both parents OFA fair- red flag - Page 4

I have a bitch that I had sent x-rays to ofa and got them back saying she had mild sublaxtion on one of
her hips, my vet had told me her hips looked good, and are well within the range for a dog of her breed
& age, he is very experienced in doing ofa x-rays, and has been a vet for over 35 years,

I asked the vet if he could put that in writing for me, and he did, and that's proof enough for me, I also had
another vet x-ray her & that vet said they looked good, I resubmitted them to ofa and they said mild again, I'm
going with my local vets opinions, I just don't think even if they were wrong the first reading that they would
change their minds, has anyone ever resubmitted new x-rays
  and had ofa upgrade mild to fair or good????(Just curious).....
 

Here are 2 of her offsprings hips, both got ofa good's and another will be getting her hips x-rayed this month,the offspring's sire has ofa certified good hips..........and her grand-daughter has ofa good hips.....

First two asides. Wuzzup. 2 ofa good parents due produce CHD on a regular basis usually resulting in much acrimony and pointing of fingers by the parties involved.  I have stated before that I had bred an OFA good bitch w/ good pedigree depth on hips bred to a normal male who had produced Excellents. Result - male pup w/ xrays that would give you the willies. The worst I've ever seen. But you know , he never read them and had a long healthy life to age 14+, It was DM that got him in the end. Herded until he was about 13.

Mirasmom, If you search the threads you will find that many times before we have discussed the inconsistencies in OFA's reading.  Yes sometimes they will change a grade but it's unusual and I think in part they don't do it because to do so would put a much more public eye on the problem of inconsistency. That being what it may, we have taught the public to rely on them and so to a large degree they are the only game in town ( yes I know a stamp, penn hip etc) I have much more concern about their elbow readings and ratings than the hips but yep it's problematic especially because I've never really seen them address the issue.

Now I'm about to try to take this thread in a slightly different direction and it may throw a spanner in the works for those of you who put so much faith in  the "distinctions"  or excellent, good and fair. I am going to make a failry simplistic statement but one that I feel is backed by some compelling evidence.

Before I do so let me state very plainly what my views on CHD are  so you will not have to have a hissy fit because of the hypothesis I'm about to present and think I know nothing about the disease.  I have had GSD since the early 60s when screening for "subluxtation" was just beginning. I have watch the hysteria develop over the years and seen many  dubious schemes for dealing with the "problem". I have seen the unethical portion of the veterinary profession take incredible advantage of people often selling wares that were totally unnecessary - such as the new operation they are doing on 4 month old as a prophylatic measure so they don't 'develop' HD. Of course at thousands of dollars per hip. I have read most if not all the books plus many many scientific journal articles on the disease. Early on I too was a hip nut or hip nazi.  I've learned better learning that xrays have very little to do with functionality and that the vast majority of dogs with CHD do not suffer but live healthy active lives. If it was a deadly disease why do all mammals including humans, cats, guinea pigs and wolves have it? Certainly if it adversely affected functionality to a great degree it would be bred out in a population like wolves. My personal view is that we try to deal far too simplistically with what is a very complex inheritance. Most dog people and hip registries seem to function on the basis that by choosing for clears you will produce clears as if it were dominant. In fact we know from early studies the inverse is true (or at least partially true- again I think the model is too simplistic). For years OFA told us that by choosing for clears we could reduce severity as well as incidence and only reluctanly changed this tune when good data from England showed it to be wrong ( you can reduce incidence - severity is a very different issue). My personal view which some newer studies seem to be supporting is that in addition to being a multifactored and expressed disease process it is likely that the inheritance of it involves a threshold model similiar to that for epilepsy. It certainly goes a long way to explaining the CHD that pops up in those perfect 6/8/10 generation hip pedigrees. Of course this again is just determining the phenotype based on xray and does not adress the issue of genotype(the ZW program in part does) or functionality but both of those are discusssion

cut off from above " Of course this again is just determining the phenotype based on xray and does not adress the issue of genotype(the ZW program in part does) or functionality but both of those are discusssions for another day. So lets not discuss this paragraph which is just mho and not relevant to the current conversation. It is just meant as notice that yes I do understand the issues".
 
So my food for thought statement  follows and that is truly what I would like you to discuss.

I found all the discussion above about excellent fair and good interesting due to a comment made to me a while ago by a long time breeder.  She made the comment that she didn't know why people went so ballistic over an OFA excellent rating because it seemed to her the the families that produced excellents often also produced a lot of fairs. That got me looking whenever I went out to the OFA db (www.offa.org ) to do research. I found that she was right. I will even take it a step further and say it's not unusual to see those same families produce HD ( when a dog shows up with an elbow rating but no hip rating in the family tree it's not a big leap to figure out why plus in some families the CHD is shown). If you would like to prove this to yourself go to the OFA db, choose advanced search. You need to enter a name so I suggest "vom" which will pull up 500+ excellents. Choose the GSD breed  , hips only, must have rating selected and then select the excellent rating. Wander thru some of the records and look at siblings and progeny and half siblings. Invariably the goods are bracketed by both excellent and fairs. And you will find excellents who produce fairs and CHD. Now what I would love to find but haven't yet is a family that merely has goods. If someone can point me in that direction I'd appreciate it.

So here is the simplistic theory to contemplate. It's an analogy to the inheritance of the number of teeth in GSD. Many people do not realize that missing teeth and extra teeth are linked. It's like either the template is right ( ie correct number of teeth) or the dog had inherited an incorrect template which can result in either too few or too many. So my thought is this. Perhaps in the muddle of the complex inheritance of CHD there are similiar templates. One where the body gets it right and pulls it all together. From dogs w/ this template I would expect consistency of ratings and great sibling and pedigree depth and probably low ZW numbers quickly obtained and consistently produced. The 2nd template would be where for whatever reason the body gets it wrong or perhaps better stated instead of consistency the body produces variability. Here we would expect to see a range of ratings -excellent(getting it 'too'right), good , fair, borderline,dysplastic . Here we would likely see less sibling and pedigree depth and much more variability in ZW ratings and a harder time maintaining low numbers. So two questions - what do you think and if there is a possible link between excellent and fairs does it change your mind at all about your insistence on breeding to excellents.  I will duck and cover now.