Does OFA sucks? - Page 4

Nancy
 Prager, your bell curve theory is not to applicable to genetics here. Actually you can take an "OFA fair" dog and breed to OFA fair and have a likelhood of as many or more passing hips than higher grades bred.

Bell curve is always applicable that is the beauty of it. You just have to have big enough sample.  I agree that now and then  you can breed fair to fair and get great litter and vice versa. But you can not do it for very long time.
Prager Hans
http://www.alpinek9.com

Observation is also key. If a GOOD dog can basically "work all day" and grow old with no significant hip problems except for elder arthritis, I would never throw that dog out of the gene pool. That's how it used to be done when folks started breeding dogs. If a dog could work and not get sick or crippled, they bred more to that line.

Ha,  there is a great point. I would venture to say that usually any dog displaying problems with walking  before 8 years of age is not doing it because of hips. As a matter of fact I personally have been around GSDs for over 40 years and I have never seen any of my GSDs under 10 years who would have a problem with hips. And dog with healthy hips will start having often problems at the same time. Heresy. I know.  HD is often blamed for problems like Pano, pulled muscles, torn ligaments and so on. HD is then only parallel / coincidental problem.  How many dogs were x rayed at 6 mo, diagnosed with HD and put to down only because they had Pano. It is hard to tell.  And x raying a dog at 6 or less months will almost always show inadequate hips because the bones are not completely ossified and cartilage does not show on x rays. That is why the prelims are recommended not earlier then 10-12 mo or  later and hips are certified at 2 years and in some countries again in 5 years.
Prager Hans
http://www.alpinek9.com

This is an excellent thread!

My apologies to Prager et al, for my snarky reply to Prager on his earlier post about market demand for "dark sables" and "big heads", etc.  Now that I have read this, I understand much better where you are coming from, Prager.

I continue to learn.

Thanks,

Freemont.

Praeger..

  Bones are not like cement castings. They are living organs, just like skin, liver, lungs. The calcium is built on a lattice of living cells. When the cells truly die, the bone becomes maybe ten times less strong and much more susceptible to fracture. But, fortuneately, this almost never happens. Perhaps it might happen to a region of the bone if the blood supply is destroyed (injury by accident or disease).

  There are two kinds of bone cells.. osteoplasts and osteoblasts. Plasts form bone, blasts break it down. Both can become active at any time during the life of the animal. Of course, we think that bone growth is something only occurring during the growth phase of the young animal, but there are also cycles of repair and destruction of bone. For example, there is generally bone loss in the jaw if there are pockets of infection in the gums. The body responds to the infection by pulling back bone and rejecting the tooth. This can happen with amazing speed, by the way.. literally in days, or weeks at the very most. Take a look at old skulls from archeological digs and you can see extensive atrophy of bone in the jaws.. not from wear, but in response to infection.

  Any time there is any kind of inflammation of the hip joint capsule, you are going to get some kind of changes, usually calcium deposits. Sometimes degeneration of the joint. Increased blood flow resulting from the inflammatory process is causing this. In fact, if you break a bone, the marrow immediately releases very large amounts of blood into the area surrounding the break, which becomes a clot. The blood cells lyse, or break down, releasing fibrin. This then begins to lay in calcium, right away, to make the mend. At first, it will make a lot of calcification, but over time this will dissolve, after the bone is strong. There will always be some artifacts or evidences of the break and repair, afterwards. OFA would call these "dysplasia", I think. Dysplasia literally means, dys-forming. or deformed. OFA does not take the reasons into consideration. Either the dog had a normal and uneventful formation of the hip joint, or it did not. Based on the smallest of evidences, including minuscule idiopathic arthritic artifacts, they will reject the dog and not give it a number. It makes me sick to think of it, but I once put down a very nice bitch merely because of a tiny artifact, no larger than the period at the end of this sentence. Otherwise, the hips were lovely. 

  I have actually discovered a method of palpation which is possible for the owner to do themselves, completely without anaesthetic or trauma.. very natural and easy. For awhile, I thought I would keep it a secret, but I have told a few people about it. It can screen out the early incidences, but there are some tricks to doing it. I've thought of making a Flash animation to demonstrate. It can save people a lot of money and time wasted on young dogs which would not make the grade when x-rayed, later on (six months or a year). Whenever I have detected hip joint laxity by this method in young dogs / pups, it has always been confirmed by radiograph, later on. 

  I think that there is a time coming sooner or later for most of us when we have to make their own decisions. If you play only by the rules.. someone else's rules.. you will never accomplish anything of your own. 

  

  

 

And, Prager is absolutely right.. So many things that cause crippling or disability in older dogs is blamed as hip dysplasia. I think in a way that we've way over reacted to the HD thing, while ignoring other important concerns.

By the way, most countries started to make their own hip study projects and screening programs after the first international symposium on the problem in 1960. Fifty years, and a lot of progress has been made.

If you ever wondered where the 'a' stamp came from, it was a system of a, b, c, d ratings on hips. When I first started out with the dogs in the early 70's, you could not find many dogs that had both parents and all grandparents 'a' stamped. It was still rare. Now, they are parsing the 'a' stamp into finer yet grades (like OFA) and nobody has even heard of the b and c grades for a very long time.

I think that more progress should be made in trying to get more participation.. not by making standards more stringent. When / if we would ever get to the point where we could know more about the entire family, we would have a much more valuable tool. One OFA good or excellent out of a litter of 6 other dysplastic dogs will not help anyone's program. That said, I still think it should be up to the breeder to make the choice.

Once again, knowing what you have and what you are breeding to is important. Hans you know this, so do a few of the most experienced breeders who have studied blood lines for many years...




Per the OFA

http://offa.org/hipguide.html 

What can breeders do?
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Hip dysplasia appears to be perpetuated by breeder imposed breeding practices, but when breeders and their breed clubs recognize HD as a problem and establish reduction of HD as a priority, improvement of the hip status can be accomplished without jeopardizing other desirable traits. Prospective buyers should check pedigrees and/or verify health issues with the breeder. If suitable documentation is not available, assume the worst until proven otherwise.

Do not ignore the dog with a fair hip evaluation. The dog is still within normal limits. For example; a dog with fair hips but with a strong hip background and over 75% of its brothers and sisters being normal is a good breeding prospect. A dog with excellent hips, but with a weak family background and less than 75% of its brothers and sisters being normal is a poor breeding prospect.

OFA's Recommended Breeding Principals

Breed normals to normals
Breed normals with normal ancestry
Breed normals from litters (brothers/sisters) with a low incidence of HD
Select a sire that produces a low incidence of HD
Replace dogs with dogs that are better than the breed average

Pranger,

A dear friend of mine had sold a puppy , the puppy started limping around 5 months old , the people flipped out - Vet cryed HD .. My friend demanded the puppy back before they tryed to put him to sleep, she payed them back the money for the dog. The dog just had Pano.. Is OFA EXCELLENT      

Your right , how many Vets "Cry Wolf" over limping and call it HD ???


Whisper

well I submitted my males elbows the same time as hips his hips ofa'd excellent his right elbow normal and they said his
left elbow has Grade 1 DJD which both xrays looked Identical I believe they are wrong so I will be resubmitting...He shows nothing wrong with that elbow he dont favor it..all I can think if its true is from when he was kicked by a horse when he was a pup...I did not submit his OFA's till he was 43 months as I just got him last year..IM just bummed about that..all they told me was could of been an injury to it. and I was told by his previous wner he was with horses when he was younger and was kicked on his left side...who knows but I think OFA does miscalculate xrays..

DDR-DSH,
The last paragraph in your post about more participation is IMO, the piece that many so called breed experts miss. This is the route to improving hips. As Prager said, the greater the number of the sample the better the result will reflect accurracy.
More strinfent health testing on a limited focus group will only get to a certain point. JMO

OFA "Fair" is still considered "Normal" with the SV
Borderline is considered "Fast Normal"
Mild is considered "Noch Zugelassen"

The SV does not differenciate between Excellent, Good and Fair.
How many of the SV hips would be considered Fair, and does it matter?

Why get upset dog comes back as Fair? Its still normal, and breeding should be OK as long as the rest of the genitics (sire, dam and siblings are mostly normal too). to me it seems that the genetics is at least as important if not more important in many cases. An Excellent can come from to Moderate HD dogs, and I wouldn't breed it, because I would feel the risk was too high.

I guess I'm still not understanding what the complaint is.

Guess we all want our dogs to come back as Excellent.


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germank9lover - resubmit elbow x-rays, they may come back better.

DDR-DSH - exactly, especially the last sentence.