Urogenital problems in male military working dogs: Incidence, age at onset, and associated factors in a retrospective electronic veterinary health record cohort, 2018-2025.

Urogenital problems are commonly reported in military working dogs, yet the population-level burden has not been quantified. We conducted a retrospective cohort study to estimate the incidence, prevalence, and associated factors of recorded urogenital problems in male military working dogs. Using a rules-based text-classification framework, we categorized 39,752 clinical Master Problem List entries from 4775 dogs, identifying 2231 urogenital problems from 1279 male dogs. Nine veterinarians independently reviewed 750 unique problem-list terms. The classifier's precision and recall against human reviewer selection for the urogenital call were 0.98 and 0.95 per entry. Across the six anatomic subcategories precision ranged from 0.55 to 1.00 and recall from 0.61 to 0.98 per unique problem term. Annual incidence of any urogenital problem ranged from 12.2 to 21.1 per 100 dog-years with no trend over time. Scrotal dermatitis showed seasonal variation, peaking in January compared with September (IRR 6.46, 95% CI 3.92-10.65). Median age at first entry was 3.1 years for scrotal and 6.1 years for prostatic problems. German Shepherds had a higher rate of a first recorded renal problem than Belgian Malinois (HR 2.14, 95% CI 1.57-2.91), while recorded renal problems occurred at a lower rate in the East (HR 0.61, 95% CI 0.43-0.87) and Pacific (HR 0.43, 95% CI 0.28-0.67) regions than in the West. These findings establish baseline urogenital problem epidemiology for military working dogs and demonstrate a valid approach to syndromic surveillance from electronic veterinary health records. Improved clinical practice guidelines for medical record reporting would strengthen that surveillance.