BREEDING OFA FAIR RATED - Page 3

   Blitzen,         

    Another good subject for comments,you have indirectly touched is premature decision to NEUTER/SPAY.I see far to many young pups advertized on this,and other sites stating that pup is fixed.One thing is for sure,if you truly love a dog and wish that dog could last a lifetime,then the best thing is a pup from your favorite dog to live on in a sense.I tell others this,only to get a myriad of strange looks.I cannot understand why I continue to get such a wide range of rediculous responses to this ideology.Once the dog is gone,with nooffspring to save,it is over in a real sense.............and it is so diff.to deal with.

Jon Eric:  If you take an afternoon and look at 300 pedigrees on our database and pull up all the well now titled and sg and V rated males , or females , show or work lines, whether Ofa or SV  and look back three to 5 generations , you will see that  it is nearly impossible to not find several     Fast normals , somethimes  three or four in the firs two generations...

Also you will see many Noch Zugelassen rated hips in the pedigrees.

It is the breeder who has to choose the mate of such a hip rating , that will strengthen the possiblities of bad hips...

It is not just go breed two good hips and not look at the hips behind on both sides...knowing also , you must ask about the sisters and brothers of the mate chosen.. The problem here, arises...can you find out that info...A lot of top studs and females for breeding, never have the rest of their litter registered or on record for anyone to find that info...

Again , you have to pick and choose...

It is a long research and even then  , is a toss up of genes. and we are not in controll..someone bigger that you and I......

 Blitzen,

Yikes, an entire lung....oh my. When I have had any of the multitude of orthopedic surgeries I have had, believe me, I made damn sure I was awake long enough to see them mark the appropriate body part that was to have the surgery. I simply do not understand a mistake like an entire lung.....

I actually agree with what you write above for the most part, as always. And yes, one would hope the three radiologist system would be more fail safe, but who knows how those mistakes get made. I suspect that in some cases, there really is a difference of opinion between the three and that may account in a few instances for ratings that are not really correct. As for the SV and OFA comparison, I don't believe one can do this without a technical paper describing exactly what the parameters are that must be met for each type of system and rating within it. "Fast" in German means "almost" and almost is usually utilized in exactly the sense that there is very little to distinguish whatever from whatever is being described as normal.

As for education, you know how strongly I feel about that topic.  I could not agree with you more. My entire life has been spent trying to help people learn that without education the doors to the world are sometimes closed. More importantly, when one really only takes as gospel what everyone else says, in these days all too often that coming from the internet which is rife with ignorant people posting about anything and everything, one is at the mercy of the world at large. I make sure I know as much as possible about every topic that interests me or affects my life. That includes knowing as much as possible about GSDs, and especially their hips and elbows and how to read x-rays etc. etc. etc.  Yes, that means I cannot sit in front of the TV and watch crap all evening, every evening. I assume  responsibility for my own life, and I also accept the consequences of my actions too.

I just had a man here for the entire month of June from a foreign country studying German Shepherds and dog training. He got a crash course and did really well. But every evening, after we were finished with lectures and training exercises, and film study, he went to his room and studied some more! He went home probably knowing more about many GSD topics than anyone in his country (he is not from Europe). And to boot, we had a lot of fun. 

Learning is a critical part of life that so often passes people by.

I hope some of you in PA can do something about this Amish puppy mill stuff.

Take care.

Its really difficult to say the result as the genetic make up plays a major role here, so its a 50/50 chance. I guess its still can be bre. You will need to closely follow up on the pups as adults if you want to repeat breed from this combo.

"If producing good hips were as simple as only breeding the best hips to the best hips, all GSD's would be OFA cerified by now. "

i agree, blitzen.  there has to be more to the equation than just the hip scores.  obviously the genetics of the sire and dam do play a big part, but above and beyond that, the health and age of the dam must figure in to it.  the number of pups in the litter is also a factor.  8 or 10 pups is certainly going to drain the dam's calcium stores much more than 4-5 pups.  the quality and amount of milk produced by the dam is also important.  (vitamins, minerals, enzymes collostrum etc)  since we do not xray other parts in the same way as we do hips and elbows, how would we ever know but what other body parts might be equally affected, but we are just unaware.  for several years, i have been convinced that development of pups before birth and growth before weaning is every bit as important as genetics.  some folks like to lay the blame on nutrition from weaning till 18 or 24 months.  while this is still very important for lots of reasons and more than just hips, i feel that the basic structure of the dog is established in the womb and in the welping box.  if this basic structure is faulty, then there is very little can be done to rectify it.

i've had dogs with good hips and bad hips, good elbows and bad elbows and, as mentioned in some of the other posts, results cannot be counted on reliably by xrays alone.  there has to be more to it.  it seems to me that their development as tiny babies sets the stage for later maturity. 

my 2 cents worth.......agree or disagree.

pjp

Ziegenfarm, maybe one day there will DNA to identify carriers or to identify which matings will or will not produce HD. I have a feeling that DNA is going to tell us that HD is the result of a missing gene or  maybe a modifier that allows HD to develop.  Maybe all dogs are born with the potential to produce HD in their offspring, but some also carry a gene/modifier that surpresses its expression.  Most likely incomplete penetration. At any rate, DNA will one day be available I think; what breeders do with that knowledge will be another can of worms. For now, it's just an educated guess.

If the dog had a lot to offer otherwise, I would certainly use the dog for breeding, bred only to dogs with a1/excellent hips. I wopuld also take into account the hip rating of the dogs parents, grandparents, and siblings, and the hip production record of the siblings, if any.

I personally will use an a2 dog if  both parents were a1, but only bred to an a1 dog, and I will not touch a3 with a 10 foot pole, nor would I buy a puppy with an a3 parent. Just a standard I've set for myself. OFA FAir to my understanding is better than a3, and look at how many prolific producers have influenced the breed with a3 hips. Jeck Noricum is a prime example. As I said, I will not use an a3, there are better options out there, just making an example.

Just because a dog is OFA fair does NOT mean it will produce bad hips. To say that an OFA fair dog is absolutely not breedworthy is an unfair assesment.  That said, one must look at the whole picture to decide if a dog is breedworthy. Does the dog have correct structure, working drives? What about elbows? Again, what about the parents/siblings?

Hodie, Blitzen, as usual excellent commentary. I think we all have to realize that the O.F.A. does use evaluators who are board-certified radiologists. But, they are humans with human eyes comparing what they see to the published standards of the O.F.A.. We do not use computer modelling to rate the hips of a dog although some day that may be easily possible.

I know that in the engineering world we are now performing true 3D non-contact measurement with exceptional accuracy. We can now measure surface profiles in their entirely, rather than limiting our meaurements to a few areas and then extracting the average through interpolation or computer modelling. And this is a relatively new application with more to come.

So what is any comparison between the "a" stamp programme and the O.F.A. programme worth? Really, not much at all since there is a drastic difference in the minimum age of evaluation that is accepted by either organization. I will state what I stated before, as that is that I trust an O.F.A. evaluation of "Fair" at twenty-four (24) months of age much more than an S.V. evaluation of "a" Normal at the age of twelve (12) months.

In the end, both organizations seem to agree as far as what constitutes hip dysplasie, but they apply different examination criteria as related to age, and of course there is the S.V. rating of "a" 3 noch Zugelassen that has always bothered me, but I digress. Of course the ZW system is an excellent compliment to the "a" stamp programme, as it would be for the O.F.A. programme. But of course it only works if ALL offspring, parents, grandparents, etc. are evaluated. And we know that is never the case.

So, we have to accept each system for what it is, and use each as a tool-not an empirical pass/fail determination. Would I breed a bitch with O.F.A. "Fair" hips? Yes I would, and yes I have. The data generated by her ancestors and siblings indicated that the ones examined were nearly 50:50 between the scores of O.F.A. "Good" and O.F.A. "Fair" and this is normal hip production. She was bred to an "a" Normal sire with an ancestry that was very nearly "a" Normal for five (5) generations.

Hip evaluation scores are tools-not empirical statements. I concur that we should breed normal * normal that is descended from normal * normal, and expect a normal outcome. The overall dataset implies that a normal outcome is approximately 80% (Excellent, Good, Fair) passing and 20% (Borderline, Mild, Medium, Severe) failing.

Best Regards,

Bob-O

 Hi Bob-O,

As usual, a rational and informative post! I believe you are absolutely right that in the not so distant future, hip and elbow ratings will be done by computer models. Probably when scores are low a human will review. But this type of inspection is done all the time now in industry, to very narrow tolerances. So it will come.

I too agree that both systems are useful. But as you correctly point out, one must temper any judgement knowing that the data is incomplete in both systems. People forget that one can show any statistic when data is incomplete.

When making a prospective match, I will look at the entire dog. I will also look at the immediate ancestors and garner as much information about them as I can. Finally, for my money, I make sure all progeny of any dog I own is x-rayed. At the very least, I know what I am producing in terms of hips and elbows, and, because I keep pups for a long time, I also know a lot about their temperament, working ability etc.

I hope life it treating you well my friend!

 Case in point about people being tired or rushed and making mistakes. In my last post to Bob-O, of course, my last sentence should read: I hope like IS treating you well my friend!