Hip Injury? - Page 2

One of the places that can give us information on this topic - tho it is limited - is the OFA database. If you go to advance search and scroll down to the bottom you can choose the kind of report you would like to look at. By choosing the 8 categories of hips ( hips, prelims, OVC, CDC, Penn, USA, Foreign and BVA) and then choosing ratings of mild, moderate, severe and indeterminate. You can limit by GSD which will give you 121 search results or just hit search and all breeds will give you 899 results. On this latter click on breed and the list will sort by breed. Then on either list click on printable list for a quick overview. In GSDs we find that slightly more than half are reported as unilateral. In all breeds it appears even higher than that plus what adds to the argument against purely accidental causation is look at the variety of breeds and the unlikelyhood of that many dogs especially well protected foo foo dogs from experiencing unilateral trauma.
Also I am not saying that this family has a tendency to unilateral HD but in looking up some dogs in the db yesterday I just happened to come across this  http://offa.org/display.html?appnum=1260565#animal . If you look to half siblings ( sire) you will note that 4 animals show up with unilateral HD - all on the same side.
Now I will be the first to admit. The OFA db has some severe problems when trying to research these types of issues. We are dependent on folks being willing to publish their bad results - and few do. Whether the percentage of unilateral HD is the same, higher or lower when viewed against all xrays submitted we do not know ( perhaps we could ask OFA to do a statistically study since they do have access to that information). We also have the problem of self selection in reporting. With how many animals with obvious unilateral HD do the xrays just not get submitted?
Finally we are dependent on the energy and good will and integrity of the reader. If they are having a bad day and see obvious HD they may just report moderate HD and not note that it is unilateral (yes Virginia that does happen just see many of the past posts about the inconsistencies in OFA evaluations). As an ex I know of a bitch whose owner was concerned about the quality of the xrays so paid for a board certified radiologist to read them before they were submitted to OFA. His opinion good hips and normal elbows. OFA result good hips but grade 1 DJD in both elbows. The owner went back to another board certified radiologist who said OFA is full of ...  As a result another set of digital films - an entire CD was done and looked at by 6 specialty vets in that practice. The consensus was maybe - MAYBE- there was a 1 mm ostephyte (which scientifically has not been shown to be anything) on ONE elbow. So not sure what kind of day the OFA readers were having but their judgement not supported by their peers.

I did not check the Penn hip info which is a much much smaller db of information so do not know if it is possible to document significant differences in the DI unilaterally ESPECIALLY if the dog is ALSO determined to have unilateral HD. Perhaps a board member could check on that with them.

Another example for you.

I chose a name of  dog on the gsd list generated -Foxwood's Wynd Raven since there were two Foxwood dogs listed and I wanted to see if they were related. They are out of the same sire. Both are unilateral left.  So then you click on vertical pedigree. If you click on an individual dog it will show you his siblings ratings and his progeny's ratings.

Now PLEASE keep in mind overall these dogs come from a very very strong OFA background. Lots of dogs xrayed clear, lots of sibling and half sibling , cousin,uncle etc depth.

However when we pull up Ivan the sire of these pups http://offa.org/vertpedigree.html?appnum=1132710®istry=HD#animal  and click on his grandsire on the dam's side http://offa.org/vertpedigree.html?appnum=605894®istry=HD#animal  we find he produced 1 unilateral and when we click on Ivan's materal great grand dam  http://offa.org/vertpedigree.html?appnum=508888®istry=HD#animal we find she also produced 1 unlateral.   By the way all the unilaterals in this pedigree were left side except for one on which the side was not notated.

 Finally when we look at Wynd Raven's pedigree we find that the above individuals also appear on her dam side as well.

AGAIN keep in mind overall these breedings have an extremely good OFA pedigree for GSD so I am no condemning the breeders by any means. But it is suggestive to me that unilateral HD is genetic and that it is hip specific.

I think the ability to do this kind of research in invaluable and kudos to the owners who published the data on their dogs good bad or indifferent. I would suggest we urge OFA to either link their db to akc and ukc dbs or develop a better system for insuring that parent identification  is included on the OFA request so that OFA can start developing a more robust db.

By the way took a look a PennHip (not a favorite of mine for many  reasons) and could not find that they had any sort of public db. Does anyone else have information to the contrary?

i know that kennel foxwood, they have produced alot of HD , not to mention major gentic health problems, i am not very far from them. they are in wisconsin.

From Data I have collected over the years in the UK I agree with TIG
in fact when a dog/bitch is scored bad even or uneven you can always trace back to where it comes from and yes unilateral does appear in certain lines some times it skips a generation but always comes back. Here the L & R are scored seperately, many people have blamed unilateral dysplasia on injury and used their dogs in breeding programmes for it to come back with a vengance in grprogeny, many breeders also blame too much exercise whereas I have found that those with severe hd that require surgical intervention are the ones who restrict exercise to short lead walks without any free running. Again others blame food, I have raised dogs on both complete and raw highest score I have had is 2:4 lowest 0:0; my dogs are allowed free running from 8 weeks which supports good gluteal muscle balls which in turn helps to stabilise the 'ball' in the 'socket'

TIG if you pm me your email I will send you the data, but will have to be after Thurs.
Pam

The OFA organization probably would not be interested in this idea, but it could be presented to them with all the research done.  Just a simple thought.  Shame that all the research was done and nothing done with it.  This list did not seem to either be interested or know anything about this research.  If the research is sent to OFA and a good response comes back, please let us know.