Czech GSD's with bad hips - Page 11

Jenni, remember the old adage, 'Don't believe everything you see..."

Yep, you checked OFA and found a bunch of Hans' dogs on there. 

Do they represent ALL of the breeding stock used and owned by Alpine K9?

No.  No, they don't.  I know this because Hans himself said he has not had Adela vom Ron OFA'd, and he has no intention of doing so because, and I quote, he "doesn't want to."

So maybe Adela isn't a brood bitch, right? 

Wrong.

She's had two litters for Alpine K9 that I know of, and I only know of them because a single pup from each litter has been entered on here.

So that pretty much shoots the theory of not certifying just the non-breeding dogs, it would seem.  Unless Adela's was done by the SV or some other organization, and Hans just didn't include that info. S'pose that's possible.

But I very much doubt it.

MAN...this thread has veered off-course.  Or not. Depends on how one looks at it.

Hexe,   I said what I said,... yours is a good post thouh,... I must admit. However your recommendation to change my  vet is silly. I trust my vet and he has been good vet for me for 20+ years.
However    I would be curious though if you can tell me how much you pay for your x rays at your vet. 
 As far as different results goes. 
 I can  produce different results on OFA reading at will. It happens all the time. I do not understand why would you dispute such thing.  That is not an urban legend but well known fact. That is why OFA does have 3 radiologists to cover their but. Are they always the same 3 ?  I have read that the x rays are often read by vet students. Did  the radiologists  sleep well or have hang over? Are they depressed? Then there is comparative discrepancy for hips being read in Finland and Czech and Holland and Germany.and and GB and so on and different scales and different understanding what is perfect hip and on and on. Do they send  blind x ray where the breeder is not told  what is the quality of the hips until gets it in mail or he can redo the x rays  or not send the x rays in at all....  
Thus  I am not targeting specifically  OFA . On top of it slightly different positioning will produce often diametrically different results. Thus what is then such evaluation of faulty positioning worth? Not much. You have said  that people should not accept poorly produced x-rays. Well that is exactly my point IF THEY  CAN NOT READ X RAYs,THEN  HOW DO THEY TELL if the x ray is of good or poor quality? Have you read Catch - 22?  Thus posting actuall x rays on internet ( like website or PDB)  is more  helpful and telling  then to depend on official but  often questionable evaluation by some organization.  
               As far as  anyone posting wrong hips x rays under their dog on their website is a matter of  integrity. If integrity is in question then anybody  dishonest can bring an ABC dog to the vet and claim it is XYZ dog and send it to  OFA . If someone wants to cheat then they will cheat.
Also I do not give a damn about legal veracity. I breed dogs and  good dogs. Micro chipping? Give me a physical brake . That is  is the easiest thing to fake. I am not going to post here how can it be done, but you can trust that it is done all the time.  So how does that help with integrity of OFA data?!
As I said my respect for OFA data  on scale of 1-10 is about 5 or 6. 
               I summarize: Reading depends on:
1. Positioning,
2. mood of the radiologist(s).
3. if it is radiologist and not his student.
4. data can be falsified.
5. it is firmly believed by many in know that SV for example is notorious by downgrading  Czech dogs . May be the truth or not. Who knows? I don't.
6. Same dog comes with different readings in the same time or short span of time.  
I can probably come up with few other reasons but the ones  which I have posted put at least in my mind enough doubts that I do not trust OFA or SV or what ever and I prefer to read my own hips  and if I have doubts I confer with Jiri Novotny ( JINOPO) or my 2 friends who are  radiologists in Czech and whom I trust 100% and who read x rays for the registry there and from time to time I send them to Fred Lanting who will often send them to his radiologist friend in Australia.   I  believe that I can trust these data more then to data of OFA ofr to what ever other money making venture..  I will repeat. I do OFA my dogs only  as a courtesy to my clients. At this time I pretty much do OFA on all my breeding dogs.  However the only reason to do it is as a courtesy to my clients and to shut up people like Aadilah 07 from South Africa.
However I used to be more adamant about OFA BS and did not OFA  my dogs even so they were thoroughly evaluated by me and my friends and my vet.   Some of these dogs are old and  I will not   OFA them because I x rayed them to my satisfaction  bred them many times before anyone requested it.  Those dogs produced tens of pups with excellent - good  hips and some fair and no HD results up to this time. I post their x rays of their hips on PDB and on my website. Anyone doubting that they are my dogs hips x ray is welcomed to come here and re x ray them, at their own cost .  But to OFA dogs is for me only a business decision and not a single and in my eyes very inferior way I evaluate my dogs. 
Hans

I would buy a dog from Hans, and I have a puppy out of a vom Ron stud. Couldn't be happier with this puppy, 7 months, and as nice a puppy as I have had in many years. Hips and elbows prelimmed fine!......temperament off the chart. I trust knowledgable breeders far more than I trust certs and titles. But I understand the need of some people to have to see certs and titles to buy a pup or dog. Everyone has to find their comfort zone....I have bred and worked Czech dogs for past 15 years, and when applying the same scrutiny to hips(parents, sibling, trends, and breeder trust) as I have to German and American dogs over the years, I have found the hip situation to be no different. Maybe it's luck....I dunno......but I don't breed for the public, more so for law enforcement and people who trust my judgement.

I and my friend  x rayed Adela's hips 2x Here is one of the x rays. Are the hips bad? Go ahead fault them. This x ray is there for anyone to see on PDB and my website. 
You know this is not about if we are producing good or bad hips this is about how to get off on  putting  someone down. 


. 

Gustav that is an excellent point. Are  after decades of OFAing dogs  there better percentages of good  hips produced by general population? No! Actually Hell no! The only betterment of results I see is the result of  that most breeders got smart and are sending only "good " x rays for evaluation. So what are we talking about here? Enigma? To produce good hips take more then to have OFAd pedigree and on top of it, it  is a fragile balance when you finally get there. House of card threatening to collapse  at any moment so that you can only start all over again. I and Tina Barber have developed LMX program where we x rayed all littermates of all dogs on the pedigree at least 3 but better 5 generations back. It was literally hundreds if not thousands of x rays. If I would OFA all those I would have to be an eccentric  millionaire . Thus instead I learned and learned how to read the x rays.
However Tina found out the hard way that it is not sustainable to breed that way. Because she was afraid to bring non LMX dogs to refresh her gene pool and thus  She got some signs of degeneration and thus  she introduced new dogs and because of that  the house of the cards fell down and bad hips showed up again. Tina was obsessed by producing good hips and I learned a lot from her. But when we breed dog we must not get stuck on stupid and breed just hips. Instead we must  see the whole dog and learned to compromise. OFA is a OK  tool but only as good as the data put into it and as people reading it and ability of vets producing the x rays.  If I would breed strictly on OFA results of dogs which I normally do not know I would never succeed as well as I have so far. I'll tell you with total certainty only one thing: Breeding is not for pussies or dummies. 

Like I said, I trust knowledgable breeders, and those breeders breed dogs. Frankly, if a breeder can't tell that the hips you posted are functional, they shouldn't be breeding. And that is not even considering the fact that you can breed dog A to dog B and get three dyspastic dogs, then breed dog A to dog C and get all certified progeny.....so SHOULD dog A be bred??? That's why when I hear the simplistic approaches to hips from some, it's not worth even bringing up the complexity to this issue. Whatever!

Gustav, for the record, even severely dysplastic hips are functional.   Sound? No, but functional, nearly all are. They don't function well or without causing pain to the animal, but they do get the animal from point A to point B. 

Just sayin'.

Hans, I'll pull up the bills from the two x-rays and scan 'em in for you sometime this week.  Doing some updating on the desktop computer, so the scanner isn't functional at the moment, but should be in a few days. I can tell you for sure that the bills were a heck of a lot less than three hundred-some dollars, though!

I'm just going to throw my 2 cents in here. I understand exactly what Hans is saying. I also understand what Blitzen said about no xrays no sale. I have found that the average person doesn't care that much about all that. They may ask about hd but if you take it too far you can tell you are losing them. The last puppy I sold, the man was knowledgeable and interested cause his last dog had HD--so we had quite a nice chat and went over the pedigree together. I can read xrays with the best of them and I've never been far off--but I prefer to send them in. If I felt like digging it out I would send you the last xray bill I did and it was right at 389--that was for hips and elbows and tatoo and all that. The last xray I had for just a look see was 70.  And no I doubt I will get a new vet either. I love my vet and I have credit there. Also when I have a big problem, like the last dog fight, I throw on a lab jacket and go work side by side with them and I know it is appreciated. I prefer to send them in to OFA because I like it being on record and I like it being on the papers and pedigrees. I knew Tina way back when and I remember her LMX program very well. If only I had the finances I would like to be able to do that cause I believe in it. But when we are still in the vet's office before anything goes to OFA I want it up on that screen so I can know. The point is knowing.
Now to breeding an iffy dog. If I had a dog that accidently got bred before I could even have a look see, and later I see them and they look OK but OFA says mild, would I breed it again? Depending on H/E results of what he produced and what all is behind him--maybe to the right bitch. I'd rather do that and know what I am doing and what I have as opposed to breeding an excellent or even good with nothing behind it. Honestly I would rather do that than buy a puppy from someone I don't know that well and then get screwed. And Hans is right, you don't know who is reading those xrays and what mood they're in or anything else on that given day.
Would I buy a dog from Hans or Joan? Anyday of the week if I was looking for what they have. If any of what I have said has caused anyone to think less of me or the seriousness of what I do then I am sorry. If I lost any prospective customers, again, I'm sorry. But I grew up with a real dogman and a lot of things I do and think are based on what I was taught as a child. Dog breeding isn't for the weak, fainthearted or dumb......................JMO

vonissk, therein lies the difference--

"If I felt like digging it out I would send you the last xray bill I did and it was right at 389--that was for hips and elbows and tatoo and all that"

That's not a bill for JUST doing OFA films of hips and elbows. That's a bill for additional stuff--you really can't roll fees for things other than doing the x-rays and submitting them to OFA into the mix and then try to compare it to the cost of doing 'look/see' films.  Typically, a 24 month old dog would [should] already have it's tattoo or microchip long before it was presented for the x-rays...

Never did I say that OFA certification is the be-all and end-all for making breeding decisions, as that's just as foolish as breeding strictly on color, or markings, or any other single specific trait...it will bite you in the ass pretty darn quick. I just think it's not fair to the buyer who DOESN'T know the first thing about hip certifications and pedigrees and such, and who is just trying to get a well-bred family member with solid temperament that will enjoy more healthy, pain-free years with them than the opposite.  Those are the majority of the people who will buy a purebred puppy from a breeder, after all.

The person buying a pup for sport or show is more likely to 'wash out' the dog if it doesn't pan out for whatever reason--it could be 100% sound, but just isn't the sport dog they hoped for, or just didn't come alive in the show ring as is needed--and while I'm not saying they don't have any affection for that dog, they're less heartbroken over an unsound hip because they know the deal going in, and prepare themselves for it.  Let's face it--that is the precise reason why 'amateur' breeders [meaning those who do not make their living, or a significant portion thereof, from breeding and selling dogs] prefer to see their babies go to homes which are seeking a pet first and foremost, but want one that can do 'stuff' with them like herding, or SchH, or obedience, or agility, or sled dog racing....'cause it's more likely to be going to a truly 'forever home' than the pup that's sold to a top-level sport competitor as a prospect.