I received some great feedback on my first post in the Canine Health Screening Series.  I decided to do a follow-up post because several comments raised good points.  For anyone who is interested in the topic, I refer you back to the comments on that post since I cannot repeat all of the comments here.

My point in doing this series is not to point a finger but to educate and inform.  There are a lot of breeders out there who take health screenings very seriously with an eye to improving the breed and there are those who simply pay lip-service to them.  Hopefully by understanding health screening better, puppy purchasers will be better equipped to tell the difference.

becomingcliche wrote:

I would encourage everyone who is looking for a purebred puppy (or an intentional mix like a Labradoodle) to read this information. We lost a shelter-rescue Rottie to HD when he was eleven months old. When puppy under a year old can barely get up off the floor, things are very, very bad.

Very good point.  I should have used the term “purposefully bred” because even mixes can have hip dysplasia and often it is more difficult to check the hip clearances or lack of clearances in that kind of breeding.  Some breeders producing mixes will say that their puppies can’t get hip dysplasia because they are a mix.  Not true.  If the parents have the genes that cause a disease, they can pass them on.

Jodi wrote:

Is it possible for a breeder to say their dog has OFA clearances, but the clearances aren’t what they should be? Can a breeder still breed a dog with bad hips? I wonder how many people really know what to check for when buying a pure bred dog?

Great questions.  I suppose anyone could mislead about clearances, but normally that doesn’t happen.  What may happen is that a breeder will claim their breeding dogs are screened.  They may be screened but fail to receive a clearance.  Not a lie exactly, but not the entire truth.

Yes a breeder can still breed a dog with bad hips.  I would not want to say that they absolutely should not either.

Let me explain.

As I said in my previous post, a dog is much more than one health clearance.  Hip dysplasia is not like the single recessive diseases, (EIC, PRA) where it only takes one bad gene from each parent to produce the disease.  A dog must have several faulty genes in order for hip dysplasia to develop but the exact genes are not known.

Any breeding dog has both good genes and bad genes that it can pass onto its offspring.  It is possible that even a dog with dysplastic hips can produce offspring with hips that are not dysplastic.  Don’t forget there are two parents and their ancestors who are contributing to the genetic make-up of that puppy.

Perhaps the parent with bad hips has a really strong genetic ancestry of good hips and a strong predisposition against cancer and is structurally very sound.  Do we really want to exclude that dog from the gene pool entirely?  By focusing on one area of health and only considering that area, you can exclude a lot of good genes from the gene pool and once they are gone, they are gone for good.

This is in contrast to a dysplastic dog that comes from a line with other dysplastic dogs and has produced dysplastic dogs.  That is why OFA suggests reviewing a pedigree for close ancestors with clearances and brothers and sisters and other offspring from the parents.

Here is Thunder’s vertical hip pedigree from the OFA site, (click to enlarge):

What does this pedigree show?  It shows that all the dogs back through his grandparents have hip clearances.  It also shows any clearances for siblings of his parents and grandparents.  It also shows that three of his offspring have “excellent” hips.

When I am looking at hips I want to see clearances and it doesn’t necessarily matter if they are “excellent”, “good” or “fair” because again, a dog is more than one health clearance.  If there were a lot of “fairs” in the pedigree, it would give me pause, but a “fair” now and again would not be a problem for me.

Here is Freighter’s vertical hip pedigree:

And Storm’s:

Any breeder using a dysplastic dog as part of their breeding program should consider long and hard the implications of using that dog and proceed with caution.  Repeated breedings of dogs in a line with dysplastic hips will eventually produce dogs that only have the “bad genes” to pass on to offspring.  In poking around the OFA site, I am surprised to see some dogs that do not have hip clearances that are currently being bred.  This is just my opinion.

Callie, Shadow, and Ducky’s Mom wrote:

Wow! That’s a lot of information! But, it’s great information and I thank you for it!! My two Golden Girls both have arthritis in their hips, but I’m not sure it’s HD.

And, want to clarify something….I knew very little about HD when we got both Callie and Shadow in 2004, so I didn’t know to ask for the OFA reports on either one. However, we’ve been managing their arthritis for years and it doesn’t seem to be getting any worse.

A dog can get arthritis without  having hip dysplasia, especially when they are older.

Hawk aka BrownDog wrote:

Great information. I learned some things. One is that Hawk had his OFA done when the breeder decided to sell him, but he was only 14 months old. We had him neutered, so I suppose it doesn’t matter. He’ll either be okay or not. Once he made the trip back home with me, I wouldn’t have sent him back anyway.

My other post got very long so I did not get to go into this topic, but it is not all that unusual for a breeder to do what they call “prelims” on hips.  Sometimes a dog may have an injury, or a breeder wants to check the dog and see where they stand.  Perhaps the breeder had two dogs and only intended to keep one for their breeding program and wanted to keep the one with the better hips.  There are many reasons to do hip prelims.

You can find out more about hip prelims here.

SlimDoggy (@MySlimDoggy) wrote:

Great information – thanks for sharing. When we breed our Lab Sally, we were very careful about her OFA certifications as well as the sire’s. While Sally’s parents were cleared for hip dysplasia, she developed elbow dysplasia. Since Jack & Maggie are rescues, I have no idea – keeping my fingers crossed. Going to bookmark this for future reference.

Elbow dysplasia seems to be a growing problem in labs.  I am going to cover elbow dysplasia in the next Health Screening post so stay tuned.

Jessica @ Life with Duke wrote:

Such great information! I looked up both of Duke’s breeds on that list and they are both in the top 100. We don’t know anything about his parents or bloodline but I wonder if I should have his hips checked next time we’re at the vet to see if this is something that might be a problem for him.

My post is really about dogs that are being considered for breeding.  You bring up a good point though.  You have a rescue and probably the parents’ hips were never checked.  Should you worry about it?  I would say no, not unless the dog is having some sort of physical problem that makes you suspect the dog is dysplastic.  Many times dogs with mildly dysplastic hips live their entire lives without it becoming overly painful and the owners never know.  Rescue dogs are not bred so they won’t be passing on bad genes to any offspring.  Of course if you think Duke is having some pain or suspect hip dysplasia then you should absolutely speak with your vet.

Before the Chessies we had a Golden Retriever.  We checked his hip clearances.  Both his parents are in the OFA registry, but further back the information in that registry is sketchy.  The reason is because online registries only go back so far.  However we  checked the paper clearances.  He lived to 13 and never had his hips x-rayed.  There was no reason because he never had any apparent issues and eventually died of renal failure.

Finally, what do you do if your dog is diagnosed with hip dysplasia?  I urge you to read the comment Miss Harper Lee left on my original post describing what her people are doing to help her after she was diagnosed with both hip and elbow dysplasia at a young age.  I found it very informative and helpful.

Thanks again to everyone who shared my original post.  I appreciate the support.