Front angulations - Page 1

Anyone can help me regarding the evaluation of front angulations and how it contributes to frontreach of German shepherd dogs?

To start with,here is a quote from FCI GSD breed standard

Forequarters

The forelimbs are straight when seen from all sides, and absolutely parallel when seen from the front. Shoulder blade and upper arm are of equal length, and firmly attached to the trunk by means of powerful musculature. The angulation from shoulder blade and upper arm is ideally 90°, but generally up to 110°.

 

Gait

The German Shepherd Dog is a trotter. The limbs must be coordinated in length and angulations so that the dog can shift the hindquarters towards the trunk without any essential change of the top line and can reach just as far with the forelimbs. Any tendency towards over-angulation of the hindquarters reduces the stability and the stamina, and thereby the working ability. Correct body proportions and angulations results in a gait that is far-reaching and flat over the ground which conveys the impression of effortless forward movements. The head pushed forward and the slightly raised tail result in a consistent, smooth trot showing a gently curved, uninterrupted upper line from the ear tips over the neck and back to the end of the tail.

Here is the skeleton of a canine in 3 D

http://www.real3danatomy.com/bones/dog-skeleton-3d.html

 

This one shows you canine joints

http://www.uco.es/organiza/departamentos/anatomia-y-anat-patologica/embriologia/atlas/ARTHRO-OSTEO/arthro_osteo.html

But how can we see on dog whether it has an perfect forehand angulation is that a length of specific bone which gives a good reach?

I will try to cover all aspects of front angulation in coming replies, hopefully more members will share too

So from standard, front angulation is related to scapula and humerus, lengths and angles. See in below drawing the scapula and humerus and angle in between, that is shoulder angle. From standard: The angulation from shoulder blade and upper arm is ideally 90°, but generally up to 110°. Shoulder blade is same scapula Upper arm is same humerus

Above diagram shows the shoulder angle, standard says ideal is 90 degrees and in general it is upto 110 degrees. Next we will see how to correctly measure this shoulder angle 

Experts claim that this 90 degree shoulder angle is not achievable ( I will not go into details ) and correct achievable angle is 97 degree. Shoulder blade at 45 and upper arm at 53 like you see in below drawing

Please note the way the shoulder, shoulder blade & upper arm correct measuring as taught by Mr. Louis Donald. To highlight that more look at where the red arrows point. These are the points that determine the shoulder blade angle and upper arm angle and thus the shoulder angle.

A note: Above shown angles are illustrations of what standard (experts) consider ideal for GSD front angulation, they are not drawn to scale. Please note carefully the points you have to locate by feeling the bones of your dog's shoulder so you can draw and measure the angles as correctly as possible. I tell you this because I myself during the process of learning how to feel the bones and locate joints made many mistakes and came out with wrong results. By feeling dog's bones, one tends to think this is the shoulder joint (point of intersection between scapula and humerus) which is wrong

And one tends to wrongly locate start of humerus bone wrongly like in below drawing, which is again wrong

To demonstrate what happens when you wrongly locate the start of humerus and shoulder joint here is a sketch

 

Note the wrong result:

1. Steeper upper arm than what it actually is

2. Longer upper arm & shoulder blade than what they actually are

3. Better layed shoulder blade than it actually is

 

I made this mistake many times when drawing the shoulder bones on some dogs on this very site, so be careful, feel the bones correctly, pin point the three points as shown correctly above.