Check out my dogs hips-Prelims 13 months - Page 1

How would you rate these hips?

Thanks,

KIM

would like to see the sockets deeper, but the femur heads couldn't be seated any tighter.  Passing, surely.

molly

Actually, the depth is just fine. Also the congruity (tightness) of the joint is good. What could be better, according to OFA, would be the length and angle of the femoral necks. However.. Let me take a guess. This youngster has very muscular thighs and I would not be surprised if it has some East German blood. I would say this dog could make a "good", if nothing else changes, but with the femoral neck angle and length, OFA might give it a "fair". Personally, I don't care for this method of rating. In my book, a dog is either dysplastic or not dysplastic, and nothing in between. I think that they are trying to promote a certain kind of hip joint that they think is more stable and desirable for the GSD. However, there can be a marked difference in the stance and musculature of some GSDs which have a "wider wheel base" and are less gracile in build. Their unique physical profile is not considered. If you look at the hips of Rottweilers and APBT's, you would see similarities with the more robust and muscular GSDs. I have the DDR lines, and I have some dogs like this.. In those bloodlines, I was popping a lot of  "fair" ratings. Disappointing, but I know the truth. They are not dysplastic and they are very powerful, robust dogs.. working dogs, not show (side-gaiting) dogs.

http://www.pedigreedatabase.com/gsd/pedigree/538457.html

This is her pedigree.  She is DDR line. 

Thanks,

KIM

On second look, I will make a few more comments..

The positioning could definitely be a little better. The left (mirror of the right, on the image) side is the lesser of the two. It has been my observation, over the years, that a majority of HD affected dogs are unilaterally dysplastic. And, here is a curious thing.. It is usually the right side! Perhaps not coincidentally, most of our dogs are "right handed". In other words, given a choice, they will turn to the right (rather than the left) to come around. Coming around sharply, as a dog would do in a typical kennel, is not a natural motion.. especially if done repetitively. Our breed are also wicked fence-runners and some do laps in a kennel run all day long. I'm inclined to think that the standard kennel run, that forces a dog to turn so sharply to come around, is not good for our dogs, especially if they are fence fighters in a kennel.

What you're going to have to watch for in this one is that the femoral head does not start to spread back on the neck, or that the neck does not thicken. This can come from inflammation of the hip joint capsule, and I would watch for overexercise or unrestricted repetitive motion which might contribute to that sort of problem.

The obtuse angle of the femoral neck and the shortness of it are just part of the dog.. nothing you can do to change that. But OFA considers this type less than ideal and they have a profile for each breed.. This would be OK for a dog with a wider stance and a more muscular thigh like a Rottie, but they will probably view it a bit suspiciously for a GSD.

The GSDs with the most beautiful hips I've seen came close behind Quanto Wienerau, many years ago, and there was a particular stance that was characteristic for these dogs, that when viewed from the front and slightly at an angle, you could see that their knees were inclined inwardly just a bit, in line with and under the hip socket. A dog such as this would be more likely to have the desired (more acute) angle to the femoral head / neck. But.. That is not how a lot of the old DDR working lines are built.

I still have some old x-rays from many years ago, and I ought to post them to my website. I have thought about that. I don't think that we hardly ever see anymore the REALLY bad hips that we used to see thirty years ago. If you saw that, you would want to cry!

Does anyone out there have hip xrays that are rated excellent hat can be posted here?  I can't seem to find any on the internet so that I can see the difference between the ratings...  and actually- it would be interesting to see some HD xrays too...  Thanks...  :-)

Nice bitch, Kim! Wonderful pigment!!!

Yeah.. I suspected she was DDR. I've seen quite a few like this in the DDR dogs. To me, they are normal for their physical build. I would be happy with this x-ray.

Someone else asked to see an OFA "excellent", and I have personally had three of those, over the years, out of around 98 / 99 dogs that I OFA certified. That's a pretty low percentage, I'd say..  Now, here is the really curious thing: One of those dogs that OFA'd "excellent" was a "noch zugelassen" dog!!!! His name was Zapp von der Lengernheide, and I got him from Bill Fleisher, many years ago. Big, rangey dog, very long legs. OK.. He did have nice hips, but not the best I've ever had. The best that come to mind were two bitches that OFA'd good. And, I still have the x-rays on one of those bitches, dead for many years. The thing that I know for sure with at least one of those OFA excellent bitches, was that they could not or did not PRODUCE excellent hips, or even good ones, or even fair ones. Same with the one bitch who got a good and (IMO) definitely was worthy of an excellent... tragically, not a good hip producer. In fact, none of her progeny had any good luck on hips, and two that I can think of were basket cases, future cripples, waiting to happen.

Go figure! Another "good" who deserved special mention in the hip category (gorgeous x-rays) was a dead-kick dog who produced NOTHING in the way of drive or intelligence. Useless, really..

Sometimes, it used to seem to me that the really good working dogs were more likely to come up with bad hips.. I had my share of them, until I got into the DDR dogs. That's when I really started getting good results in the hip certifications. Instead of getting one out of four or five that WOULD OFA, I was getting with the DDR dogs maybe one in four or five that wouldn't, and even of those, I was not seeing the outright cripples that we used to see. They were usually near-misses. So, yes.. Give me all those "fair" ratings! Better than having four that would not make it, to get one that would.. and it was usually the least desirable pup in the litter (as luck would have it).

I used to breed to a good dog and then keep four or five pups and raise them.. Dogs like Rocco vom Busecker Schloss and Enno vom Antrefftal, and some lesser known local dogs. They had the same breeding, same food, same handling, same environment, same everything. The first time I EVER got a litter with all the retained pups being good (and eventually OFA certifying) was to a son of Don vom Rolandsteich.. the great DDR hip producer! I went from being ready to quit the breed, to having a whole new beginning. What a difference! And, it just kept getting better! I got a LOT of good hips from the DDR dogs, and some very interesting temperaments that you could really do something with.. not all good, naturally, but better than I'd ever had before.

DDR-DSH

Thanks for the compliments on Tika, she is a pretty nice pup, with really good drive for being DDR. 

I am hoping to get some current pictures of her this weekend, the picture on her pedigree was taken about 5 months ago. 

I will let you know what OFA says. 

Kim

The thing that is important to remember is that ratings by OFA are subjective, depending on who is doing the looking. My understanding is that it's a consensus of two out of three opinions, randomly selected from a pool of veterinarians. Probably some will almost never give an excellent, while others will rate everything less than the ideal for the side-gaiters as a "fair".

Did anyone ever wonder why they called it an 'a' stamp? Because they used to have a 'b', 'c', and 'd' stamp.. Which we have not seen for many years. But now, they parse the 'a' stamp even further and the lowest 'a' is 'noch zugelassen' ("still permitted").. But how did my NZ dog make an OFA 'excellent'? Go figure!!! I swear that this is true!!!

DDR fans may remember Cäsar von der Knappenmühle. He made OFA 'excellent'. Well, someone told them how cool it would be to resubmit him to OFA at an older age to reaffirm his good rating, and he got knocked down to a 'fair'. Again, "go figure"! It's a subjective analysis, folks, and that depends on who's reading the x-ray. Some of these vets seem to think that we can "raise the standard" and get more good hips, but I don't see it happening.

If everyone participated in the program, and nobody cheated, we'd get a really good idea as to which family lines are producing good hips, and which are not. That would be the biggest help of all. The East Germans had such a system, and no economic incentives to cheat. We will never see that kind of paradigm, again. What we DO know is that annually, they reported about 85% normal hips in the breed, and that was very, very consistent with what I saw. On the West German dogs, working AND show, I saw something closer to the exact opposite... AND, lots of cryptorchids, soft ears and often very useless dogs in general.

I haven't raised a litter in almost ten years and have in no way conducted any business with the dogs in all those years. I have no financial stake or agenda. I have some frozen semen, but none is for sale. You understand, please.. I'm just telling it like I saw it.

Kim, who is that nice stud dog on your signature?