The Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine's Cavalier heart study recently passed the six-month mark. The whole cardio team looks forward to "Cavalier Fridays," when we get to cuddle with, ahem, examine, these beautiful dogs! Our study began in Summer 2019, and we thought this would be a good time for an update on our progress.  As of last week, we've screened 139 dogs and enrolled 46 heart-healthy cavaliers. That means almost 70% of the Cavaliers we've screened are affected by cardiac disease. Part of what we hope to learn in this study is the underlying cause of the high prevalence of mitral valve disease in this breed, and to give owners better tools for predicting future outcomes. All we can do for now is reassure owners that, for most of these dogs, this disease is very slowly progressive, and with annual monitoring, these Cavaliers are likely to stay happy and healthy for a long time to come. 

We still need 74 more dogs to meet our goal of enrolling 120 heart-healthy Cavaliers. Please spread the word about this study to your Cavie-loving friends. And if you've recently brought a new Cavalier (or ten!) into your life, please get in touch.

Interested owners may contact Mindy Quigley: mindyq@vt.edu or 540-231-1363.

Calling all Cavalier King Charles Spaniels!

We're pleased to announce that we'll be opening our a longitudinal study of Cavalier hearts on May 3rd. We've been applying for additional funding since our Jump crowdfunding campaign ended, and have now received grants from the AKC Canine Health Foundation and the Veterinary Memorial Fund. These grants will be combined with your generous gifts and an extra contribution from the Cavalier Heath Fund, and will allow us to enroll 120 healthy Cavaliers and follow them for three years! Our hope is that 3-D echo measurements can be used to predict the future onset and severity of mitral valve disease in these dogs.

ELIGIBILITY

• Purebred Cavalier King Charles Spaniels who are ≥18 months of age
• Otherwise healthy
• No history of heart disease
• Mild murmurs (2/6 or less) are acceptable

WHAT IS REQUIRED?

Dogs will undergo standard echocardiographic and physical examination to establish baseline measurements. Dogs will return for recheck examinations every 4 months until mitral valve disease develops or until the end of the study period (2022). All appointments must take place at the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine in Blacksburg, Virginia.

Interested owners may contact Mindy Quigley directly: mindyq@vt.edu or 540-231-1363. Enrollment will be on a rolling basis, beginning in May, 2019.

We are still in awe of the tremendous support our Cavalier heart project garnered. Thanks to everyone who donated or took the time to share the campaign on social media. 

We'll be spending the summer raising additional funds and looking into the purchase of a new, cutting-edge echo machine that will give us the best quality data for our Cavalier study. If all goes according to plan, we should start enrolling dogs in the study later in the fall. We will send out another update when we're up and running. We will be looking to enroll healthy Cavaliers, who don't yet have murmurs or any other signs of heart disease. We'll follow them over several years to see if our 3D echo method can help to predict which dogs are more likely to get sick.

For those who haven't yet contributed to our research but would like to, please contact Courtney Sibiga, email: <csibiga@vt.edu> | phone: 540-231-4259 to find out how you can help.

Thank you to the many donors who've given their "whole-hearted" support to our Cavalier King Charles Spaniel research project. As of this morning, 86 donors from 23 states have donated over $12,000! We owe a special thank you to the Cavalier Health Fund. Their generous gift will help us get the study started sooner and enroll even more Cavaliers as we begin to better understand why mitral valve disease hits the breed so hard.

We have less than three days left before the campaign closes. While we are delighted to have exceeded our original fundraising goal, we continue to seek more funds to ensure we can recruit a large number of cavaliers. The more dogs we enroll, the more robust the data we collect will be. So please continue to spread the word to all of your Cavie-loving friends, and if you haven't donated yet, please take a moment to do so now. We love this breed with all our hearts and want to do everything we can to keep owners from losing their beloved pups to mitral valve disease.

Thank you!

The Cardio Team

Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine

Thanks to your generosity, the Whole-Hearted Help for Cavaliers project has exceeded our original fundraising goal. We know that each gift honors a special dog, and it's those dogs who motivate us to keep working. This campaign has been an amazing and poignant experience for us. To know that this project matters to you, and that we are all -- owners, breed groups, veterinarians, and researchers -- working on this problem together, is beyond inspiring.  

Please be assured that every dollar you give, even now that we've exceeded the goal, will be spent directly on this project. Please continue to spread the word over the next nine days until the campaign ends. 

Thank you from the bottom of our hearts,

The Cardio Team

Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine

Thanks to incredible supporters like you, we are almost halfway to our fundraising goal already. We are so grateful to everyone who has donated to support this project to improve the cardiac health of this beloved breed. 

Please continue to spread the word. When we started on this crowdfunding journey, we feared that our $7,500 goal was too high to achieve. Now we believe that, with your continued support, we can meet and even exceed the goal and help more Cavaliers enroll in this study. Every dollar raised through this campaign will be spent on this project. If we exceed the goal, we will get up and running sooner and fund enrollment for even more dogs, making the ultimate results of our study more powerful.

We are so grateful.