don rolandsteich - Page 1

don is known to be a great producer of good hips....it is my understanding that his hip rating was a3,noch zugalassen[spelling]. can someone comment on this...and that dogs with this hip rating should not be bred according to some,,...if he had not been bred ..what a shame...what a waste....

Jade many people believe that noch zugelassen dogs will not produce good hip But it is said that Don vom Rolandsteich produced 86% A hips

Don produced almost 100% normal hips in his offspring. He was in the high nineties. The first 200 surveyed were 100% "kein Hinweis" (no trace). After that, it came down to about 98.6%, as I recall. The average for the DDR overall was approximately 85%, varying slightly from year to year. The figures were published annually. I OFA certified almost 100 dogs in my 25+ years with the breed (up until about seven years ago). I've seen a LOT of hip x-rays, and elbow x-rays, too. My first DDR dog, a Don son, produced 100% normal hips out of three bitch pups retained by myself, and I had never seen anything like this, before. That's why I got into the DDR dogs. I bred quite a bit on various DDR lines and always found that the average was about 85% normal hips. The "bad" ones were mild, in most cases.. never anywhere so bad as the bad ones we used to see years ago. A lot of younger people around today never saw REALLY bad hips. You'd have to see some of the hip x-rays from back in the old days, and that would put things in perspective, nicely (or not so nicely). A lot of people today don't even realize that there used to be 'b', 'c', 'd' hips, as well. That wss the original standard, after an international symposium on HD, in 1960, I believe. Now, 'a' has been further parsed into three grades, 'normal' (normal), 'fast normal' (almost normal), and 'noch zugelassen' (still permissable). Now, I will tell you something REALLY surprising.. I bought an imported dog many years ago, named "Zapp von der Lengernheide". He was a W. German dog from old lines. He was 'a' "noch zugelassen", and I got an "OFA Excellent" on him!!! I have only owned TWO OFA excellent dogs.. a dog and a bitch, actually, out of almost 100 OFA'd dogs, over the years. That should tell you something about the numbers, and how they are stacked against anyone who thinks they will breed ONLY OFA excellent dogs.. LOL.. Yes, I have heard that before, and people can be SOOO naive! Probably the best hips I have ever seen on a dog were on my original bitch, Alfa vom Konstanzer Haus. Her hips were awesome! But she only made OFA good.. And she was not a producer of hips. What matters the most is what the dog or bitch produces. And you don't know that until you have bred them. You can try to stack the odds in your favor. My advice? If you want to stack your odds, then have an open mind towards OFA fairs, and use DDR bloodlines. You will probably get better percentages which are NOT dysplastic, and far less severely afflicted dogs, overall. But I am not that familiar with the few DDR lines still existing. Unfortuneately, people did not realize what they had in these dogs while they had them, and failed to protect and preserve them. Sad, really.