Why Not To Ever Get a Shar Pei!!!!

[EllenD]

I love him dearly, I really do, but oh, the health issues!!! I could have bought a new full-size pickup with the money I've spent on vet bills for him throughout his first 3 years of life!!! Too much skin and too many wrinkles, the eye-tacking surgeries, the skin infections, and the chronic ear infections that are now resulting in ear surgery to open-up his ear canals...He has mucinosis all over the back of his hind legs that can get broken-open and become infected at any time, he's constantly getting infected hair-follicles/whisker follicles because of the wrinkles and having to be on topical antibiotics and anti-fungals...Never again!!!

It's a shame too, because they purposely breed them this way, the more wrinkles they have, the "better quality" they are, the more money they bring...The more "Mucin" they have in their skin, the more wrinkles they have. So they are bred to have the highest amount of Mucin possible, and this is what happens to them...His poor ears are currently full of what looks like bright green, thick snot...I finally can't take it anymore and don't want him to suffer anymore with these ear infections, so he's going to have the surgery to permanently change the structure of his ear canals so it will be a straight shot from the openings to his eardrums...I feel so bad for him, he's always miserable...

Never again...I love him, but never again...

 

[noodles123]

They are easily in the top 3 cutest dogs of all time list for me...I have heard they have lots of issues though....SO CUTE....BUT SO EXPENSIVE... lol
It's funny that you have one---I feel like a lot of people don't think they are as cute as I do...Seriously though---how could anyone not love those noses?!

 

[RavensGryf]

Oh no, I’m so sorry you’re going through this! I love Shar Pei too, but have read about the plethora of dreaded health issues.

Have you heard about the traditional Chinese “bone mouth” Shar Pei? If you haven’t, google it. They have much less wrinkles and mucin. I’ve read that in the US they like them with more exaggerated features and breed them that way, and consequently have created such an unhealthy breed.

I feel for you with the expense. Although not as much as surgery, my Thai Ridgeback has been diagnosed with severe food intolerances to the most common ingredients in dog food. The highest quality food all have offending ingredients (peas, rice and or potatoes being in everything. So the only thing without those ingredients as well as being safe to handle, is pre-packaged raw dog food. Super healthy, but $$$$$ so I’m looking for different ways to feed our boy without going broke. He can’t eat hardly anything without an immune response. Parents have been carefully chosen for health, Many of his siblings have gone on to become show dogs with no problems. Just us. Things just happen in some individuals. Like I’m sure some Shar Pei have no problems. But I wouldn’t trade him for anything. I’m sure you love your little guy just as much .

I hope your baby boy is comfortable soon! That sounds like a painful surgery . I’m sure he’ll be getting tons of tlc!

 

[ChristaNL]

Good luck with the surgery.
Poor dog (and every other overbred pup out there).
I hope he feels better soon.

 

[EllenD]

I absolutely love Shar Pei's as far as their looks, they have the most adorable muzzles in the world...I'm constantly grabbing Jett's muzzle and kissing it, he hates it, lol...I grew-up with Pugs, so I have a predisposition for the breeds that most people think are "ugly", lol...I actually got Jett as a puppy about 6 months after my male Pug, Jaeger, passed away at the age of 14 from kidney disease.

I actually "rescued" Jett...His story is a sad one and it still makes me angry whenever I think about it. And to be fair, I knew that he was probably going to have some health issues, at least with his eyes, when I chose to take him in...

His breeder is a very well-known and "reputable" Shar-Pei breeder in the Pennsylvania/Maryland/DC area, and has been breeding Shar-Pei's for decades. I didn't know much about Shar-Pei's honestly, and I had just started thinking about getting another dog, and I really thought I would end-up with another Pug...Then I went to the Avian/Reptile Rescue to work one Sunday, and one of the volunteers is also a Dog-Foster, and she told me that she had gotten a call the night before about a pure-bred Shar Pei puppy that was 14 weeks old and was going to be euthanized by his breeder. The breeder told a close friend what she was planning on doing (just couldn't keep her mouth shut, thank God), and her friend told another friend, and so on, until it got back to this woman who was a volunteer at my Rescue because she was a Dog-Foster and they were trying to convince this breeder to turn-over the puppy instead of euthanizing him...

So basically this breeder had been breeding and selling AKC-Registered Shar-Pei's for years, and she sold the pups for between $2,000-$4,000 per pup, depending on what type of coat they had (Horse-Coat or Brush-Coat), what color they were, and how "wrinkled" they were...the more wrinkled the more they are worth, and depending on the "distribution of wrinkles" the more they cost...Well she had just had a litter of 6 pups that were black, silver, and tan, and they were apparently quite the pups and were bringing huge money...But she had one male puppy left, a black male with a Horse/Bristle-Coat that was the most-wrinkled of them all. She said he was one of the most beautiful pups she had ever bred...However, he was soooooo wrinkled that he had horrible Entropion, which is when they have so much skin over/around their eyes and in their eyelids that their eyelashes are constantly folded into their eyeballs, causing corneal ulcers, constant infections, and eventually blindness...

Now Shar-Peis can have to have "Eye-Tacking" surgery as young puppies even if they aren't officially diagnosed with Entropion, because their eyelids are all naturally wrinkled and loose, so it's pretty common for the pups to have to have their eyes "Tacked", which just means putting sutures in both the upper and lower eyelids to keep them pulled away from their eyes, and then as they grow their eyelids will stay away from their eyes...If the eye-tacking surgery doesn't work or if they aren't even able to do eye-tacking surgery because it's so bad, then they are officially diagnosed with Entropion, and they have to have a much more invasive surgery where they actually remove strips of skin from both their upper and lower eyelids to make them shorter so their lashes won't be in their eyeballs...

Here's the problem: If a Shar-Pei puppy is officially diagnosed with Entropion and they have to have the invasive surgery to remove skin from their eyelids, their parents can no-longer be bred to produce AKC-Registered puppies ever again, even if it's just one puppy with Entropion they have produced, because the AKC doesn't want them to be bred purposely to have those issues. SO...That meant that because of Jett being born with Entropion, his breeder could no-longer breed AKC puppies from his parents ever again...His breeder had a Vet who was willing to attempt eye-tacking surgery on both his eyes 3 TIMES ON EACH EYE!!! She was desperately trying to get the eye-tacking to work so that he wouldn't be diagnosed with Entropion, but it didn't work and Jett was diagnosed with Entropion...So his breeder decided to make a deal with her Vet to just euthanize Jett and pretend like he was never born to begin with, and that the litter was only 5 pups instead of 6 (all 5 other pups were already sold and gone, Jett was the only one left, and she pulled all the ads down and told everyone that the litter was only 5 pups and they had all been sold. So this breeder and her Vet, who she no doubt spent a fortune with every month/year, made the decision to kill Jett and pretend like he never existed...but she just couldn't keep her mouth shut...Now she could have gone the route of just selling him un-registered for less money as simply a "pet" quality puppy, but no, she wanted him to be wiped-off the face of the earth...Well then I got involved...I basically called her and told her very clearly that either she was going to sell me the puppy without registering him, or I was going to blast her all over the internet/Social Media and expose both her and her Vet and what they were going to do...So I drove the 2 hours to her house and picked-up Jett...

He's my little wrinkle...

 

[EllenD]

Here you can see his right eye when he was about 15 weeks-old, it's the eye he's now completely blind in...

And here you can see that he's a bit disproportionate, lol...My mom says "He's like a gigantic head on a stick"...

Side-Eye...

 

[RavensGryf]

It was meant to be that you ended up with your sweet pup. Jett was meant to live, and be with you. He is honestly so cute! I can see why you’re always grabbing his muzzle and kissing it lol!

Good luck with the ear surgery. Hopefully you are almost done with surgeries, and the worst of his problems are over!

 

[ChristaNL]

To completely abandon al Xmas-cheer etc.

How the < insert helpless but very forcefull swearing> can someone in any way claim to be a "reputable breeder" while shovelling the misfits under the carpet and deny they ever happened just to keep intentionally breeding more handicapped dogs next to the pricey ones?!
The first fail-puppy ever should have been a warning and an ehtical (if not yet legally enforced) decision NOT to breed those dogs ever again should have been the next step!
There is NOTHING reputable about this person exept (maybe) the taxreceipts.


Willingly and deliberately creating (long/short) suffering animals is never acceptable: birds, dogs, fish, fleas, it does not matter. We know way too much now to ever go back to "I had nooooooo idea".


These people should be courtmarshalled (or something like it)-- I know we live in a world where money will forever trump animal wellbeing and -health, but if your own breedderssociety has rules about these things... you can rest assured that is really has gone waaay past acceptable in anyones eyes.
(except for the ones who cannot see past the dollarsigns... and these people really should be stopped.)


You saved the life of this one (and trying your utmost to make his life as good as it can possibly get) but I am left wondering how many "unwanted failures" are already burried underneath the plausible-denial-bush in her backyard (and how many more will follow).


It is not like no-one will ever *not* breed the (borderline) non-failures.. so she is guilty of generations more miserable puppies to come. (Even if they are not born on her property.)

 

[EllenD]

Yep, Christa you are exactly right. And unfortunately, as I've learned since adopting Jett, when it comes to the AKC/Show-Dog community, this is not at all uncommon. In fact it's so common that it's actually "accepted" within that community, or that "business", and these AKC breeders who are breeding the big-money dogs do this kind of thing on a regular basis, everyone within the community knows it (including a lot of the AKC people I'm told), and it's simply not spoken about out-loud. It's just the way things are.

I didn't know anything at all about pure-bred dogs, the AKC standards and their breeding rules in-regard to health/medical/congenital issues, or these kinds of breeding practices before I adopted Jett, nor do I really know much about it now...I don't want to know anything about it if I'm being honest. However, I did learn that within each AKC-recognized breed there are certain physical/medical/congenital issues and conditions/diseases that the AKC has deemed "A product of the common breeding-practices of each, individual breed", and so the AKC has made these types of rules about continuing to breed AKC-registered parent-dogs who produce pups who are born with any of these issues and still being able to AKC-register these pups. HOWEVER,
as I was told by a couple of people who have been involved in that world, the problem is obviously created by the AKC to begin with, because at the same time they are telling breeders "You can no longer AKC-register puppies from either of those parent-dogs any longer because they've produced a puppy with these traits/conditions, THEY LIST MOST OF THOSE PHYSICAL TRAITS AND IN A LOT OF CASES THE VISUAL EFFECTS THAT RESULT FROM THOSE SAME PHYSICAL/MEDICAL CONDITIONS AS BEING THE MOST "DESIRABLE PHYSICAL TRAITS OF THE BREEDS, AND A LOT OF THE PERMANENTLY-DEBILITATING EFFECTS OF THESE MEDICAL CONDITIONS ARE ACTUALLY LISTED AS THE "AKC STANDARDS FOR THE BREED"! So the AKC (and as I'm told ALL of the dog-breed accreditation societies/organizations that are recognized in the show-dog world) requires each dog breed to display certain physical traits in order to even be eligible to obtain AKC accreditation, and a lot of those traits are the visual, physical effects of purposely breeding them to have these congenital conditions...Catch-22 much? lol...

I was told by a few different people that breeders who breed and sell "show-quality" dogs very often "make puppies go away" so that their parent dogs will be allowed to retain their AKC and other breeding accreditations. And yes Christa, these are the breeders who are considered to be the most "reputable" and successful (your comment is the reason I put the word "reputable" in quotations in my initial post, as their definition of "reputable" and mine are two entirely different things. Jett's breeder has been breeding show-quality Shar-Pei's for over 20 years, and I guess she retired from breeding the "show-quality" puppies, or puppies that are bred for the show-world specifically, and are sold as such. But she still breeds the same show-quality parent-dogs in order to simply make a bunch of money selling what she advertises as "Show-Quality Pet Shar Pei puppies". And she's still breeding them to this day, although not often anymore. She owns two males and four females, but she's only advertised 2-3 litters this year and last year (yes, she's being watched closely by many), but they are still AKC-registered puppies. I really thought after putting the fear of God in her 3 years ago that she would at least stop registering the pups with the AKC to avoid both criminal and civil legal issues with them (Yes, the AKC sues the hell out of breeders who they can prove have done what Jett's breeder did/does, even though they pretty much require them to follow these horrendous and cruel breeding-practices in-order to obtain AKC-accreditation in the first place)...I really thought she would just breed pure-bred puppies as family pets, as even without them being AKC-registered, pure-bred Shar Pei pups go for between $1,500-$2,000 a puppy anyway. That's a good chunk of change if you're having litters of 6+ pups per litter, and with 4 female breeders...But no, apparently she has to get $3,000-$4,000 per put...I was told that when she was selling actual "show-quality" puppies that were bred to be strictly show-dogs and not pets, they were sold for up to $20,000 per puppy...I can't imagine what their health issues were like...

In the meantime, poor Jett is blind in his right eye permanently, and he has to have the inside of both of his ears basically "gutted" so that his ear-canals are completely straight tubes from the eardrum out. They remove all of the fleshy/tissue structures from their outer ears, any places/crevices that can retain moisture are cut out completely, and then they basically scrape every inch of his ear-canal until it bleeds, so that it will heal the way they want it to and in the shape that they want it to...It's a horrible surgery that is very commonly done on pet Rabbits with great success.

Right now I'm debating doing both ears at the same time or just one at a time...On one hand I want to do both at the same time just to get it over with and so he only has to go under anesthesia once (the more wrinkled they are, the more breathing issues they also have), and he'll only have to go in to the Vet office once, etc. On the other hand, my Vet told me that it's an extremely painful surgery, and sometimes when they do both ears at the same time on Rabbits, they actually scream the entire rest of the day and all through the first night from the pain, even though they are on morphine the entire time...I got a second-opinion from another very well-respected, local dog vet who is also a general-surgeon, and he said he absolutely needs the surgery on both ears, but he wouldn't do both at the same time due to the pain and the stress on them...So I have to make that decision by Monday...I wish they could just keep him in the hospital for the first day/night and just keep him totally sedated the entire time so that it wouldn't be so bad when he woke up the next day, but they won't do that...

 

[EllenD]

Just so you can see how "well-bred" Jett is (sarcastic lol), I found this photo of him from the first week I brought him home; he's around 14 weeks-old in this photo. You can see just how much skin we're talking about, and just how much Mucin he has in his skin...His rear Hocks are covered with "Mucinosis", which are areas covered with patches of hundreds of little, tiny vesicles filled with clear, sticky liquid (the Mucin). They have so much extra Mucin in their skin that it has nowhere else to go, and so these vesicles form all over their rear Hocks (backs of their back-legs), on their front legs around their elbows, around the base of their tail/anus, and on his chest as well. Thank god that the Mucinosis vesicles are very strong, they aren't at all like "blisters" that easily pop, they are extremely strong-walled and the only way they rupture and leak the Mucin inside them is if the dog slides against pavement or is burnt, etc. I couldn't scratch them open with my nails if I wanted to, that's how tough they are. This is the only good thing about them, because whenever they do rupture and the Mucin leaks out, they almost always become severely infected, and if the dog isn't put on oral and/or injected antibiotics immediately, they almost always end up with large areas of necrosis in the area, often resulting in large tissue debridement and/or amputation...

But here you can see what we are dealing with pretty clearly...

Yes, his eyes are in there...somewhere.
Poor little dude...Though I would be lying if I said I didn't love his HUGE, adult muzzle, which was formed by the Mucin too...It's so cute!

 

[ChristaNL]

We live an a crazy. crazy world.
Jett is so lucky you found him!


I would be inclined to go with- yes plze ...put him in an artificial coma a day after and get it all done right the first time, so he does not have to go through that twice.
I am so sad for him (and you) that all of this has to happen just because some people love deformed animals.


I remember the comments of an experienced vet on his first time he was asked to judge a dogshow - I forget exacly what breed (something like a bernese mountaindog or something shorthaired in that sizegroup) - and his comment was: " I just could not find a nice, healtylooking wellproportioned dog among them, they were all over the top, overbuild, oversized with way too crude bonestructures."
Only to learn later that was "a race characteristic"...

 

[EllenD]

I think that's the way I'm leaning too, I want to get it all done at once so he doesn't have to go through that whole thing twice. I'm going to push the issue about keeping him sedated the entire day/night of the surgery in the hospital, or at the very least "out of it" with some good opiates...They said that they'll most likely send him home with Fentanyl-patches, so that should do the trick, lol. He weighed 72 pounds at his last appointment, so he can handle the good drugs.

That whole "show-dog" world is as inhumane as it gets, and unfortunately it is that way for the "show-bird" world, the "show-rabbit' world, and probably the rest of them. A girl I have known since we were like 11-12 years old and I consider a pretty close friend has been a breeder/shower in the "show-rabbit" world for quite a long time now, she got married right after college and moved to Virginia, and she and her husband are really, really into it. She posts photos of her rabbits on Facebook, as well as her entire breeding/housing set-up, and it's just as big, competitive, and intense as the show-dog world is...She's spent a fortune buying show-quality rabbits to breed and get started, the huge amount of cages it requires because you have to separate them all from each other (apparently in addition to constantly breeding anything that moves, rabbits also have issues getting along with each other and often kill each other), the strict and expensive, high-quality diet of certain types of hay, pellets, and then a ton of supplements, and then they do a lot of their own veterinary/medical stuff themselves at home, so they order all their own antibiotics, anti-fungals, IV kits and bags of different fluids (they load them full of fluid before shows to make them look "plumper" or something, I don't know the specifics, just see photos of multiple rabbits hooked to IV bags hanging from their cages), all kinds of really expensive grooming products, etc. It's insane...She sells her baby bunnies for hundreds to thousands of dollars a piece!!! Bunnies! And the "Lop-eared" rabbits have exactly the same issue that Jett has with his ears, they are constantly closed by the ear being folded down over the ear canal, and they have very tight, convoluted ear-canals, so they often have the same surgery that Jett is having to change the entire anatomy of their ear-canals...but they have to make sure that it's not visible from the outside because that will end their "show careers"...

I hate this "using animals for profit" world, but it's a multi-billion dollar industry, especially in the US, it happens with dogs, special breeds of domestic cats, rabbits, guinea pigs, reptiles and amphibians are HUGE in the "show world", in-particular snakes, parrots/birds, primates, marsupials, etc. It's terrible...