Von Willebrand's Disease in Boston Terriers

Day-to-day life rarely tests a dog's clotting system to its limit. A nail trimmed slightly short, a minor scrape from rough play, a small cut from a bramble - these are exactly the situations a dog with mild von Willebrand's disease usually handles without any visible difference from a dog with normal clotting. The shortage is real, but everyday injuries are small enough that even reduced clotting function is often sufficient.

The disease becomes visible when it meets a bigger challenge. A spay or neuter, a dental extraction, an accidental deep cut, or a significant injury asks far more of the clotting system than a scraped paw does, and that is where affected dogs bleed more heavily, for longer, or ooze from a surgical site that should have sealed cleanly. This is why the diagnosis is so often made in hindsight, after an unexpectedly difficult procedure, rather than picked up in advance.

Ordinary pre-surgical bloodwork does not reliably catch this. A standard blood count and basic clotting screen can look entirely normal in an affected dog, because von Willebrand's disease is a problem with a specific protein rather than a shortage of clotting factors those routine tests are built to detect. Finding it requires either a dedicated von Willebrand factor test or a DNA test looking for the specific inherited variant.

The single best strategy with this disease is finding out before surgery is scheduled, not during it.

If you think your Boston has von willebrand's disease, the plan is three steps: write down what you have seen and when it started, book a veterinary appointment rather than waiting for the next flare, and take video of the behaviour or symptom before you go — the thing you are worried about rarely happens in the consulting room. Screening in the parents covers brachycephalic airway syndrome (boas), patellar luxation, cataracts.

What the vet visit should produce is a diagnosis and a written plan, not just reassurance: what is being ruled out, what the monitoring interval is, and which signs mean you come back sooner. Ask what the treatment costs across a year rather than per visit, because that is the number that decides whether you are managing this condition or reacting to it.

Between appointments, keep a short log — dates, what you saw, what changed. It is the single most useful thing an owner brings to a follow-up, and for von willebrand's disease it is often what separates a clear pattern from a guess.