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Keeper's hips are acceptable!

 

His littermate came up severely dysplastic at 6 months old, and they x-rayed the parents after that diagnosis to find that his dam was moderate. After those diagnoses, my heart just sank. I had very little hope of Keeper being even remotely normal. I put him on lots of fish oil, golden paste, partial raw, cartrophen and glucosamine injections, a strengthening and rehab program, everything I could think of.

 

A good friend of ours is an agility trainer and I've had an awful itch to get him started. I decided to bite the bullet and get the radiographs done and prepared to be disappointed. What a surprise to find that they're ok! They're not great, but they're not awful! They'd probably OFA around fair for the right and borderline for the left, potentially very, very, very mild. I know most people wouldn't be happy about these results, but I'm ecstatic!!

 

Time for our next adventures!

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That link isn't working, but I've probably read it! I did an embarrassing amount of research while preparing myself for the worst. :)

 

Edit: Yes!! This was one of my "clutching to hope" articles! I was very conscientious about Keeper's activities as a youngster, and it pretty clearly payed off. He could have been pretty moderately dysplastic, I'm guessing, if I had let him do as much as he wanted to do as a pup.

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I fixed the link. I'm not sure what went wrong there!

 

I try not to completely change my opinion based on a handful of articles, but that one really made a solid case for environmental factors that I honestly hadn't paid much attention to in the past. Do you know what kind of flooring Keeper's litter was raised on? It's great that you feel you were able to mitigate those risk factors.

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I don't know if you've read Denise Wall's thoughts on hip dysplasia in the border collie, but it's an article that I always recommend to those interested in the subject.

I don't know why I never read that article until now, but thank you for referring to it again. When was it written? And does anyone know if the DLS study was completed and any results from it?

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I don't know why I never read that article until now, but thank you for referring to it again. When was it written? And does anyone know if the DLS study was completed and any results from it?

It was written a good while ago -- 12-15 years, probably.

 

I know that the border collie DLS study that ABCA supported was not completed because the original design of the study called for working dogs to be used, and as the testing went forward, not enough working dogs with doubtful hips could be found to take part. The Principal Investigator told us that without a wide range of hips in the study subjects--from excellent to dysplastic--the study would not yield statistically significant results. He said we could proceed if we widened the study parameters to include non-working dogs, but by that time the DLS method had been studied in enough other breeds that it was evident it was a good predictor of DJD, so we did not proceed further. We do regard the DLS method as validated and reliable, but it requires specialized equipment and unfortunately is not available from most vets.

 

Mark Billadeau was closely involved with that project, and I trust he will correct me if anything I've said is off the mark.

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