Hip dysplasia

[juliepoudrier]

AK,

In speaking with my vet today about using glucosamine, etc., proactively in performance dogs he said that MSM mainly has antiinflammatory effects and so really wasn't necessary for dogs with healthy joints to which you are just trying to give extra support to hopefully keep them healthy. That is, he (in addition to seconding my original vet who said there just weren't many adequate studies on MSM in dogs) recommended that I give Jill MSM because we are supporting joints that already have a problem, but that Twist and Kat, who have good, healthy, young joints, could benefit from glucosamine, chondroitin, etc., but MSM wouldn't really help them.

 

What are your veiws on this? I'm really just curious as the opinions I have heard on MSM seem to be all over the place and you at least must see working dogs on a pretty regular basis.

 

J.

[AK dog doc]

The one thing I've heard as a dog application for MSM (and this was from a recent meeting, not a publication - meetings sometimes present "in-progress" work that may or may not end up being validated, so this is grain-of-salt information) was about its use in supporting liver function in dogs that have liver disease. I'm not sure of the mechanism by which it does this (presumably at least partly as an anti-inflammatory), but it may have effects on cellular metabolism.

 

So far as joint care is concerned, all my MSM reports are anecdotal - though some people swear by it. This is primarily amongst my clients who use it themselves or who have dogs with pre-existing joint trouble, and may or may not begin a younger dog on it prophylactically. While there appears to be some prophylactic effect of the glucomsamine/chondroitin supplements on joint health, and the omega fatty acids are generally useful even in dogs that don't have joint issues (because they have other effects, including help regulating skin and coat, for example), I'd really be guessing on the prophylactic benefits of the MSM either alone or with other supplements so far as the joints are concerned. Partly this is because people using it preventatively are usually NOT using it alone - so which thing is causing the benefit? That isn't clear. I don't know that it would do any harm, though; and at least in theory, even a healthy joint can have minor inflammation as a result of strenuous work. So use your best judgement on that, and/or be guided by your vet. Nutraceuticals (like glucosamine etc) are a hot area right now, so I imagine there will be good studies eventually.

[havenjm]

Jennifer (and others),

 

I'm sorry to hear about your and Duncan's situation. Outside of what AK and others have offered in terms of treatment, I would ask that you make sure that the breeder from whom you got the dog is aware of Duncan's situation. Hopefully if they're aware of the situation they will retire Duncan's parents as breeders and you can perhaps save others from the grief that you have suffered.

[Bill Fosher]

Haven,

 

Chances are that Duncan's parents -- at least the bitch -- are pretty likely retired anyway. He's eight years old. But if you're interested in preserving the working Border collie, you can't simply say that any breeding that has ever produced CHD cannot be repeated.

 

What if Duncan's parents have produced national sheepdog champions or other valuable working dogs? What if they have produced several litters, and Duncan, at eight years old, is the first one to develop joint problems attributable to CHD? Personally, I think it would be more remarkable if a Border collie didn't have some arthritis as eight years of age from whatever cause.

 

CHD will always be in the gene pool -- it can be produced by breeding OFA excellent parents -- so it has to taken as one of the risks that might come up with any breeding. I would hate to see the day when we say that hip conformation has to be put in front of working ability when breeding decisions are being made.

 

The way to preserve the working Border collie is akin to the biker's creed: work to breed, breed to work.

 

We may be able to reduce the incidence to CHD by checking parents' hips, and by not repeating breedings that produce a lot of CHD (>50 percent) but if it starts to be *the* determining factor in whether a dog breeds, it will become more important than working ability, and working ability will suffer.

 

It's not as simple as collie eye anomoly, which is a simple recessive that can be eliminated from the gene pool in a few generations with no degredation of working ability. I even know some folks who would argue that the condition known as CHD is actually an improvement that allows the dogs to shift and turn more efficiently.

 

Look at Ben, 2X National sheepdog champion here in North America. I believe he is dysplastic, but what a wearing dog! And he has sired nursery champions and lots of open trial winners who share his ability to wear.

 

This is a very difficult subject, and one where I am at odds with many authorities. All I can say in my defense is that the Border collie hasn't gotten to where it is today because of the OFA rating system, and it hasn't gotten to where it is today because people stopped breeding dogs that produced offspring that became lame when they were eight years old.

 

None of this is meant to belittle Jennifer's problems and the challenges that she faces keeping Duncan comfortable and happy in the years to come. This is population genetics and breed definition. If we allow the hips to be the first factor, they will come to define the breed. I would rather have a breed that works until it is eight or nine years old -- and many much longer than that -- than one with great hips and no working talent. Let's leave that to the AKC.

[Jodi]

Bill -

 

I am going to have to respectfully disagree with you here.

 

Bill said:

"We may be able to reduce the incidence to CHD by checking parents' hips, and by not repeating breedings that produce a lot of CHD (>50 percent) but if it starts to be *the* determining factor in whether a dog breeds, it will become more important than working ability, and working ability will suffer."

 

I have a 6 month old pup who works like a dream in a small arena with nothing in her way. However, she's been diagnosed with HD, and she has trouble getting up from a lie down postition, and cannot jump from one couch to another (they are in an "L" shape) because her back legs cannot support her enough for the short jump that my healthy dogs complete with ease. There is no way she would be able to jump over a stream or something in her way to cover sheep properly.

 

Now let's assume two years from now, the rest of the dogs in her litter go on to qualify for the nursery finals and turn out to be excellent herding dogs. Because she was only one of seven and not the >50% you mentioned, her parents should be bred again? Knowing that the last litter produced only ONE pup with HD out of the last litter, it's ok to have possibly only one more with HD because the rest of the litter did so well?

 

I don't think that not breeding those two dogs together again would affect the working gene pool for the worse. I think there are many other great dogs to choose from who would be better candidates.

 

While I agree that we should not have the hips be *the* determining factor, I do think it should hold as much weight. What good is a dog with all the desire and none of the ability?

 

But I am sure this argument has been played out over and over and over...

 

Jodi M.

[Denise Wall]

In case anyone is interested, here is a short excerpt with breeding recommendations from the ABCA Health and Genetics of Border Collies - A Breeder and Buyer's Guide ( http://www.americanbordercollie.com/ ):

 

"The best way, at this time, to avoid producing puppies with a predisposition to develop HD is to test both parents and be aware of the hip status of other related dogs such as the parents' other progeny, the parents' parents, and the littermates and half siblings of the parents. The more tested, unaffected dogs there are in the pedigrees, the better the chances of producing unaffected pups. Unfortunately, even following the most stringent guidelines, puppies may still be produced that will develop HD. This does not mean there's no point in testing parents before breeding them. This line of false reasoning is akin to arguing that, because working parents will occasionally produce pups that won't work, there's no point in testing the working ability of breeding stock. Selection for good hips will increase your chances of producing pups with good hips, but it's unrealistic to expect that puppies with HD will never be produced from tested, unaffected parents. Likewise, it is unrealistic to expect every dog who has ever produced a pup with HD to be banned from breeding. Since it's likely that most non HD-affected Border Collies are carriers of one or more of the genes for HD, most dogs will produce at least one pup with HD if bred enough times. Sooner or later, a cross with another carrier will produce the wrong combination of the HD genes and an affected pup will result.

 

Given the incidence and complexities involved with HD in our breed, the recommendations at this time are to breed only hip tested, unaffected parents. Also, try to plan crosses having as many tested, unaffected dogs in the pedigrees of both parents as possible. If an affected puppy is produced from a cross of two unaffected parents, at the very least, don't repeat that particular cross because that affected puppy has proven that the two parents can together provide the right combinations of genes to create more puppies with HD."

 

C. Denise Wall, PhD

ABCA Director

ABCA Health and Genetics Committee Member

[Bill Fosher]

Jodi M wrote:

 

Now let's assume two years from now, the rest of the dogs in her litter go on to qualify for the nursery finals and turn out to be excellent herding dogs. Because she was only one of seven and not the >50% you mentioned, her parents should be bred again? Knowing that the last litter produced only ONE pup with HD out of the last litter, it's ok to have possibly only one more with HD because the rest of the litter did so well?

 

I'm not sure that qualifying for the nursery finals is the test I would impose, but I would say yes, if that breeding produced six sound dogs that were top-flight workers and one with bad hips, I would hope it would be repeated. That's a 14.2 percent incidence of CHD in the breeding, which is much better than the breed average, according to the figures that get bandied about it.

 

Taking those two hypothetical dogs out of the gene pool would be a mistake, in my opinion. This is obviously different from the ABCA's current recommendations.

[Denise Wall]

Bill Fosher wrote:

 

Taking those two hypothetical dogs out of the gene pool would be a mistake, in my opinion. This is obviously different from the ABCA's current recommendations.

 

Just to be clear - The recommendations are not that they should both be taken out of the gene pool, just that they should not be breed together again.

 

Denise

[havenjm]

Bill- I didn't mean to imply that any dog that produces a pup with HD should be taken from the gene pool. I wanted only to emphasize the point that breeders should be notified of health problems that are genetically linked. I know of people that feel uncomfortable appraoching a breeder about problems with a dog's health. If the breeder only knows of half or a third of health problems they are producing they may not realize they're producing unsound pups.

 

Health issues should be discussed openly so that ignorance can be kept to a minimum. Duncan's case may not be the best example, but I think the breeder should still be informed of the situation.

[Bill Fosher]

Hi Denise,

 

Thanks for the clarification. And just to be clear on my opinion, I *do* think those hypothetical dogs should be bred again, if they produced six out of seven dogs capable of qualifying for the nursery finals, or some other benchmark that determines an excellent working dog and one with a hip problem that caues disease in some dogs that have it and not in others.

 

I don't actually approve of the hypothectical standard that is being set here -- I think nursery qualification doesn't mean that a dog will prove itself in the long run. It's more of an indicator of promise than proof of the pudding, in my opinion. But I think the point of the post was to say if six of the seven dogs are top shelf workers and one is dysplastic and debilitated, should the breeding be repeated?

 

My answer to that question is yes, with cautions to the prospective puppy buyers.

 

I do agree with Haven that breeders should be informed. I don't think there's any benefit to driving CHD underground.

[Jodi]

Bill -

 

I completely agree on my lousy hypothetical standard of nursery qualification, but it was the only thing my puny brain could come up with before I ran out the door on my way to work this morning. Glad you got my point, though, and aren't holding it against me! Let's stick with your term of "top-flight workers."

 

I think that maybe because I am dealing with the heartbreak of watching my first HD dog, I may now have a biased opinion. However, according to your numbers ... let's do a couple of different hypotheticals.

 

Litter of ten pups. 5 are normal. 5 have HD.

 

Litter of nine pups. 5 are normal. 4 are HD.

 

And let's assume all are top-flight workers with good dispositions, solid backgrounds, etc.

 

Do you breed either litter again? Now keep in mind both litters still don't have >50% HD.

 

I am in no way trying to be argumentative. I have been reading a lot of what you call "many authorities" write . . . and I agree with you that the BC hasn't gotten to where it is today because of the OFA rating system. I am simply interested in your thoughts on this.

 

Jodi

[Bill Fosher]

HI Jodi,

 

I don't know that I can state a hard and fast rule for how I would approach either of your scenarios.

 

There is CHD and there is CHD. Underlying most of my heretical opinions on this matter is a question about whether the thing vets call CHD is actually a disease, or a particular hip conformation that predisposes some dogs to joint disease later in life.

 

Dysplasia means malformation. But the label is being applied to dogs that are functionally sound because a veterinary radiologist doesn't think the formation of the hips is close enough to a normal standard to be called healthy.

 

I have a friend with a dog that was diagnosed with "severe" CHD when he was about a year old. The vet told him immediate surgery was needed to save the dog's chances of mobility.

 

A second opinion and two years later, the dog is working nearly every day, has had no operations, and is not lame. He is on supportive nutraceuticals (glucosamine & chondroitin, I think).

 

So, if four of five or five of ten pups had that kind of CHD, and they were all working up to the standard of my friend's dog, I think I personally would wait and see how they would age. As a practical matter, that would probably mean that I wouldn't repeat the breeding. But I certainly wouldn't condemn a breeder who did.

 

However, if a breeding was producing that many dogs that were debilitated, I would not repeat the breeding, and I would encourage the owners of the pups to not breed them.

 

On the other end of the scale, I wonder wether Border collies with hips that are too "sound" might actually cause injury to themselves because they lack the ability to absorb shock in the hip joint. There are several OFA excellent dogs that I know that are frequently lame -- I'd love to see a study of torn ACLs and whether they are any more common in OFA excellent dogs.

 

I just think that the tools we have for evaluating hip conformation and its links to reduced function are too imprecise at the moment, and good breeding dogs may be condemned to the scrap heap of the gene pool while we try to figure out this disease.

 

At one point -- maybe a year ago or so -- I used to question whether CHD was really even worth paying attention to. I now believe it is important to the future of the Border collie, but I still think we have to keep working ability as the top consideration, and not have hip scores as a litmus test for potential breeding pairs.

 

What concerns me the most is the attitude that Haven expressed first off in this thread: that if a single offspring goes lame at eight years of age, the breeding was a bad one by definition. That may not have been what Haven intended to say, but it is not an uncommon view of the situation.

 

Concerns about hips will also tend to favor the selection of OFA excellent parents over good, fair, or borderline parents all else being equal. Again, I think this could be a mistake in the long run. I'd hate to see a situation arise where we had to go to backyard breeders and puppy mills for breeding stock because we had been so sucessful in breeding away from hip laxity and then discovered that it served a purpose in the working dog, as I believe it very well may.

 

I have no doubt that debilitating CHD is a heartbreaking condition for those who end up caring for the unfortunate dogs that have it. I wouldn't wish it on anyone. But let's bear in mind that no one is claiming that we can *eliminate* this condition from the breed, only that we can reduce its ocurrance. And the studies that back them up on this all presume that a radiographic diagnosis is the correct tool for the job.

 

The logic is that if you breed dogs with hips that look a certain way on film, you'll get more pups with that kind of hips and fewer of the other. No argument from me on that point. My question is whether that is the right thing to do.

[Denise Wall]

Since I may have been the one to start, or at least helped solidify some people's views on this business with "lax hips are good" in this article, http://www.stilhope.com/hipartical.htm , I would like to clarify my point of view and add a few comments.

 

Bill Fosher wrote:

 

"I'd hate to see a situation arise where we had to go to backyard breeders and puppy mills for breeding stock because we had been so successful in breeding away from hip laxity and then discovered that it served a purpose in the working dog, as I believe it very well may."

 

First of all, there are several definitions of "laxity". My concern with PennHIP is that the dog is anesthetized and all pelvic muscle mass contribution to holding the hip in place is negated. Force is applied laterally to see how far the hip will come out of the joint and an x-ray is taken. This distance the hip comes out of the joint is measured against an x-ray taken before the force is applied and a figure is derived for passive laxity, that is, laxity which is inherent in the hip joint itself and not influenced by any other factors that might help hold that hip in place. In breeds like German Shepherds, using this test for breeding selection has been shown to decrease the incidence of hip dysplasia. German Shepherds are also very unlike most border collies in that they have very little pelvic muscle mass to contribute to holding the hip in place. Therefore, PennHIP might be a good tool for that breed because passive laxity may be the most important factor contributing to the development on hip dysplasia.

 

What I never meant for people to take away from that article was that laxity in general is good. General overall laxity will cause the hip to bang around in the joint and will eventually cause bone remodeling or the poor joint conformation described as hip dysplasia. This is not a good thing. This is an inefficient joint.

 

If a dog has an average or below average passive laxity score or tendency, this type of laxity may be compensated by stronger muscles in the hip area. Good pelvic muscle mass is a strong contributing factor to good hip structure. If there is a successful balance, then the dog will have the pelvic muscle mass to hold the hip firmly in place in most instances. If there is an intense enough trauma however the pelvic muscle strength will be overcome and passive laxity will come into play because you have now gotten down to the laxity inherent in the joint itself. At some point, increased trauma will overcome even an extremely tight (meaning very little to no passive laxity) joint. So under extreme trauma, the very tight joint will hold up better and longer. However, a joint that has at least some passive laxity may provide the "give" needed for flexibility and less stress on the entire structure of the dog in work requiring quick stops and flanks such as needed in livestock work. In this scenario, the increased pelvic muscle mass is doing a good job making up for the "give" the passive laxity provides except when it is needed and a good thing. This combination of factors may provide the most efficient hip joint for livestock work. But, just to be clear, "give", or laxity all the time is a bad thing.

 

So you see, there is a continuum where in some situations, a very tight joint serves the system well, and others where a little give with appropriate muscle strength to compensate is probably better. What I believe is that border collies tend to score or have a tendency for a little more passive laxity than many other breeds because the work has selected for it. If the dog with the increased passive laxity does not also inherit the strong pelvic muscle mass to compensate, that passive laxity will contribute to joint remodeling that may be bad enough to be defined as hip dysplasia.

 

The problem where good functional hips produce bad hips lies in that these factors are not necessarily inherited together. So, if, for example, you had a tight hipped (little passive laxity) bitch with poor pelvic muscle mass but still good hips and breed it to that "perfect" average passive laxity but strong pelvic muscle mass good hipped male, one or some of the pups will likely get the passive laxity of the male and the poor pelvic muscle mass of the female along with those pups that get a good hip combination of genes. The safest way probably to always get good hips is to go with the tightest hip joint factor (low passive laxity scores). But then, my fear is the lack of give will stress the other joints in the leg and body during work or cause injuries due to lack of athletic ability. So there is the problem, folks. The technology, information and tools we have now are clearly not going to yield 100% sound puppies no matter what we do. That does NOT mean we shouldn't try to do our best with what we have, using reason, and considering the breed as a whole.

 

One more point I would like to make in this post:

 

Bill Fosher wrote:

 

"There is CHD and there is CHD. Underlying most of my heretical opinions on this matter is a question about whether the thing vets call CHD is actually a disease, or a particular hip conformation that predisposes some dogs to joint disease later in life.

 

snip

 

"Dysplasia means malformation. But the label is being applied to dogs that are functionally sound because a veterinary radiologist doesn't think the formation of the hips is close enough to a normal standard to be called healthy."

 

You speak of this "hip conformation" as if it's some structure the dog is born with that may or may not cause disease. It's the disease that causes the hip conformation not the other way around. All dogs start out with good hip conformation. What changes them to a conformation that is termed hip dysplasia are the factors that affect the efficiency of the joint. As I said above, general overall laxity causes too much looseness and banging around in the joint. It is this inefficient process that causes inflammation and eventually joint remodeling leading to osteoarthritis and the joint changes seen on x-ray that are defined as hip dysplasia. So, the poor structure doesn't cause the disease, the disease causes the poor hip structure.

 

I would like to end with a heretical statement of my own. I no longer have horses but I spent most of my life with them. The things I did with them caused me to constantly be evaluating them for gait abnormalities and lameness. Over the years I got pretty good at this. I have never seen a dog yet that was diagnosed with hip dysplasia that I couldn't see some lameness or gait problems in. The owners of these dogs often considered them completely sound. In addition, I have polled those who sell goose dogs and they report an unusually high number dysplastic dogs in those that are sold on as goose dogs because they fail the behavioral performance criteria for livestock dogs. I have no formal numbers for this but the amount of anecdotal evidence I have suggests that even though dogs diagnosed with hip dysplasia seem fine to many people, things are probably going on that they aren't aware of and the dogs can't tell them.

 

Denise

[Northof49]

Okay, I will jump in here because this is a topic that is very important to me. I am not replying to any one particular post, just jotting down my thoughts.

 

I get all my dogs xrayed for hips, and have a prelim done on all my dogs between 10 - 12 months of age, simplyl for my own information, with a final set of xrays at 2 years. I want to know at a young age if a dog has abnormal hip sockets. All my dogs are xrayed and ready by Board Certified Radiologist, not a Vet (not even my own)

 

I know of several litters of pups that the majority of the litter had CHD, and these pups were all xrayed between 6 - 8 months because of obvious problems. In each litter the hips were very very bad and several of them had no hip sockets to speak of (Yes, I was lucky enough to see xrays). Unfortunately the bitches and studs that produced these litters were continued to be bred, and all subequent litters have had puppies with CHD.

 

The Radiolgist that I have been using has been doing this for 20+ years, and we always get into dicussions of genetics and environmental influences, particularly inutero, and how much each part plays. There is currently no consensus, except that the genetic inheritance is not a simply receissve but polygenetic and possible environmental influences. If you look into the research, theories abound.

 

The one thing that my Radiologist has always stressed is that instead of assessing hips under one standard, individual breeds need to be evaluated on what is the perfect hip formation for that breed, or the group a particular breed belongs to.

 

He has always stressed that a good Border Collie hip formation should be slightly shallower than say a Goldern Retriever or Labrador, because the slightly shallower hip socket allows for greater flexibility that the Border Collie need to do its work.

 

Now if you go by a general standard, that a deep hip socket is rated as excellent, a slightly shallower hip socket would be classified as good. However, the slightly shallower hip socket for the Border Collie, which would be the correct for them, should get the same "excellent" rating that the deep hip socket which is the most correct for a Golden Retriever and gets an excellent rating.

 

When he does my dogs, he always read the xrays them according to the breed.

 

For anyone that is interested, I cam across this article a while ago. I haven't had time to read the whole thing, just quickly skimmed through it. I am solely posting it as information, NOT people to read and start fighting over on this list

http://www.filadog.com/The%20Error%20of%20...%20Medicine.htm

[havenjm]

i think taking the breed into account when rating hips is essential. particularly in the case of the working BC where you can take a "let the hill decide" approach and likely achieve more positive results than you ever would breeding from ratings.

 

the problem with other breeds is that there really aren't any "hills" to speak of that can demonstrate whether the hips are sound enough to do their job well.

 

with the working BC, i think "the hill" is the best judge of soundness both of body and of mind.

[Eileen Stein]

Why arrogant? A vet can often detect health problems with a dog that the owner is oblivious to. A top herding clinician can spot problems in my dogs' working technique that I can't see, even though I own the dogs and see them daily. Seems reasonable that someone with a great deal of knowledge and experience in assessing gait could see gait problems that a less knowledgeable owner might fail to see.

 

BTW, a good companion piece to the URL Northof49 posted is http://realgsd.info/GSDinfo/Care/HD/causeofHD.htm

[juliepoudrier]

Silent,

I don't consider Denise's statment arrogant at all. I am the owner of a dysplastic working dog. Very bad hips. And yet to see her working you'd never know it. Sure she may have had the occasional odd hitch in her step when going upstairs and such, but people who knew her and saw her work wouldn't have guessed her hips were as bad as they are--not unless the saw the radiographic proof.

 

And like with many physical problems where deterioration may be gradual, it's not at all odd that an owner might not notice such a decline whereas an outside observer (someone who didn't see the particular animal on a regular basis) might pick up on it right away.

 

J.

[juliepoudrier]

Perhaps, but I certainly wouldn't consider breeding her, nor would her previous owner, who had her spayed after seeing her hips.

 

J.

[Northof49]

"The owners of these dogs often considered them completely sound. I have no formal numbers for this but the amount of anecdotal evidence I have suggests that even though dogs diagnosed with hip dysplasia seem fine to many people, things are probably going on that they aren't aware of and the dogs can't tell them."

 

That's certainly rather arrogant, isn't it? Making the observation that you know more than the people who acutually own the dogs and see them daily?

_________________________________________________

 

I don't think it's arrogant either. Many people are totally unaware that their dogs are injured. The massage therapist that works on our dogs, has said that at any given agility trial that she has attended, she estimates about 20% of the dogs are running injured, but the indications (slight shortening of stride on one leg, very slight hestitation to take a jump, contact etc. etc.) is simply not picked up by the owners. It's not that they don't care - they just don't understand the subtelties to pick up on it. Same thing at stock dog trials, flyball and obedience trials, or your just stay at home dogs. I had two puppies in my last puppy class with pulled stabalizer muscles (slippling on slippery surfaces and doing a Bambi impression), and the owners had no idea- the indication of it was a slight hesitation to pivot to one side and a slight toeing out of the affected back leg. I immediatly noticed the problem when they came to class, but the owners had no idea. Once I pointed it out to them, they got the puppies looked at and gave them the appropriate rehab.

[juliepoudrier]

Hmmm..in case anyone is wondering about my seeming non sequitur above, it was a response to SilentMajority, who apparently deleted to post to which I responded (after I responded).

 

J.

[Bill Fosher]

I don't find Denise's comment arrogant either. Apparently Silent Majority, whose post I never saw, thought better of it.

 

What does confuse me though is if CHD is what Denise says it is -- a disease that causes damage to the joints -- what are the vets looking at and calling CHD in 8-month old puppies? In my experience, it is usually shallow hip sockets or excessive-- very subjective term -- laxity. These puppies are not injured yet, but they have a hip structure of which the vets don't approve, and which gets labled dysplasia.

[Denise Wall]

what are the vets looking at and calling CHD in 8-month old puppies? In my experience, it is usually shallow hip sockets or excessive-- very subjective term -- laxity. These puppies are not injured yet, but they have a hip structure of which the vets don't approve, and which gets labled dysplasia.

 

In some instances, I suppose, vets may diagnose hip dysplasia in an eight month old pup based entirely on excessive laxity with no obvious changes to the joint. I'm not entirely convinced I would agree with that either. Most of the time, though, there are also changes like abnormally shallow hip sockets. And these are abnormal changes, not the normal hip structure that the pup started out with. So their hips really are injured already, Bill, even at that age.

 

I've seen hip x-rays in 7-12 month old pups that would make your toes curl they look so bad. It's not all that uncommon for pups to have hips so bad that their x-rays show severe enough changes for a clear diagnosis of hip dysplasia even at that young age.

 

Denise

 

PS I also missed the posts before they were deleted but personally, I find it somewhat arrogant to call ones self "The Silent Majority".

[StillTerry]

Denise,

 

Arrogant is never an adjective that I could associate with you.

 

As usual, you are "right on" but not "self righteous.

 

By the way, thanks for the iespell information, without it I would never have spelled righteous

correctly.

[AK dog doc]

I'm not a board-certified veterinary radiologist, so I can't speak for what they see... but I will say we've seen dogs whose growth plates have barely closed (so, 8 to 10 months) that have hips that are luxated or subluxated already. Even if there is not a *lot* of radiographic change apart from that, the early stages are usually there. Those, fortunately, are the uncommon extreme cases. But a radiologist may see a lot more than I do, and we should bear in mind that if the hip looks that bad, we usually let the owner know that it's questionable and let them decide if they even want to send it in to OFA - so the numbers over the population as a whole are probably under-represented in the OFA annals.

 

One of the problems with hip films as done for OFA is that they're done under anesthesia, so the muscle tone that may hold a joint in good working conformation is absent. I don't think OFA is perfect, but we have to start somewhere, and it's them or penn hip. Since most breeds do not cull ruthlessly, it takes longer to weed out problems (and it may be impossible to completely weed some out anyway, given the polygenic nature of them). Most of the people on this board are deeply interested in the performance of their dog(s) and are breeding as judiciously as they can. I'll point out that CHD is reputedly rare in racing Greyhounds, but occurs at a higher rate in their breed-ring cousins - because a slow racing dog doesn't win and is culled without compunction, while a slow show dog may well breed repeatedly. On the other hand, we DO see a reasonable amount of arthritis in old sled dogs - particularly the distance runners. I think in them it's a combination of things - wear and tear (some of the races are 1,000 miles long and more, plus the training miles beforehand - and footing is not always good); the fact that fitness, good muscle and good biomechanics in other regards may to a degree make up for an imperfectly-shaped hip and so produce a good running dog who is bred even without perfect hips; the fact that sled dogs need the right head for the job as well as the right body - which is so critical for leaders that you may trade a bit of hip imperfection for gifted leadership; and we can't forget that very few sled dogs are OFA'd, since the most are Alaskan Huskies, which means some generally husky-like dog that may have everything from Airedale to wolf mixed in. So God only knows how many of them pull all the way to Nome on a less than perfect hip, and some that show early promise have been bred before they are proven out sound over thousands upon thousands of miles.

 

It isn't an easy-answer sort of issue, and there are points to both sides; but on the whole and all other things being equal, I'd rather have a dog who has a radiographically good hip than one who does not, even if the not-perfect one is sound. We don't know if they twinge a bit all the time, or not - they can't tell us, and working dogs tend toward stoicism. The fact that they don't whine doesn't mean that they don't suffer - and I personally also tend to lump the suffering of the owner in with that, because with some it so completely breaks their hearts to see the dog limping valiantly along that you might think it was their infant child who was suffering. It's worth trying to minimize that. Would I put Finn down out of hand if he were dysplastic? No way. But I wouldn't breed him either. There are a lot of other dogs in the world who can do that, and I am not committed enough to breeding one of my dogs to do what I would consider enough research to try to suss out acceptable genetic combinations to compensate for his bad hips (which, fortunately, he does not have). I leave that to those who ARE so committed, and I take my hat off to them.

 

Just my opinion, though.

[Bill Fosher]

AK,

 

Perhaps I wouldn't mind a radiographically good hip -- all else being equal -- but I'm not sure I'd want an excellent one (or a pair of them).

 

Perhaps it seems like semantics, but it matters a great deal -- particularly when breeding choices are being made. As long as OFA uses value-laden terms such as "excellent" to describe hips that might actually be detrimental to musculo-skeletal health, and "borderline dysplastic" to descripe hips that might actually be close to the mechanical ideal for the breed's work, I think there's a problem.

 

---------------

 

So Denise, what's happening to these pups whose films would make my toes curl? Are they being put down? Are they being sold as goose dogs? Are they wiling away their days as couch potatoes? How many of them are there? Do they even represent a single percentage point of the breed?

 

And how do we deal with the cases on the ends of the continuum -- the older dog that has worked to a high degree of proficiency despite "bad" hips or the young dog with "excellent" hips that is damaging his ACLs or spine getting his job done?

 

Sure, these are tough cases and tough cases make bad law. But I think the toe-curlers are tough cases as well. If we're going to consider the toe-curlers, we have to consider the other extremes as well.

 

I think this issue requires a very nuanced response in order to keep working ability at the forefront of breeding decisions while not producing toe-curlers if we can possibly avoid it. But the simple, sad fact ofthe matter is that there will *always* be some toe-curlers.

 

Practices that take selection pressure away from working ability by placing it on hip conformation will work to the detriment of the breed's performance and may succeed in reducing the number of toe-curlers to some extent.

 

If I didn't think there was some positive correlation between working ability and the things that are called "bad" hips in many cases, I would totally shut up about this issue. No responsible breeder wants to produce puppies that live a life of pain. And surely there are breeders out there who are doing just that -- no ABCA guidelines are going to change the behavior of breeders who breed for money.

 

The effect of the current guidelines -- combined with the public's paranoia about genetic diseases in dogs, which is in turn fueld by statements like the ABCA's -- is to discourage responsible breeders from producing litters from good working dogs if one of the prospective parents' hip status is questionable based on radiography, even if the function is perfectly fine.

 

That, I think, is the baby going out the window while the bathwater is left behind.