SV á'Stamp Program Has A Problem - Page 5

Les, personally I do not justify it, and would not do if I was breeding. But I am aware that many people have argued that there is room for using dogs with a score slightly higher than the breed norm of the time (including for example M Griffiths, not to mention Malcolm Willis himself) provided that the chosen mate is of lower, good hip status, and if there are other extenuating circumstances in terms of the qualities of the dog with the higher score.  Besides which, some have tried ONLY breeding with low scoring stock and still lucked out, or eventually got into worse messes (e.g. Helen Hein).  So as I cannot prove they are wrong, I do not dictate.

I was not advocating using those dogs scoring anywhere near the 106 total ... ever !   I do not believe anybody that is quite sane WOULD do so.

The reason I had that total 60 bitch was that she was retired from the Showring and taken out of her owner's breeding programme because of her hip score.  She was otherwise quite a nice little bitch and had done some winning.  She was known for her good movement in competition, so she must have been trotting and gaiting in the Ring without problems ! She made a passable Obedience competitor with me in her enforced 'retirement', and lived to 2 weeks short of 14 years. She would probably have made an excellent brood, but it was not to be. 

I have also handled others with worse than average hips and found some of them (not all) to manage very well, be very active, trot properly etc.  And heard about a few dozen more.

@ Swarnendo - Quite ! As Reliya no doubt represents other, non-contributory lurkers who may have been equally misled; and as Les would no doubt have argued with ME if he'd thought I was wrong in calling attention to the probable confusion engendered by Bav's post, I am standing by what I said. Pots and kettles, yes.

BW: That is precisely the sort of thing I am castigating you for - you are unconvinced you can write anything ambiguous, and do not want to pay attention to anybody telling you that you are causing or contributing to confusion. I believe you do have much to offer the breed, but I think you will find in time that if you apply the same attitudes to your dealings with 'real' people that you constantly display on here, you will find more turn away from you than wish to work or discuss with you. That was what I meant by your arrogance being a shame.

I didn't write anything ambiguous. When it comes to a discussion about SV and their a-stamp program NZ will always be noch zugelassen. Only your hero/master of the English language from New Zealand decided that what I meant by stating that the dog with a total score of 25 was an NZ dog was that the dog was from New Zealand...even though I used information from the chart he posted when I wrote what I wrote.

Your 40 year old books don't impress me and I don't think any of the information you're writing from them applies to today's GSD world. Maybe you don’t like to hear it, but I get my experience from putting my hands on living/breathing animals every day. You and Kiwi can enjoy reading your books and thinking that what those biased and subjective individuals wrote about applies to what is happening today. I’m glad there were advancements in the 70s and 80s that led to the increased hip health we have today, but the original statement was about the SV being wrong on a few ratings, when asked about proof, none has been provided. Kiwi decided to let the forum know about how much better the a-stamp in Australia is because using his favorite SUBJECTIVE system only a 16 would get the a-stamp and not a 25 like in Germany. A nine point difference that in the grand scheme of things is minuscule and anyone breeding GSDs will know that there are definitely differences when it comes to rating those borderline dogs no matter what system you’re using. On top of that, there will always be human error and opinion involved.

Kiwi called for the person who rated my dog fair when it later came back good to be fired. Clearly doesn’t get the point of the story. The point is, there is subjectivity in all ratings and when dogs fall between the rating scales one person will call it one thing, another person will call it another. Fair was good enough to breed, but a good rating makes the dog look even better. Same if a dog can have really good hips but not quite excellent. Good is a great rating to have, but excellent is that much better in the eyes of consumers. The 16/25 difference. That’s so miniscule that what Kiwi doesn’t get is that when you start eliminating dogs from the breeding pool because their hips might be good, but just not “good enough,” you end up diminishing the breeding pool and removing some potentially good breeding dogs. It’s a hard thing to get through to Kiwi though…we have vastly different standards for the German Shepherd Dog. Prototypical “show” person from any country you go to. Not worried about anything but a show rating and a health certificate to produce your next generation of pets.

What you call arrogance, I call being rational, objective, and realistic.

You just don't get it, do you ? Your arrogance is not in the content of what you say, but in the way in which you say it / put it across. There are perfectly valid points amongst your arguments, which most other people would be happy to discuss with you, but it all comes wrapped in this college-boy bravado and insulting phraseology, impatience with anybody who disagrees with your viewpoint, and your failure to be prepared to acknowledge that yes, it is possible for a post which is already running on about somebody IN 'NZ' to be misread when it gets into 'a' stamps which are 'nz', or 'NZ'. It really would not be any skin off your nose to be bigger about it than that, to say "Yes, sorry I may have confused you", from time to time.
I KNOW Les is just as insulting, often, and I realise you might think you are quite funny, as clearly does he - but the rest of us aren't treating you that way yet you always want to lay it on indiscriminately.
As for taking things off topic, YOU didn't HAVE to go into your rants about Les's rants and every area they covered, did you ?

You're quite the fan of someone who hasn't accomplished a single noteworthy thing in GSDs after being in the breed for decades and probably twice as long as I've even been alive. Sad really. Maybe that's the biggest shame about people in GSDs, the following and believing that just because someone has done something for longer they know more or are better at it. Maybe once we stop idolizing people who have been "breeding" for decades without any noteworthy accomplishments we'll be able to get the breed back to what its supposed to be. Until then, the hero worship will continue to lead to subpar breeding practices and people getting rewarded for doing things the wrong way.

Also...it's just a joke that you read into my writing as much as you do. No way you can actually figure out the tone of my writing. You've just got an idea of who I am and want to believe that everything I write is that way. Again, lack of objectivity and huge amount of bias. Nothing less should be expected though, you've proven that time and time again. Remember how you thought I was a female for the longest time? Wrong that time. Remember how in PM's you tried to tell me time and time again that the "Universal Sieger" was an American creation? Wrong that time too. You'll keep being wrong if all you do is keep thinking people who have "done it longer" know more or better. Remove your emotion, read, be objective and rational. New Zealand is no longer part of the Empire, they don't need you to defend them.

 

Still waiting for some clarity as to how "dogs with known good hips" came back rated dysplastic. How were they known to have good hips if they hadn't been screened yet?

[Reliya] 17.10.2016 - 07:10
● "Les, I was referencing Hundmutter's post where she said Bav was going back and forth with using NZ for New Zealand and noch zugelassen. My brain didn't catch on that he didn't mean New Zealand until she pointed it out."
Thanks for clearing that up. It isn't YOUR brain that is the problem, just [Bavarian]'s. But at the stage you wrote the comment I queried, I was convinced that [Bavarian] was a "she" of the worst kind. Unless you correct me, I will assume that you are a "she" of the better kind - that assumption based on the observation that most European names that end with an "a" are feminine.
 

 

[Bavarian Wagon] 17.10.2016 - 13:10
● "Sorry...There isn't a single post where I used NZ to mean New Zealand. I was clearly speaking about hips and meant it as Noch Zugelassen."
Mod edit.. personal insult, one of many that needs to stop.

If you use capitalised "NZ" it refers to Aotearoa New Zealand,
If you can't be bothered typing "noch zugelasen" but want us to realise that THAT is what you meant, YOU have to type "nz" in lower case.

● "The first person to get that confused was the almighty Kiwi Boy because of his great knowledge of English I'm assuming."
Talk about ERRORS!
#1: I was NOT the "first person to get that confused" by your carelessness - but I might have been the first person to MENTION it. A problem with poor education systems is that they produce people who would rather BE and REMAIN ignorant than risk SEEMING ignorant by asking for clarification.
#2: When using the adjective "almighty", the correct noun is "God". We have that on the authority of the Christian Bible, and probably also the Hebrew Talmud / Tanakh / Torah.
#3: Although I don't have as great a vocabulary as William Shakespeare or Robert Burchfield, I DO have a "great knowledge of English" - so you are wrong to merely "assume".

 

● "Sorry, no way should anyone have read my post and thought I was talking about New Zealand. I was clearly speaking of the hip rating."
The "Sorry" should have been the end - the rest proves that you do NOT accept responsibility for YOUR error. Your "I was clearly speaking of the hip rating" is NOT true, except in your woolly mind - you strung things together in a way that does NOT exist together EXCEPT in your VERY unclear statement.

● "Keep on reading books from the 1970s, it definitely has bearing on the breed in 2016."
You simply can NOT accept that what we see nowadays are the results of errors of judgement made by breeders and judges in generations from the 70s onwards. I can SEE a progression of "herding-capable" type in these ancestors:
1909: http://www.pedigreedatabase.com/german_shepherd_dog/dog.html?id=24294-norbert-vom-kohlwald
1934: www.pedigreedatabase.com/german_shepherd_dog/dog.html?id=2043-pfeffer-von-bern
1962: http://www.pedigreedatabase.com/german_shepherd_dog/dog.html?id=250-bodo-vom-lierberg
1962: http://www.pedigreedatabase.com/german_shepherd_dog/dog.html?id=187-bernd-vom-lierberg
1966: http://www.pedigreedatabase.com/german_shepherd_dog/dog.html?id=207-heiko-von-oranien-nassau
1966: http://www.pedigreedatabase.com/german_shepherd_dog/dog.html?id=33-mutz-von-der-pelztierfarm
with Mutz being my favourite.
Even
1964: http://www.pedigreedatabase.com/german_shepherd_dog/dog.html?id=402962-lance-of-franjo
could, despite his erect neck and deep chest, be visualised as herding on a mountainside without cutting his hocks & heels on the sharp stones. But it is very difficult to accept the Banana-Backs and German Crouchers and NAmerican Ski-Slope Dogs and Titanic Tail-Tuckers that your "the breed in 2016" covers, as being part of the development of sheep herding dogs.

[Swarnendu] 17.10.2016 - 17:10

● "Ok, I have counted..... But, Bav only saw the red flag down under...."
Apart from flying over various embassies in Wellington, and the "red duster" that was once used on merchant ships, we tend to NOT have a "red flag down under":   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_Zealand_flags  

 

And if you refer to the ANZAC nations (Australia and New Zealand) the term is a proper noun and requires a capital initial for every word that isn't an internal connective, so you should type "Down Under" or - better - "DownUnder".

 

 

[Hundmutter] 17.10.2016 - 18:10

● "Les, personally I do not justify it, and would not do if I was breeding. But I am aware that many people have argued that there is room for using dogs with a score slightly higher than the breed norm of the time (including for example M Griffiths,"

Hardly a GOOD advisor! A superb "eye" for a show-winning dog, but very much a "sharp dealer" whose stock to Australia - especially by Jeck Noricum - produced lots of defective joints.

● "not to mention Malcolm Willis himself) provided that the chosen mate is of lower, good hip status, and if there are other extenuating circumstances in terms of the qualities of the dog with the higher score."
The second part is of importance ONLY if no other mate is available to provide the "admirable" virtue possessed by the pooch with defective joints. The first part is the key. When our NZVA produced its first (Pass │ Breeder's Letter │ 3 Fails) system, "they" warning the owners of a "Breeder's Letter" pooch that it should not be used EXCEPT to a partner with a Pass. After adopting BIF-scoring "they" claimed that their old "Pass" was equivalent to BIF-0-to-4.

● "Besides which, some have tried ONLY breeding with low scoring stock and still lucked out, or eventually got into worse messes (e.g. Helen Hein).  So as I cannot prove they are wrong, I do not dictate."
Even assuming that she was Amberwell kennels, I have no respect for her:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/vets-100-dogs-lived-in-filth-as-wild-pack-1342800.html
Malcolm Willis provided the Progeny Analysis tool to HELP breeders work out which popular studs carried LOTS of the "bad" alleles for hips, which had only a few. Of course, to make EFFECTIVE use of that tool one has to wait until the stud has had litters by 20 or more bitches - or has produced a SEVERELY dysplastic pooch with an owner honest-&-helpful-enough to provide the official data to Malcolm while he was active, The KC after it set up the MateSelect address. By which time most people have "forgotten" and have focussed on his current show-winning grandson....
 

● "I was not advocating using those dogs scoring anywhere near the 106 total ... ever!   I do not believe anybody that is quite sane WOULD do so."
Please mentally SEPARATE the difference between "A" a dog whose own score is 100+, and "B" a dog whose worst PROGENY were scored at over BIF-100.
Not many breeders are idiotic enough to use Dog A - but LOTS consider themselves so God-given-naturally-lucky that they will gladly use Dog B!
 

● "The reason I had that total 60 bitch was that she was retired from the Showring and taken out of her owner's breeding programme because of her hip score.  She was otherwise quite a nice little bitch and had done some winning.  She was known for her good movement in competition, so she must have been trotting and gaiting in the Ring without problems !"
Er... ahem.... Sorry dear, but (1) you are naive. She will have gained that reputation while still YOUNG (and was probably stoic, like our 1967-68 Zacki whose pen was a narrow one along the whole end of the house. When we were out shopping, she decided to do a standing leap from there to come inside through the open sash window (of the dining room) 7 or 8 feet above her pen, after which she opened the fridge and ate the meat & eggs in there. But SHE was the one who had the shocking hips despite happily waltzing-etc with the veterinbry prof),

Don't feel TOO bad about being naive - (2) so was NZ's only SV-licensed judge. An obedience judge had a nice dog called "Troy". Mike, our SV-judge, ran the classes & 5-winning-dogs examination for Dog CC the normal way, then called for the microphone and had Norm & "Troy" do a demonstration lap while Mike was drawing the ringside's attention to how SMOOTHLY "Troy" accelerated. Now guess why "Troy" accelerated so smoothly? Norm and I knew that "Troy"s hips were POOR, but "Troy" needed only 1 more CC (we need at least 8, under at least 6 judges) - and he got it that day, was retired, and never allowed to mate.

● "She ...(snip)... lived to 2 weeks short of 14 years."
DEFINITELY a stoic bitch!
 

● "I have also handled others with worse than average hips and found some of them (not all) to manage very well, be very active, trot properly etc.  And heard about a few dozen more."
But NEVER forget the AGE at which they "managed very well" - and now you know WHY they did, until the pain got to be too bad.

[Bavarian Wagon] 17.10.2016 - 21:10 to [Hundmutter]
● "I didn't write anything ambiguous."
Oh yes you DID - and you STILL haven't learned to punctuate.

 

● "When it comes to a discussion about SV and their a-stamp program NZ will always be noch zugelassen."
In   https://www.google.co.nz/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&ved=0ahUKEwitgPLS8ePPAhVMzWMKHULZDqYQFggwMAM&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sv-krefeld.de%2Findex.php%3Fsection%3Dmedia1%26act%3Ddownload%26path%3D%2Fmedia%2Farchive1%2F%26file%3Dellbogendysplasie_beim_schaeferhund.pdf%26PHPSESSID%3D75d4f4c4776702dac18ae419f1aef4bf&usg=AFQjCNGfrfHoWhYbZZcljIxJoI-U5GWlew&cad=rja   all three mentions of "noch zugelassen" are in lower case.
In   http://www.das-schaeferhund-forum.de/index.php?thread/464-warum-z%C3%BCchten-mit-noch-zugelassen/&s=0a2644b2dba51b230c519fa30ddd661149e6a769   all mentions of "noch-zugelassen" (except for the heading, where EVERY letter is capitalised, for emphasis) are in lower case.
In   hauswittek.de/Service/Zuchtordnung.pdf   ALL mentions of "noch zugelassen" are in lower case.
Of course, NO WAY will you admit that REAL Austrians, Bavarians, Germans write better Deutsche than YOU do! However, realistic people who can use a search tool in those web-sites will SEE the truth. YOU are welcome to search for  .de  websites that type "NZ" when they mean "noch zugelassen"

● "I used information from the chart he posted when I wrote what I wrote."
No - you MIS-used it, combining things that were NOT together and changing the punctuation..

● "Your 40 year old books don't impress me and I don't think any of the information you're writing from them applies to today's GSD world."
That is sadly  mostly VERY true where you are, and is oozing closer to being true EVERYWHERE. Fashion, prestige & profit have been replacing FUNCTION and TYPE. .
But it is obvious that Max von Stephanitz didn't know what he was talking about when he published "Der Deutsche Schäferhund in Wort und Bild" in 1918, revised it in 1923, and again in 1932. After all - none of that was in THIS millennium! And it wasn't where you have been prowling around since your mother decided you no longer needed nappies.... So it has NOTHING to do with what the Deutsche Schäferhund breed is about. When are YOU becomong the senior judge at both a BSZS and a BSP, to thus "put the breed to rights"? After all, the USA needs a young SV-licensed judge - Fred Lanting is getting ancient and Morton Goldfarb's leg stops him from flying in the main cabin.

● "Maybe you don’t like to hear it, but I get my experience from putting my hands on living/breathing animals every day."
Really? Would that be the semi-humans "animals" in the bar where you get over-excited? (Donald, your "twin", has been developing rather an unwelcome reputation for THAT sort of behaviour!)
As for touching dogs: On how many days have your hands done that? Never overlook that I got my first pup in 1949 or '50. I had to go without any dogs during 1954-66 (but for some of those years I had hunting cats). And I had to wait 22 months between the death of Offa, my last home-breed, and the birth of Bea, my current bitch - and she hasn't seen me since 24.4.2015 thanks to the hospitalisation that saw my leg amputated - but she will be back once I find the type of ute I now NEED, and at a price I can afford. Nevertheless, that leaves a LOT of days when I've handled up to 8 of my own dogs per day. Plus I was an obedience club class instructor for a while (not that I believed in handling other people's dogs for them - my Jena had to put up with me trying to shorten the interval between command and leash-jerk so I could demonstrate the technique of getting an inattentive pooch's attention).

● "You and Kiwi can enjoy reading your books and thinking that what those biased and subjective individuals wrote about applies to what is happening today."
Whenever the EXPERTS' writings DON'T apply, you will discover that each improvement has been accompanied by a deterioration - such as under-angulation to over-angulation, too-shallow chest to too-deep chest. Of course, you are capable of believing that YOU are the only person qualified to work out what is an improvement, what a deterioration.

● "I’m glad there were advancements in the 70s and 80s that led to the increased hip health we have today"
What a pity you lived in an area where the hips were so BAD. During NZ's period with an OFA-like and 'a'-stamp-like scheme, hips here got WORSE - it was the adoption of the BIF-scoring that made it possible for me to have NO litters with HD since the unplanned-by-me one in 1983.

● "Kiwi decided to let the forum know about how much better the a-stamp in Australia is"
There are NO dogs in Australia or NZ with an "a-stamp", but there are several :with an 'a'-stamp.
http://www.pedigreedatabase.com/german_shepherd_dog/dog.html?id=414912-kwint-v-juerikstall
http://www.pedigreedatabase.com/german_shepherd_dog/dog.html?id=715581-mac-von-der-noriswand
being 2 such. However, Oli's "force" loop won't let people put the apostrophes in.
There are LOTS with "A"-stamps.

● "because using his favorite SUBJECTIVE system"
It's not my "favorite system" - for it to be the favourite there would have to be others that I consider almost as good. There aren't any such.
As for "SUBJECTIVE" (a word you are obviously VERY proud to have at last mastered the spelling of) - you won't find any xray scheme that is LESS subjective.

● "only a 16 would get the a-stamp and not a 25 like in Germany."
There is no 16 or 25 involved in the non-existent "a-stamp".
Like most people, you haven't learned how to correctly use "only".
When it comes to the "A"-stamp, 16 is FAR from the "only" score to gain an "A"-stamp - indeed, MOST 16s would FAIL, because one of the hips would be higher than an 8 - it is 8 that is one of the limits on the "A"-stamp, not the combined score of 16. There are MANY scores that gain an "A"-stamp - from 0 : 0 upwards. But the closer a lateral score approaches to 8, the more likely that the other hip's lateral score will EXCEED 8. I doubt that you have remembered that a score as low as 4 can fail the "A"-stamp - you would have had to be paying much better attention to what people write for you to understand why THAT can be, seeing as you are so confused that you you repeatedly claim that 16 is a pass! And manage to believe that 25 should also be a pass....

● "A nine point difference that in the grand scheme of things is minuscule"
Tell that to people who died when an Air NZ pilot flew a plane full of tourists to the South Pole, thinking that the course he'd been given was aimed 9 "points" or degrees (9° is a VERY small part of 360°, eh!) to the side of Mt.Erebus, so tried to descend to get below the cloud. Tell it to the people who were inside a house 9° from the terrorists' house when the missile hit the civilians instead of the terrorists. Tell it to the under-graduates who, at the end iof their course, had achieved 91% of the grading-points required to graduate.

● "and anyone breeding GSDs will know that there are definitely differences when it comes to rating those borderline dogs no matter what system you’re using."
Er... ahem... "Genius" - there is no "borderline" in the "A"-stamps. There never has been in the 'a'-stamps.
OFA is the only organisation that uses the term - which was originally an attempt to improve their accuracy by requiring such pooches to be RE-x-rayed some time later (I wasn't interested enough to remember how long afterwards - to me, the OFA scheme is too supercautiousfragilistic - not daring to certificate until dogs are 2 years old, despite that the rest of the world is certificating at 12 months onwards).

● "On top of that, there will always be human error and opinion involved."
Especially in anything YOU are involved in!

● "Kiwi called for the person who rated my dog fair when it later came back good to be fired. Clearly doesn’t get the point of the story."
The point of YOUR story - regardless of whether YOU realised it - was to discredit one of the radiologists and/or radiographers.

● "what Kiwi doesn’t get is that when you start eliminating dogs from the breeding pool because their hips might be good, but just not “good enough,” you end up diminishing the breeding pool and removing some potentially good breeding dogs."
Now WHERE have I heard THAT expression before? Oh - yeah - the first (or maybe 2nd) Yank book about GSDs. The first editor reported along the lines of "Max von Stephanitz arrived in the ring half drunk, fired his pistol and ordered out of the ring all the BEST dogs, then began judging what was left,"
One of the next editors of that book had the good sense to delete that sort of incredibly IGNORANT comment. As if gun-shy mutts can be the best for use as army dogs, avalanche dogs (an avalanche often starts with a snap like a pistol shot), duck retrievers, pig dogs, police dogs....

Clearly YOU didn't understand my ACTUAL words. Just how few words CAN you cope with in a single sentence before needing to rest on a full stop (that's a "period", in Yanklish. But in English "period" has enough other meanings without burdening it what that one as well)?

● "It’s a hard thing to get through to Kiwi though…"
One of the delights of being surrounded by so much water in ALL directions! But some insects manage to reach Aotearoa NZ, and birds such as the godwit ( http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/bird-migration - Alaska to NZ in 8-to-9 days non-stop! We are SO attractive!) visit us annually, and marauding magpies have establish themselves here.

● "we have vastly different standards for the German Shepherd Dog."
Impossible - there can be only ONE valid STANDARD for the GSD. It happens to be the one approved by the WUSV for passing to the VDH to be included by the FCI as FCI#166. What The KC (absolutely NO disqualifying faults listed!), the AKC (5 DQs: white; attempts to bite judge; cropped/hanging ears; docked tail; nose not black; undershot - although "level & "overshot" are mentioned in the dentition paragraph they are NOT listed in the DQ section. And although the CKC's judge must be able to DETECT testicles, cryptorchidism is NOT listed as a DQ) and CKC (4 DQs: albino/white; cropped/hanging ears; cryptorchid; docked tail) have published does NOT require a pooch to be a genuine GSD. Now go count the DQs in   http://www.fci.be/Nomenclature/Standards/166g01-en.pdf
If what YOU admire does not fit what that web-page states then what YOU are propagandising is not a GSD - it is a "something else".

● "Prototypical “show” person from any country you go to. Not worried about anything but a show rating and a health certificate to produce your next generation of pets."
And no doubt you consider your outrageous opinion so infallibly superior that you don't want either kind of certificated support.

BTW#1 - if a pooch isn't fit to be a pet it isn't fit for ANYTHING. Aborigines and Eskimaux cannot have a "3 dog night" unless they have 3 pettable dogs willing to lie on their humans.

BTW#2 - the letters "proto" give "prototypical" a meaning different than "typical" - go look them up. You'll find that no-0ne in the pdb has been alive long enough to be a "prototypical" show-person - they'd have to be about 180 years old to be have been involved in the "prototypical" dog show.

● "What you call arrogance, I call being rational, objective, and realistic."
In which language? Google refuses to translate Bavarian. I can't recollect anything you wrote (in the 2 threads I've seen your activity) that fits the definitions of those 3 adjectives - "rational, objective, and realistic" - in my Concise Oxford Dictionary of English.

Bavarian, let it go......this is entertainment for some .....regardless of what is said, if you know good dogs, try to help them that want help.

Les, I'm afraid I have to disabuse you: Vida was only 3.5 yrs when I took her on as my house dog. I knew - and exercised - her from 7 months, and saw her performances in the Showring many times. She was possibly the least stoic dog I've ever known, at least with me (yes I know they all hide things from strangers / possible predators). If she had anything wrong with her, I KNEW about it, in no uncertain terms !

It took until she was well turned 12 before she showed much arthritic stiffness, and even then
she didn't show much actual pain with her reduced movement. But when she had a sore foot or toothache she was always pretty vocal until it got sorted ! So I honestly don't think she was just being stoic about the state of her hips. OK it is more about what she would have produced; but her breeder wasn't about to take that risk. Given the bitch was one in a litter with otherwise low scores, came from low-scoring or 'a' stamped forbears, with no un X rayed gaps for generations, yes some breeders would have done it. Somebody always has to go first, to produce any progeny to compare with others, right ?

Some (not all) of the other dogs mentioned were with me until a ripe old age, also, and I do not think I am exactly unobservant about dogs in discomfort, even if they were not as 'talkative' about it ...