HD SCORE - Page 2

Pakros d'Ulmental has a-normal hips (ZW 79), but his ELBOWS are noch zugelassen.

Brittany, just because someone posts something on the web ie the above mentioned link, does not mean that it is correct. The gradings listed there do not correspond with how the SV actually rates hips. Rather shocking that the OFA lists on their own hips grading page (http://www.offa.org/hipgrade.html - bottom of page) that they consider a-normal to cover all passing OFA grades from Excellent to Fair. From experience, we know that that is not the case. HDa3, or HD noch zugelassen does not mean that the dog is dysplastic. HDa3 means that it is still acceptable for breeding. HDa4 is the SV rating for mild HD, and HDa5 is the SV rating for severe HD. Neither does a2 too mean "suspicious" for HD, it means that the hips are nearly normal, but just not quite perfect. Few things are perfect in nature. You also have to consider the WHOLE dog in breeding, not just parts of it. Breeding is not like baking a cake where you take a pinch of good hips, a smidgen of good angulation, an ounce of nice head, a pound of good topline, a few drops of extra colour, mix if really fast for good movement and voila you got yourself a good dog. Sigh. No HD certification is fool proof. PennHip is touted to the most correct, but few vets are certified and fewer breeders use it for one simple reason: EVERY dog that goes in for a PennHip gets a score, even if the hips do not look good. So if a breeder does not want his lines "tarnished" with a possible bad hip result, he will most likely avoid PennHip. With the a-stamp and OFA breeders have the option NOT to send in the x-ray, thus falsifying all the existing statistics. Since far more GSD have been screened via SV-stamp, the SV stats are still more representative than the OFA stats will ever be. The way dogs are x-rayed is also slightly different for each method of certification, hence different results when a dog gets re-certified elsewhere. In Germany the dog gets put into a device that postitions the dog and it fully knocked out during the x-ray. How a vet takes the x-ray will influence the result too. If the dog was put under will incluence the result. Age, possible injuries, physical trauma and stress, diet, all that will influence how the hips look from one x-ray to the next. Many owners and breeders have had experiences, or heard of other people's experiences where a dog came back with a result that was different than expected. In both directions. We recently had a female the vet predicted would get a1, she came back with a3. And that is not a first. Another female the vet said would not even get an a3. Turns out the positioning was aweful. A new x-ray at a different vet and this one came back, as the new vet had predicted, with a2. I still have the first "off" x-ray on file. Email me if you want to see it and see for yourself how "bad" an x-ray has to look in order for a vet to consider it not even worthy of a3. With the OFA you can rather easily contest how a dog has been certified, re-screend the dog, and often the new x-rays come back with a different score than the original one. So how precise is this whole process really! With the SV going against the a-stamp decision is nearly impossible, so few people try. The trick is to get it right before sending it in, like with the female that ended up with an a2. So how precise is the process really! cont...

cont... The ZW does not determine the a-stamp or influence its result, Brit. The a-stamp is the result of the individual x-ray. The ZW is a result of that individual score PLUS the results of that dogs relatives and offspring. So a 94 is NOT = an a2 hip. The a-stamp does not change when the ZW changes. You can have an a1 hip with a ZW well above 100, all it takes one or two offspring with a4 or a5 and the ZW goes through the roof. It comes down again with more a1s but much slower. Or you can have an a3 dog with a ZW below 100, though that is more difficult. The a3 hips are fully recognized for breeding. It is just a popular misconception that these dogs are of lesser quality. For one, the a3 could have been the role of the dice. Two, hips change all the time and outside influences are strong and could have influenced an otherwise good hip. Three just because you add a3+a3 does not equal a3 or worse for all its offspring. Humor yourself and look up Hobby Gletschertopf, a very influencial show line male. Both parents a3, himself a1 and what would this breed have been without him... Finally consider this: The SV states on their website, HD is 30% genetic and 70% acquired, which is a pretty commonly accepted fact these days. Studies have shown that outside influences DO have an effect on HD results of the individual dog. HD screening has been around since 1966. If it was that simple to eliminate bad hips by simply breeding excellent to excellent or a1 to a1, then would 40 years not have solved this problem by now? Some better reading than the first link posted: http://realgsd.ca/GSDinfo/Care/1health.htm http://www.mrgsd.com/special-pre-publication-price.html

D.H this is a very well stated post. I believe the whole ofa vs sv is very similar to the linux vs windows in the fact that both sides have drawn lines and gathered armies to defend there point of view. You cant win no matter what you do with these people. It is nice to see that there are people out there that are in the middle and understand this. I believe that with out allowing noch the gene pool would have been to small when they first instituted the rating system. Is this correct?

Below is an explaination Daniela(D.H.) sent to me months ago when I had a question about my females ZW number. It further highlights her explaination. Stephen (From D.H.): The ZW is not a sure science anyways. It would be more accurate if all x-rays taken had to be sent in, but unfortunately, usually only good ones are sent in. Occasionally you get a result back where you feel the vets doing the evaluation rolled a dice. We recently sent one in where we were sure it would come back as a1, it came back as a3. Needless to say it was a surprise. If it looks like it would come back as a3, most people will not even send it in as such a dog usually has no future. So when I see a3, I take it with a grain of salt. If I see very few offspring a-stamped that would raise a bit more of an eyebrow, since I would have to assume that there were not enough x-rays good enough to be sent in. I would like to see at least a few a-stamps on a dog. Most pet homes do not x-ray, we all know that. Your female's dam has a good number of offspring x-rayed, except for that one male with very good results. Most males that are used a lot, will sooner or later go up into the high 90s with their ZW, since their high number of offspring makes them more statistically accurate than a dog with just a handful of progeny. With that their offspring goes up to. Considering that the breed average is 100 with a2 hips, anything below that is better than average. So taking all that into account, the ZW on your female really is not bad at all. The way to bring the ZW down is to get as many offspring as possible x-rayed and submit the best results for a-stamp. If you want to present a true picture of HD performance, you would submit all. Something that can backfire of course because you would be the odd one out who will actually present an accurate picture, rather than a tweaked one that only has the top results submitted.

FYI, the Leerburg website has an excellent article with photos as to what constitutes a good xray and how the dog should be positioned.