Posted by Hank
on 11/6/2009, 6:43 pm, in reply to "Hip Dysplasia"
I posted this on another thread but maybe I should've put it here. I actually took 2 statistics classes in college and I agree with Gary, it is pretty much gobbledy-goop.
Once you know you have a dog with hip issues: keep 'em lean ( a visible rib or 2). I have had dogs with OFA "horrible" (scatter-bred hybrid)and kept them lean and they exhibited zero symptoms. This is not a guarantee but at least you know it is possible.
Additionally, a vet that studies hips and speaks on HD, told me a few things that I found interesting: 1) MANY dogs that don't pass OFA remain asymptomatic but he believes it is a good tool 2) Horizontal relations are more reliable indicator than vertical. I.e. brothers and sisters with good hips are a better indicator that your dog will have good hips than parents that have good hips . Obviously this was passed from parents, If a particular breeding produced a large number of "good" hips then a repeat breeding will do the same. This is a better indicator of future success than necessarily breeding a "good" to a "good".3) I get the general gist of the last , but forgive me if I don't use the exact vernacular: He xrayed working dogs (not just AB's) that exhibited no signs of hip problems and found the incidence of "good", "fair","poor" pretty closely mirrored the general population of that breed. In other words, a lot of dogs can still work even when their xrays indicate their hips are "poor". 4) Dogs don't understand the placebo effect and chondroitin-glucosamine helped dogs exhibiting symptoms.
I think it is a good tool for breeding purposes and a dog with known hip issues should be kept out of the gene pool.
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