The Dog Aging Project with Audrey Ruple

Travis Williams (00:08.174)

When do you want your dog to live? While forever is the only acceptable answer to that question, it's probably not the most realistic one. And while we know the age -old best friend of humans tend to not live all that long, do we really understand why and do we have any ideas as to how we might help extend those lives? Well, Virginia Tech's Audrey Ruple joined us to talk about this very topic and an effort she's involved with to get some answers to those very questions as well as a lot of others.

Audrey is an associate professor of quantitative epidemiology as well as the Metcalfe Professor of Veterinary Medical Informatics and the program director of the Biomedical and Veterinary Sciences graduate program over in the Virginia Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine. Audrey and I chatted about the dog aging project. We talked about the types of data they're getting from thousands of dogs across the country and the things they hope to learn not only about the dogs but about the environments the dogs live in and about their owners.

She shared some basic tips on what we can do to help our favorite four -legged friends live their longest and best lives, and she also shared her favorite fictional dog. And don't worry, there's also a shout out to cats in the podcast. The animal though, not the musical. I'm Travis Williams, and this is Virginia Tech's Curious Conversations.

Williams:

So I guess just to start this off, what is the Dog Aging Project?

Ruple:

The Dog Aging Project is a long -term, longitudinal project where we're collecting information from our companion dogs that are owned all across the United States. And so these are dogs that are owned by humans and living with them in their homes. These are truly companion animals. And we are studying their life events and all of their exposures and health outcomes and then using that information to determine the keys to healthy aging and also risks to health that can impact both dogs and humans. How long has the study been going on? So we were funded under our current funding mechanism, which was an NIH grant. It's a U -19 program grant that was funded in 2018. We opened up for our first enrollment and for our participant enrollments at the end of 2019, so just before the pandemic. And we're still enrolling dogs now.

Williams:

Wow. And so how many dogs roughly are you talking about? We are at almost 50 ,000 dogs enrolled in this project. And from all over just the country or are there international dogs as well?

Ruple:

We are United States based only, but that does include, it's not just the continental United States. So we do include Hawaii and Alaska, not yet Puerto Rico, but we're working on that. It's our next vision quest, but yeah, we are a US based population study.

Williams:

So what types of data are you asking for from, I guess owners, because I don't, I don't guess that the dogs actually send you back the data themselves. That's a different type of study.

Ruple:

It is truly a community science project. So obviously our dog owners are the biggest key to the success of this project. So our dog owners provide obviously a lot of the information about the dogs. And by that I mean we have a survey based platform for a lot of the information we collect in on all of those dogs, all 50 ,000 of those dogs. We're collecting information about that those dogs lifestyle, health events, so all the health outcomes that happen, but also things like what types of preventive medications have they had, are they getting vaccinated, those types of things. But then we get information about diet and nutrition, exercise, what their household environment is like and how stable that environment is. So in other words, do they move frequently or are they living in the same household for their whole lifespan? So all of that information is information we're collecting directly from the dog owners.

Some of our dogs actually do give us information through things like cheek swabs. We'll get genomic information on the dogs so we can actually look at their genome. We'll collect peripheral blood, so just a routine blood sample collection where we'll get things like the complete blood count and look at metabolomics. We're able to look at some of the metabolites too through that blood collection. We do urine collection and look at urinalyses.

We get fecal collections and look at fecal microbiome. And we also collect hair to look at toxicology and cortisol. So we do get information directly from the dogs as well. And then in addition to that data that we're collecting directly from dog owners and from the dogs, we also have really enriched our data set through use of spatial joining systems. So in other words, we geolocate where these dogs live. So we combine information about things like temperature and precipitation. We also get information about air pollution. We get information about neighborhood walkability and safety scores. So like what kind of a neighborhood do these dogs live in? We also get information about the socio demographics around those areas that the dogs are living in. So we end up, we're able to really enrich this data set through other data sources that are available. So it ends up being a very well -defined and, rich data set about these dogs whole life existence.

Williams:

Yeah, it sounds like you're not just learning a lot about dogs. You're learning a lot about everything, like everything about where the dog lives, like environments.

Ruple:

Yes, absolutely. And that's so I'm the head of the environment core, which is one of the core parts of the dog aging project. And the reason that I do what I do is because dogs are good sentinels for human health hazards. And I mean that in the same way that canaries were used as sentinels for coal miners. Dogs are experiencing our environment in much the same way that humans do. In fact, they move through the environment and similarly to children. They're kind of closer to the ground, putting everything in their mouth, sniffing everything, licking everything. So dogs end up having these huge exposures to our environment that are obviously really similar to the types of things that we're exposed to but they live a shorter lifespan. So we can actually get whole life information about all of their exposomes, so all the things that they've been exposed to through their entire lifespan in a very short period of time.

Williams:

Well, as a father of a five -year -old, that checks out completely. So what are the benefits to studying, being able to look at the full length of something's life? Oh, that's a great question.

Ruple:

So we talk about something in exposure science called latency. And that's the time that it takes from an exposure to have occurred and a disease or a health outcome to happen. And we know from human health research that sometimes those exposure latency periods in human populations can be decades. And trying to fund studies where you're looking at data collection that literally takes place over 60 or 70 years where you're going to have lots to follow up, people are going to get tired of filling out surveys for instance every year. But also some of these outcomes are really rare. And by rare, I mean things like cancer, which we talk about a lot in our society, but when you look at population wise, it's still a rare outcome. So gathering the type of information and the huge quantity of information you would need to do over decades worth of time, it's a very difficult thing to do.

One of the big benefits of using dogs for this type of work is that we can get that whole lifetime experience in something like seven to 15 years. And we can collect that information longitudinally, meaning we know when the exposures are occurring. So we know that the exposures occur before the health outcome occurs. So we have this time piece that's accounted for in the way they were collecting these data. But it's also something that allows us to see all of the health outcomes that have happened over the course of the lifespan. As we know, dogs in this country have a very sophisticated healthcare system that's available to them. So dogs are able to go to really well -educated doctors that are able to then send them to specialist institutions, they're able to get really rich diagnostic procedures done and often those things that we're doing these diagnoses on are really similar and mimic kind of the lifespan of what happens in human populations. But we're able to really address those and collect information about them over the course of the lifespan of that dog. Yeah.

Williams:

So I know that the study is fairly, I guess, fairly new. And in fact, that it's probably what about five or six years old at this point, if I'm doing math correctly. I'm curious, what are we learning already about dogs?

Ruple:

We have learned a lot about dogs. One of the things, I just mentioned that there's specialist institutions that are available to dogs, but one of the specialties that does not yet exist for our dog companions is geriatrics. So the study of aging or of aged people is, you know, the gerontology is something that exists in human medical systems, but does not yet exist in our canine population.

And it's a needed piece. It's a kind of a missing puzzle piece. It's something that I think we will see as a specialty in the future because dogs are obviously being taken care of much better than they have been previously. They're seen as part of our family. And so people do have dogs that live a very long time because of the types of health care that they're giving them. So in terms of what we're learning about the dogs, even just the being able to characterize what the normal aging process looks like in our...in our companion dogs. A lot of the work that we've done has really been novel. We're developing things like frailty indices. So frailty is a common outcome of aging in human populations. Everybody's probably familiar with that term, becoming frail, and it is about many markers of the aging progression that happens in human populations. It had never been really characterized in a dog population or indexed in a way where we could really compare what frailty looks like, for instance, in a seven -year -old Great Dane as compared to like a 15 -year -old Chihuahua. So figuring out a way to really look at how frailty occurs in dogs of different breeds and sizes was a really important part of some of the work that we've done. We've also looked at things like...feeding frequency and whether that's related to health outcomes. I won't get to the punchline. That one is one that gets the media attention. We're looking at things like those environmental factors that are associated with health outcomes. We're looking at genomic work. One of the pieces that we're working on currently in our lab, which is kind of a fun one and a little bit outside of a little tangential to what I typically do, is even just characterizing how often dog owners are able to correctly identify the breed of their own dog because of that genomic work that we're doing and I think often we take people's word for it when they say that they have a dog of a certain breed but when we look at the genomics it's not always what they think their dog is so that's been really fun too.

Williams:

How do they react to that? Like by the way you actually have a collie I know you thought this was a chihuahua but sorry. Yeah.

Ruple:

Well, we do give the dog owners that participate in the genomics work, they do have the opportunity to provide feedback. Some people just think we're wrong. And I think other people are really enlightened and really surprised by the results. I think one of the things that we are seeing is that often when people adopt a dog, like they don't purchase it from a breeder and they're adopting a dog, they know it's a guess. So they're attributing their dog to a breed that's maybe familiar to them. And then when they get the results back, they're often really excited to know better or with more certainty and precision what breeds their dog might be.

Williams:

Yeah, I think that that would be really helpful. You're right. We've gotten dogs before from just different rescues. And I remember one time we were told that we were getting a black lab. And within about two days of having that dog in our house, we were like, this is actually a Jack Russell and that's a very different dog. And we had a small white dog at that time too. And it kept trying to treat that white dog like it was a rabbit. And so that situation didn't work out. It just didn't. So, well, I guess I'm also curious, are you already learning maybe things about human beings and environments from this study?

Ruple:

Yeah, of course we are. And again, it's that sentinality piece. We're not directly collecting information about the human participants in our study. It's really just about this information from the dogs. Yeah, we have learned a lot about them. We're also learning a lot about the way that humans perceive their dogs, which I find that to be pretty fascinating. This kind of ties into some of the work. I know you spoke with Dr. Courtney Sexton. It really ties into a lot of her interests. But some of the things like, when,

owners are reporting how active their dogs are. What we found is that typically that really depends on the age of the owner. So older owners are more likely to report their dogs as being really active. And that might just be because we're using our own activity levels as kind of the metric that we're comparing against. And so younger owners typically don't say that their dogs are super active or they might even call them, you know, moderately active or even lazy, whereas older owners typically think of their dogs as being more highly active than they might actually be.

Williams:

Well, I'm also curious, how is the dog aging project, how is it benefiting not just you all and the researchers at the universities that are tapped into, but how might it benefit researchers in the larger, I guess, research community, the world?

Ruple:

Yeah, so this is an open data sharing project. So by that I mean that we anonymize our data, so our privacy of our participants is of utmost importance to us. But we actually release curated datasets at the end of every year. We embargo those information for one year for internal use and also for data at QA, QC, so looking at quality assurance and quality control. But after a year of embargo, we actually release entire curated datasets, and that includes...health information, environmental information, those enriched data sources, so like the temperature and the neighborhood information. All of it is released and people can apply for access. Anyone who is not working for a for -profit institution is able to access this data through a really simple data use agreement. So people agree to not use these data for bad things and we have really started ancillary projects and research projects with researchers from all over the world who are able to access these data and then do their own research. And it's been really wonderful because a lot of this enriched data set is something, I mean, it's not, it's more data than any one of us that are affiliated with the dog aging project could analyze over the course of an entire lifetime. So it's been really great getting to share these data widely.

Williams:

Well, I have two dogs. I should say my family has two dogs and we want them to live forever. I know that that's not actually possible. Well, probably not. We'll see. We'll see where science goes. Who knows? What are some things that I can do to ensure that they have the longest and best life possible?

Ruple:

Well, there's obviously some well -known veterinary care information that I'm going to speak to first because I am a veterinarian in addition to having a PhD. So obviously that preventive care. So see, make sure your dogs are seen by their veterinarian regularly. And by that, I mean, it's typically recommended once a year kind of at a minimum, make sure that vaccines are given on a regular basis, do diagnostic testing if things go awry with your dog. But there's just some basic tried and true care information out there. Obviously having a well -balanced diet, getting adequate exercise, fresh air and sunshine. So all the things that we know are good for us as humans are also good for our dogs, I would also argue plenty of love, affection, and companionship are part of it. That is another part of the things that we're looking at is that social life of these dogs. So those are things that I think also contribute to longevity in our canine companions. Okay. Well, that's also, I'm assuming that you are a dog person yourself. If not, this has got to be miserable for you. I have cats too, but I'm a dog.

Williams:

Okay. Well, I'm curious as a dog person, as a person who studies this, can you watch dog movies? And if so, what is your favorite dog movie?

Ruple:

Dog movies are really tough for me because it seems like every dog movie ends up having some part in it that is absolutely gut -wrenching. And I really struggle actually with most animal movies. So I don't really know that I have a favorite one. I do have some favorite like dog cartoon characters. Like I'm a great Dean person. So I really like Scooby -Doo.

Williams:

I think that's a great answer. Well, thank you so much for talking to me. I really appreciate it.

Outro:

And thanks to Audrey for sharing her insights related to the dog aging project and how we can better take care of some of our favorite four -legged friends. If you or someone you know would make for a great curious conversation, email me at traviskw@vt.edu. I'm Travis Williams and this has been Virginia Tech's Curious Conversations.