Those who know Czech - Page 12

Re. loose ligaments... an online friend once told me how she was looking at the pups from a very well-known American show line breeder. He showed her how he would actually select for puppies that were flexible enough to put their whole hock on the ground, and had nice, stretchy ligaments in the front, too, for maximum reach.  

Ligaments are supposed to hold the joints together so they articulate smoothly, not stretch !!!
That guy is selecting for unsoundness.....which is what I have recognised about the show dog breeders of every bred! Everything is extreme! If the judge likes a sloping rear, then let's put the ass on the ground!

Please...Tell me it ain’t so that people/breeders are stretching their puppies ligaments and tendons in hopes of increased range of motion!

The more loose or stretched a ligament is (the connective tissue that holds bone to bone in a joint) will correspond directly to how unstable a joint will become.
The more loose a ligament, the more unstable a joint. The more unstable a joint is, the more incorrect movement (articulation) will happen causing joint damage in form of building an incorrect joint shape or later through the wearing down of cartilage that protects the raw bone in a joint.

Since puppies don‘t have fully a fully developed joint (femur ball/ilium socket) in the hips yet, one should never mechanically over-stretch the tissues that are forming in that area (or any other forming joint like shoulder or hock/ankle/knee). To me, it would be akin to massaging ears in puppyhood...which just breaks down the collagen growth, resulting in softer ears.

Jesse, I don't believe manually stretching is what Sunni was saying. She was saying the breeder selected puppies with very loose ligaments to keep for showing. The breeder Sunni talks about thinks the dogs have better ' flexability,' with loose ligaments...a dummy.

Joan,
I understand. But, you know, it is a short jump in thought that some novice might make and think its a good idea to manually stretch a pup for a hoped for increase in range of motion down the road, that some judges like to see. So for those reading, or finding this thread through google cause they were thinking about doing that,...don‘t.

We know that any young pup legs, which are like rubber still, can be manipulated to do just about any movement like putting a hock on ground. Means nothing IMO.

Joan, yes, that's what I was trying to say. But yeah, there might be some idiot out there that would try to manually stretch the ligaments, too...

The guy I was talking about above is an AKC Breeder of Merit. 

Joanro:If hd is specifically genetic, what is the explanation for not eliminating it from litters where ever parent in the entire pedigree has certified healthy hips? I don't believe the ' hidden gene' retoric, because selecting for KNOW genetic abnormalities can and have been eliminated in dogs. We are talking about 60 plus years of selection based on hd certified breeding stock.

 

Prager: I have no clue what this supposed to prove. I do not know what it means that hips are "specifically genetic"?Also what you or I believe is irrelevant. We are not talking religion here. We need to be talking about what we know and not about what we believe. 

HD is predisposed by genetics and environmentally induced. Here is an explanation of your point why hips were not eliminated so far through 60 years of selective breeding.

Answer: Unfortunately, selective breeding cannot eliminate everything. if it could we would have perfect dogs now yet no dog is perfect.

The truth is that some genes became an integral part of the genetic makeup and cannot be eliminated. For example, you can not ever breed out right rare leg in a dog and breed  3 legged dogs. Gene for 4 legs cannot be eliminated. Maybe a better and more practical example may be missing testicles which are undeniably genetic. Nobody of any consequence breeds missing testicles. That is done for more generations then we are attempting to eliminate HD, yet missing testicles so far are here to stay in about same percentage as ever in just about all lines ( some more some less), even though a considerable effort had been made to eliminate them. Same may be said about missing teeth and on and on. The fact is that in these cases these problems can at best be only pushed to the bottom of the genetic deck yet they are always there.

Another thing to consider in order to prove genetic bases of HD is that you may have 10 pups in a litter being risen in the same environment yet some pups will not develop HD while the others will. That alone should be enough to convince anybody that HD is based on genetics.

or as Fred Lanting says: HD is a polygenetic problem with an irregullar pattern which is genetically predisposed and environmentally induced. 

the 10 pups story is hard to keep up, as it is impossible to get 10 pups and all give them the exact same food,medication and other environmental influences till old enough to do xrays

so prager, by your Fred Lanting quote, do you think a dog can be geneticly predisposed for HD, but by perfect nurture and upbringing not develope it ?

Prager - „you may have 10 pups in a litter being risen in the same environment yet some pups will not develop HD while the others will. That alone should be enough to convince anybody that HD is based on genetics.“

Not really only genetic, but a lot, IMO.
Consider that each pup from the same parents will have a different roll of the dice concerning genetics. Any combo of genes and gene groupings can be inherited per pup. So you can have pups in the same litter with the potential of genetically ‚tight‘ connective tissue like ligaments; and other pups can have the genetic combination creating ‚loose‘ connective tissue / loose ligaments. And any anything inbetween.

On top of that, like Duke says, it is impossible over at least 1.5 years, if not longer (in the case of a GSDs perhaps) to control the environment so that each pup has exactly the same environment in surroundings, movement, growth rate, body weight/fat, and food.

But I also tend to agree with Lanting IF he said that a genetically predisposed pup, with the right nurturing (surroundings, movement and food over the course of the dogs life) can develope ok hips. But it may also depend on HOW genetically predisposed to loose ligaments the pup is...there are many levels of looseness that are possible. From super floppy to only mildly so.

The PennHip Test uses the marker of loose ligament to determine the hips, with the use of a distraction tool that pulls apart the hip joint of the dog to measure the ‚stretch‘ of the ligament, by measuring the the gap seen on a radiograph from ball to socket. The wider the gap,the more predisposed to HD, in their opinion, the dog will be later. So a dog like this, with milder levels of loose tissue, may beat the odds by proper nurturing.

Added - I’m not saying the pennhip test is the be-all end-all test, IMO.
I personally would have concerns about stretching my dogs hips at a few months of age with a distraction tool. While the ligaments do spring back, they may take a while to reorganize the (perhaps in some cases if stretched too far) the overly stretched ligament cells/bands. Ligaments are very slow in healing due to lack of blood circulation in them. This would create more instability

 

Thank you, Jesse. It gets tiresome answering the same question repeated over and over.

From page 11.......

Gustav, no. Not if the two dogs look like this:

Duke, if the gsd is sloppy like the neoploitan pictured (and there are gsd that are very loose and baggy) then the best environment in the world won't help. That is the genetic aspect of hd...so select out slack flat muscled dogs with huge heads, loose fat skin, big fat splayed feet, dewlap like a Brahman bull, and the flews of a mastiff....in other words, select for tight muscular dogs like this: