both parents OFA fair- red flag

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by Gustav on 05 February 2009 - 14:02

TIG, I have been preaching the same sermon as you and have been in the breed since the late sixties. You have made some excellent points that many will never acknowledge or understand because they were introduced to the breed in this certification culture. Functionality of hips must have a equal consideration as testing as genetics. Before testing was prevalent, functionality was main barometer of hips. In my 40 years of the breed I have seen very few cases of crippling HD in comparison to the many many many, cases of dogs that functioned in working modules until age and normal conditions of age set it. This is not to say that people should not test....am not saying that....its the HD fanatic mentality of only goods and excellents should be bred that you hear without regard to other conditions. The military accepts grade one HD, many of these dogs perform as patrol dogs until they are 7,8,9 years. The same is the case with many police dogs with certified hips, they retire at 7,8,9, years old. Some will misconstrue this posts as being soft on hips, to the contrary, functional hips are just as important as functional temperment in a working dog....but there CAN be a difference in functional hips and certified hips. The oldtimers who were in the working practitions knew this, many of the people do not understand the differentiation. Ultimately, it comes down to hips being a part of a German Shepherd, and a German Shepherd not being a part of hips. Good post TIG....lot of good stuff in your post.

by TIG on 06 February 2009 - 02:02

Char the correct designations are a1 normal a2 fast normal a3 noch zuglassen (still permissible) and a6 Ausland 9 meaning hip clearance down elsewhere. a4 and a5 are the ones to avoid tho some will argue vs using a3's also. The problem with a6 is it may indicate a dog who was exported to America and is ofa'd or it may indicate a dog that was shipped temporarily to a friendly co owner in another European country that has slightly looser hip standards. More common in the old days than today I think.

Mira just curious re how you handle inqueries on your bitch's hips. Do you merely present the vet's letter or do you also inform the potential buyer that there was a professional disagreement on the hip status and yes your vet has certified her normal but OFA has classified her as dysplastic?

Gustav don't you love it. This thread was half way down page two and heading south fast. Our posters all seemed to have vanished into the woodwork.

Hmm No comments to be made on the proposition that ofa excellent may not have much to do with breeding better hips and in fact may stack the deck against you? Come on folks this ought to be a ripe old discussion.

by Rezkat5 on 06 February 2009 - 02:02

I know that the SV's ZW system was briefly touched on.....What do you all think of those statistics? If you want to call it that....

And also interesting topic about OFA excellents.....

Kathy

by VKFGSD on 08 February 2009 - 01:02

I have spent an interesting day playing hooky by wandering around the OFA db as suggested above. Now I do have to say, I find it very disappointing that they do not do more with the info they have. With the relational db that are available to us they should be able to offer us info on the results of all sorts of breeding combinations specific by breed. Excellent to Ex; G to G ; F to F: E to G; E to F; E to unrated: E to dyslastic and ditto for Good and Fair . Since it would not violate confidentiality they could include the dysplastics that do not show up on the public db to make a somewhat more accurate picture ( still missing the unsubmitted and unxrayed but it would be a start). Again with the relational db they could offer us the chance to manipulate the public info in about anyway we wanted - by dog, by age, by rating, by kennel name, combined with other tests such as elbow etc. Perhaps we need to start a lobbying campaign w/ them and those who donate money to them for research.

That be as it may you can still glean very interesting info using the broad search and sort features that are available. for example did you know that the vast majority of excellents are black and tan gsds. Only 7.2% are sables ; 5% blacks; 2.6% whites. There are about 10-15% that have no color designated and then there are the singleton odd balls - black and white; blk and yellow, grey blue and white, liver, ticked and tri(1997,04 and 05). Bi colors only show 23 dogs but I suspect they are often designated black and tan so know way to really know. When you pull up your list note that you can sort by any of the headings - name, date, color etc.

I suggest you try some of the same searches I did. I went to the main offa.org page and on the left side chose search ofa. Do not enter a name or check a box there. Merely choose GSD, hips, any reports and then choose either excellent which returns 3507 records OR choose all the categories of dysplastic which should return 967 entries. I then wandered around both at random and selectively choosing dogs with kennel names that I knew bred a lot and should have multiple generations. When looking at a dog's record click on vertical pedigree. You can then click on dog's names within the pedigree and it will show what that dog produced. (w/o the click it merely shows sibling data). Note however the info on dysplastic is only for those that are public. You also want to look at the indiv 's page because it will show siblings and progeny that are likely to be dysplastic but not counted as dysplastic on the vertical pedigrees.. I.E. shows a passing elbow rating only.

What I found seems to confirm what was posted above. Lots and lots of excellents produced from fairs. Not unusual at all to see two fairs produce excellent. Very few excellents produced from excellents. Lots of excellents producing fairs often at what appears a higher than average rate and not unusual to see them producing dysplasia. Very few dogs producing excellents for several generations. Occasionally you will get a line 2 or 3 generations of excellents but usually with a ton of fairs as collateral damage in the extended family. The only pedigrees I found more successful than this in passing on the excellents (and it was only a few) were highly linebred american show lines which is really not surprising because of the amount of linebreeding and/or inbreeding. They are in effect dealing with a closed gene pool. Generally speaking tho once again the relatives showed fairly high rates of fair. What this suggests to me is a. we need better datasets for our use and b. perhaps we need to re-examine our practices and assumptions.

by Sam1427 on 08 February 2009 - 03:02

It looks to me like what is needed is a good statistician to crunch OFA data and produce understandable reports. No I'm not going to volunteer although I did similar stuff in my working life. There's a large amount of OFA data and all we have are incidence lists for breeds as a whole as well as anecdotal or spot reports on lines that individuals looked at.

We all know HD is polygenic and we don't know exactly which genes yet or how they are expressed. But without good reports from the data we have and perhaps better datasets to begin with, we really can't draw conclusions beyond our current assumptions. I suspect we really can't know the actual distribution of hip ratings in the breed because the bad ones don't get reported (but sometimes get bred.) Yet without a way around this problem, we don't have complete data on which to base conclusions.

Reportedly, the incidence of HD in the GSD has decreased significantly since the reliance on OFA ratings (and a stamp ratings) for breeding. If the most obviously dysplastic dogs aren't being bred and the incidence of HD has decreased over time, then eliminating HD dogs from the gene pool appears to have had a positive effect.

As for the OFA passing grades (fair, good, excellent) we don't know how many develop HD later in life. That would require what are called "longitudinal studies", or studies that watch the dogs over their lifetime. OFA doesn't pretend to do that. We don't even know how many fair parents produce how many good or excellent progeny or anything like that. Many of us, maybe most of us, figure that good or excellent parents are going to produce more that their fair share of non-HD, OFA passing grade puppies. The overall breed incidence reports would seem to bear out this general assumption.

by Gustav on 08 February 2009 - 17:02

Given a choice between assumptions and raw data, I will feel more comfortable with the data,......I have heard so many come on this board and state how breeding a "FAIR" or NZ was irresponsible, or hindering the breed, or would never do that in their breeding program. Now that there is statistical proof that not only is this not doomsday to breed these dogs,(still it must be responible intelligently done through knowledge of lines and sibling,etc), but the great(OFA EX) don't necssary produce so great and the marginal don't necessarily produce so bad. Some of us knew this already, but people like shortcuts and breeding Good to Good without the other homework is so cliche. Breeding is an art that requires extensive knowledge of multiple variables and not just a simple, "that dog is fair so I won't breed to him" or equally extreme,"That dog is excellent so he will improve my hips". The FACTS seem to support neither supposition...... I love it when facts get in the way of opinions! Again, I will state I don't support HD in any way but it is more complicated than "Good ratings" and people have used this badge to justify many many bad breedings, that's part of why the genepool is so narrow. Isn't it also interesting that the subset that seems to produce the higher amount of Exceptional hips(American Show Lines), produces the dogs with the least functionality....Wake up people!!

by Mystere on 08 February 2009 - 17:02

Gustav, You are so right!! My first schutzhund dog was a bitch. Her xrays were very good. In fact, I was told by Dr. Corley(?) that her hips were extraordinarily good "for a German Shepherd. One hip was goo and the other was Excellent. She received an OFA Good rating. Her sire was a German import that was OFA fair. Her mother had a good hip and one that was severely dysplastic! I only learned about the breeder's lie to me about the dam's hips when my bitch was already about 4 years old, OFA'd, titled and koered. Obviously, there was more at work than just the parents' hip status...not that I would knowingly walk into that scenario. :-)

by Bob-O on 09 February 2009 - 00:02

TIG, good post. If one examines O.F.A. data for the GSD one will see that the percentage of "Excellent" dogs is quite low, and that the remainder of "Good" and "Fair" is comparable by division, and the quantity of dysplastic dogs is about 19%-20%.

The S.V. cites a much lower failure rate. Yet, I presume this is the result of the "a"3 rating level that is available to certain dogs who might fail the requirements of another canine orthopaedic organization. Or, it is possibly because there is some easily connectable history of the parents' ancestry that furnishes a more precise outcome in regards to predictability. While I presume the former to be true, I do hope that the latter has some meaured impact. But comparing the S.V.'s ZW system to O.F.A. is very nearly a comparison of apples and oranges-there is no directly correlated data.

One should always seek to improve upon what the parents bring to the genetic makeup - that is what an ethical breeder strives to do. Yet life is not always fair and sometimes dysplatic puppies are produced even though both parents had good or excellent hip ratings and low numeric scores (per the Zuchtwert calculation) as did their ancestors, siblings, etc. As I was told often during my early years - sometimes that is just the way it is.

O.F.A. "Fair" x O.F.A. "Fair" - not for the faint-hearted; yet if the hips scores of the parents represent minor anomolies rather than the norm for each parent (as determined by ancestry and siblings) then it might be fine in the correct hands.

Best Regards,
Bob-O

by Dog2 on 09 February 2009 - 20:02

My pup has severe hip dysplasia. He is now 9 years old with no symptoms. His mother was HDa-normal(a1) and the father was HD fast normal. I would never had known, but I had him x-rayed at 18 months because I was showing him.

by Jenni78 on 09 February 2009 - 23:02

There is very convincing evidence that unilateral hip dysplasia is not genetic. I will repost when I find the article I want....

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