Resubmitting OFA Hip Results - Page 4

The reason the knees should be rotated inwardly is so the balls are able to seat as deeply as possible in the sockets.  If the "mild" bitch is done again and the xray is as good as the second one, I'm betting she is going to have just as deep  sockets as the first. It's all about positioning and correct manipulation before that xray is snapped.

Frankly, having seen quite a few GSD hip xrays taht received good and excellents, I am surprised that the second xray only got a fair. Maybe OFA is raising the bar for this breed?  Not sure why they would do that since their own stats indicate that this breed isn't really one with a significant reduction in HD based on the xrays they see. Anyway, I agree, do them again and send them to a radiologist and abide by that report. Personally I would never trash any dog based soley on an OFA report unless that dog were obviously dysplastic.

Side note:

My "mild" bitch came into heat on the 27th which is 20 days after filming- another reason to have redone besides the positioning 

I'm hearing of a lot of dogs not getting the ratings that were expected from OFA over the past two years.  I know that when I sent in my girl's she got a fair rating which really shocked my vet (he's also an orthopedic vet).  He really expected her to get a rating of excellent.  With my permission, he called OFA to discuss it and was very dissatisifed with the conversation.  So much so that he took his extra set (he'd made extra's for office samples to use at the office) to 2 other vets both orthopedic.  They were all very surprised that she only got a fair rating.  I've heard similar stories from quite a few folks including a couple that got mild ratings and had penn hip done later that passed.  From what I'm hearing in my area, it's not just with GSD's that they are getting odd ratings.

Melissa