Does OFA sucks? - Page 2

there is excess laxity in both hips, and the sockets are shallow.

what is wrong with fair, it is still passing?

It most definitely is the same dog and on top of it it does not matter. OFA FAIR is  on the 65 mo old dog x ray. If you mean the femur on the left (that woutd be the Right femur) which is off then it is because positioning is different. There is a faulty positioning on the 18 mo old. The knee cap is off center outwards.

 Someone asked why to be concerned with "fair " rating since it is passing.
 In order to improve hips you must understand that
statistically, based on statistical bell curve theory,  it is advantageous to breed the dog with the best possible hips on him and his litter-mates.  Period.
Prager Hans
http://www.alpinek9.com

I disagree IMO it is best to breed from a litter of all passing hips  or normal hips than a litter with half good or excellent and half dysplastic. Also from grand sire and dam with a high percentage of normals within their litters as well. HD is a polygenic trait mainly recessive genes according to my vet anyway.

if they feel they rating was unfair [pun intended!] they should call OFA and ask what the problem was with them ,they can either ask them to recycle  the x ray or resubmit, certainly going on a board and posting OFA sucks is not the answer if it sucks so bad don't use it , people who hate OFA should form their own organization

I don't care for OFA, for a long time, now. I have OFA'd right at 100 dogs, over the many years I was in the breed. In the old days, we used to see a lot of really terrible, terrible hip x-rays. Most people today have no idea how bad it was. I still have some of the old x-rays. I should post them. First, I'd have to find them! LOL.. I do have one of the backlit viewers. I used to keep copies of all my old x rays and have quite a stack.

By the way, this is why I got into the DDR lines. I got much better luck with the hips. MUCH better, like 4/5 good / bad vs 4/5 bad / good (W. German). I used to think it was more related to genetics, but now I see that there is a strong environmental component, too. Mainly human error. I think we're giving customers too many guarantees, perhaps?

Anyway.. I swear this is true. Many years ago, I had a "noch zugelassen" dog who made OFA excellent.. I kid you not! His name was Zapp von der Lengernheide. And, I bought him as a middle age male and I got the OFA on him, so there you have it..  We make much too much of these ratings, I think. Especially, I think that the relevance of "fair" and "excellent" ratings is very subjective and questionable.

OFA seems to have become increasingly anal-retentive, to the point of popping hemorrhoids. I've heard that they have a profile for each breed, and each individual dog is judged by the same standard, regardless of individual characteristics. In my experience, the really burly dogs with wide, muscular thighs tend to present more like a rotty or pitty, and are usually given only a fair rating. The more gracile, side gaiting dogs tend to come out better on an individual basis. OFA seems to like the more acute angle on the femoral neck and thinner, longer, more defined femoral necks. I've had my share of OFA good dogs which looked very good by this profile, but could not produce many good hips. On the other hand, I've had OFA fair dogs which produced a majority of offspring which passed OFA, but "only" with a fair rating, but they were all wide, thick dogs, with heavy bone structure, and all were functionally sound.

I'm afraid that OFA is actually causing a systematic rejection and de-selection of certain individuals of a type which does occur in the GSD breed.. more of an old style dog. I just looked at the radiographs of a very mature dog which I absolutely would chance a breeding with. He's very heavy boned and muscular, wide.. His only issue that I can see is that the femoral necks are short and thick, and there is a slight cupping over of the femoral head.. but, no indication of any kind of acute inflammatory processes or arthritis. AND, surprisingly, the coxo-femoral joint itself is very well defined, deep and has excellent surface congruity.

I just don't agree with OFA's policies, anymore, and I haven't for a long time. I will always x-ray my dogs, but I have considered keeping my own image file for the future. Easy enough to post online for anyone to see. I don't really breed much anymore, so it's a moot point.

What really ticked me off, years ago, is that OFA had a legend on the back side of their certificates, which said that a "fair" was "borderline" hip dysplasia, or mild HD.. something to that effect. If it's dysplastic, then don't give it a number, then!

Prager.....I agree OFA sucks, a large part of the time. If I'm not breeding a litter for the public, I don't bother sending them in to OFA- I'll have them xrayed and evaluated myself. I need not allow 3 people's OPINIONS based on nothing concrete (OFA is the ONLY panel who doesn't measure ONE thing objectively-no Norberg Angle, no nothing) to decide what dogs need to be in the gene pool and which don't. This all goes back to breeding shit dog with great hips to other shit dog (very dark of course) with great hips and getting, you guessed it................shitty dark dogs with great hips! Your breeding philosophy is, IMO, absolutely correct with regard to looking at the whole dog. And that particular evaluation SUCKS for a dog that age.

Below is a dog of similar age born in (2003) who had an injury show up on his early films. The dog (who is a PHENOMENAL dog in every way) was removed from the gene pool due to not being able to pass OFA. Their evaluation said "unilateral pathology- subluxation and remodeling." The right hip was evaluated to be good/excellent upon questioning. The original xrays showed very clearly an injury (in fact the ortho specialist diagnosed it based on the OFA xray).  I find it unsatisfactory that they cannot be a bit more subjective- now look at these xrays just taken a week or two ago- if this dog was dysplastic, there would be continued degenerative changes. Does he have perfect hips? No, but he has pretty good hips for a dog of his age, size (huge), and temperament (high energy, very tough on his body). 

What jumps out at me is the sheer size difference between this dog's bones and the typical xray someone posts. Talk about bone! I don't see how such a heavy-framed dog can be expected to have identical films to the norm. I think the problem w/OFA is that they must have a standard that they look for instead of evaluating each film independently. Just because a film doesn't look like XXXXX doesn't mean it's "bad" or dysplastic. I think groups/types of dogs should be evaluated according to the norm for that type. I think it was BAnderson who commented on the bone and guessed it was a large DDR or Czech type male. There IS a difference between bone/joint formation as compared to  say, and AM showline dog. Who knows, I could be way off. I just have seen soooo many great dogs not bred, or worse, neutered, based on a few "for rent" opinions (and yes, people, the OFA DOES send films out just about everywhere for evaluation...or at least they used to).
 
www.pedigreedatabase.com/gsd/bulletins_read/369652.html

Prager, there  is no "period". It aggravates me when people like to make over-generalizations and global statements. Sorry.. Things are not always so simple as we would like them to be.
The bell curve thing you are referring to is probably OFA's rationale.. that they are raising the standards and that "better" hip joint conformation will result in more normals or HD-negative dogs.
I actually disagree with this. First off, I think that the skeleton of the dog and it's features are largely a reflection of the overall build of the dog. More muscular, robust dogs will have a different set of hips than a more gracile, trotting type of dog. Are we then de-selecting the old type dogs because they present more like a bully type dog? They have a wider stance in the rear, more muscular thighs.. surely this will affect the angle of the femoral head / neck, if nothing else.
Personally, I believe that the breed overall would benefit far more by making standards reasonable, and public participation more widespread. Any tool works better when used. OFA isn't going to accomplish nearly as much good by raising standards to a point where there could be unexpected effects.. including discouragement by participants, IMO.
I've actually had communications in the past from people who wanted only to breed OFA excellent parents together. They have NO idea how foolish and impossible an idea this is. But, this is an example of the kind of misperception that these ratings can cause.
Many people believe that a fair rating is a sort of damaged goods rating and won't breed to these dogs. That's really a shame, since so many of these dogs have so much to offer.
We have to remember that we are breeding for a total dog, and not just a set of hips. If we wanted that, we should just stick with greyhounds?

Nevermind....DDR-DSH said it much better. LOL

I'm going on hearsay only in my opinions. I have only seen a fraction of the number of xrays DDR-DSH has.

SitasMom, I disagree w/your opinion on those hips. If you are comparing to one of those small-boned dogs w/the very clear separation between femoral head and neck,and no muscle tone in the thighs (as DDR-DSH pointed out) then I guess I see where you could say there is excess laxity. Personally, I see just a larger head/neck and a simply a different angle in the socket.

Did we all forget that the problem with dysplasia is the degenerative changes that it causes???? If there's no/little degeneration, then where's the problem? Is the dog really dysplastic??

I would take that dog, Prager, in a heartbeat. Hips look great to me. Can you at least tell us what type of GSD this dog is?