hind legs of gsd - Page 2

Please forgive me But I am having a hard time understanding that their were no signs before two months.Bare with me.If there is a litter on the ground which is rare in my case.I set up a natural as possible den for the dam.The pups that come from that den go immediately to obstacles..smelling of the grass etc.Climbing..Tunneling etc. Running free with play/prey...carrying a rope the width of two inches by ten feet long up the scale of another climbing..in which they did usually at 4 weeks pushing to 5 weeks...and the dam was just so happy they were entertaining so to speak..Themselves.What exercise course(vague) do you have in place for the pups that you have or co-own? OFA is meaningless etc etc.

Marjorie - I really sympathise with you.  When I was a child my parents bought a beautiful GSD puppy and when he was about 5 months he started to display similar symptoms and an xray showed that he had no shape to his hip sockets to the legs where just dislocating all the time.  The vet thought that up until this point this tendons/ligaments etc had held things in place but it was not strong enough to continue to do the job with his growth spurt.  Unfortunately for that boy that was the end of his life.

This puppy had been checked by the vet when he had gone for his vaccinations and nothing had shown up - it was a very sad time for all of us and has left me very wary of puppy hips even from good parents.

I have no exercise course- as I said, I co-bred the litter- they werent at my house, nor were they at the other co-breeders house. They were at the handlers house, before we got them. When the person who owned the litter got them, they were all behaving fine. When the handler was questioned, she said she had no indication of anything being wrong.

Marjorie, you cant blame yourself for something that is a flaw in development.  Its no different to a person who is born with a cleft palate, or a hole in the heart.  To have bones that havent developed properly there is nothing you can do, it is not environmental, feed related or a result of poorly bred parents, it is just a mistake of nature.  No one can be blamed.

Perhaps the handler was not telling you the truth at the time.Again I am very sorry.I learned from  more than one elderly mentor.If a person is to compete with their dogs ect.Never take your eyes off the pup etc from the get go once they have been weaned...and trust no handler/trainer.I would question as to how many pups..dogs that the handler had at that time...to not even notice something was wrong with this pup.I think that happens often.As beepy said "Don't blame yourself". To all that posted on this thread.my best wishes.But in addition I will leave you with a few comments.There are so many breeders of what was once the gsd dog.People titled for themselves.I think what is happenning now is the abundance of just kenneling with many dogs and many puppies.In ref to cow hocking...More than likely the dog needs free exercise.Some sort of hocking is not bad at all as long as the rest of the anatomy of the dog is balanced with it and there won't be a breakdown in travelling a great amount of ground very fast...hills etc etc. for a long period of testing.

Well, something was surely wrong there. When the bitch came back to us, we could barely recognize her- she was skin and bones. Looked like she hadnt been fed much during her pregnancy.  I had no clue who she was when the co-breeder sent me her pic, after the bitch returned home. Needless to say, we never used that handler again! we coudnt do anything, because we couldnt prove anything. :(