t mean you can’t take your Scottie with you on holiday! We’ve had our Scots at the lake, and they’ve been fine because the waterfront has been very gradual and shallow.  As long as they have the option to swim back when they (quickly) get tired, they can enjoy the water with you; pools don’t provide this option.  (Scottie-sized life jackets are more and more available these days – dogs who spend a lot of time around the water should no doubt have one.)

Some say that Cushing’s Syndrome is a Scottie health issue, but according to the American Kennel Club website: “It is, as yet, unknown whether there is an inherited predisposition to Cushing’s Syndrome in Scottish Terriers.”  We’ve had no experience with it.

Unfortunately, Scotties are more likely to get bladder cancer than other breeds; this poses the greatest problem for the breed.  Thankfully, it tends to surface quite a bit later in the dog’s life, and treatment with Piroxicam, a nonsteroidal anti inflammatory, can extend the dogs life’s by several months — even a year, depending on the dog.