OFA – Sand Spring Chesapeakes

Today we are joining 2 Brown Dawgs for their This ‘N That Thursday’s blog hop!

This is what she has to say about the hop,

“A little of this and a little of that and everything in between…

Wednesday’s Trip To The Vet.

I took Gambler to Spring Harbor Animal Hospital to have his hips and elbows x-rayed. The x-rays were then submitted to OFA (Orthopedic Foundation for Animals) where he will get a rating of either Excellent, Good or Fair on his hips and hopefully not a dysplastic rating. He will either get Normal or Grade 1, 2 or 3 his elbows. You can do preliminary x-rays starting at 4 months up until 24 months. You get a rating on the x-rays but the rating is not entered into the database until the dog is 24 months or older and the x-rays are retaken. This is the age that OFA states the hips are fully developed and if there is a problem you should see it by this age. I didn’t do preliminary x-rays on Gambler. He turned 24 months this past Monday so I took him in on Wednesday.

The OFA Mission: To promote the health and welfare of companion animals through a reduction in the incidence of genetic disease

If you are going to be breeding dogs that have a genetic predisposition to hip dysplasia then you should be a responsible breeder and have OFA xrays done. If you are going to do performance events on your dog it is a good idea to have the hips and elbows xrayed to make sure they are sound. They don’t have to be sent into OFA xrays but a veterinarian should evaluate them.

Link to OFA breeders guidelines.

Copied from the OFA website:

Radiographs of animals 24 months of age or older are independently evaluated by three randomly selected, board-certified veterinary radiologists from a pool of 20 to 25 consulting radiologists throughout the USA in private practice and academia. Each radiologist evaluates the animal’s hip status considering the breed, sex, and age. There are approximately 9 different anatomic areas of the hip that are evaluated. Anatomic areas of the hip evaluated for HD

Craniolateral acetabular rim
Cranial acetabular margin
Femoral head (hip ball)
Fovea capitus (normal flattened area on hip ball)
Acetabular notch
Caudal acetabular rim
Dorsal acetabular margin
Junction of femoral head and neck
Trochanteric fossa

The radiologist is concerned with deviations in these structures from the breed normal. Congruency and confluence of the hip joint (degree of fit) are also considered which dictate the conformation differences within normal when there is an absence of radiographic findings consistent with HD. The radiologist will grade the hips with one of seven different physical (phenotypic) hip conformations: normal which includes excellent, good, or fair classifications, borderline or dysplastic which includes mild, moderate, or severe classifications.

Seven classifications are needed in order to establish heritability information (indexes) for a given breed of dog. Definition of these phenotypic classifications are as follows:

Excellent
Good
Fair
Borderline
Mild
Moderate
Severe

(See What Do Hip Grades Mean for more detail on the classifications)

The hip grades of excellent, good and fair are within normal limits and are given OFA numbers. This information is accepted by AKC on dogs with permanent identification and is in the public domain. Radiographs of borderline, mild, moderate and severely dysplastic hip grades are reviewed by the OFA radiologist and a radiographic report is generated documenting the abnormal radiographic findings. Unless the owner has chosen the open database, dysplastic hip grades are closed to public information.

They don’t sedate the dogs unless absolutely necessary, they do muzzle as that has a calming effect on the dogs. They use digital x-rays so the x-ray came up on the screen for us to see. You can see that the gentleman (Dr. Link) needed to turn in Gamblers knees towards each other to get his knee caps to be aligned straight up and down. This puts the hips into position.

Flexing Gamblers elbow to get a nice view of his joint in his elbow.

This is what they are looking for when viewing the elbows.

Taken from OFA website:

Elbow dysplasia is a general term used to identify an inherited polygenic disease in the elbow of dogs. Three specific etiologies make up this disease and they can occur independently or in conjunction with one another. These etiologies include:

Pathology involving the medial coronoid of the ulna (FCP)
Osteochondritis of the medial humeral condyle in the elbow joint (OCD)
Ununited anconeal process (UAP)

All done and a happy camper. The x-rays will go off to OFA and within a month we should have his ratings.

Wednesday First Trip Of Year To The Lake

It was a nice warm sunny day so I loaded up the gang and took them to the lake for some water fun. I mainly wanted to practice with Gambler and Glory jumping off a dock. They are entered into a Dog Jumping competition hosted by UAD (Ultimate Air Dogs) this coming June at the UKC Premier. They did a small amount of dog jumping last fall so time to get practicing again. Gambler needed a couple jumps of the side of the pier before he figured out he needed to jump off the end of it. When he got it he got it.

Glory was so excited to be at the lake and to retrieve her bumper. She got up on the pier was jumping all over the place, I threw the bumper off the end and away she went, never hesitated at all. She was so wound up. She is entered in total dog competition at the UKC premier so she needs a qualifying score with her jump with UAD, so I needed to make sure she could do it before we go.