Thanks everyone we didn't go for the dog but I've found another breeder that lives close by and very bizarly turns out to be my partners auties best friend! Her dog is due in two weeks time and has 3/4 hip score and the dad is 4/4 so much better It's also good as we will have her support of we need it in the future etc. The sire has bred with the bitch a few years ago and they had a good litter. So fingers crossed.
Just wanted to thanks everybody for there help and I have indeed gained plenty of knowledge from reading health tests and ebvs. Having said that having looking at various ebv I am far from convinced of there accuracy. For example we looked at one puppy and checked the sires results for hip test now on the bar graph it gave + 3 worse than bread average. Now from my initial reaction that would have scared me off but on further investigation found his health test going way back to great, great grandparents all were tested and not one dog had a higher hip score than 10 over both hips! So this begs the question of where a + 3 worse than average score comes from. Now looking at the litter this stud dog has produced he has produced over 150 puppies and 3 of these pupppies have very poor hip scores hence I assume the poor ebv reading for the stud dog. Having spoke to different vets the likely hood would seem either very bad luck with the puppies with bad hip score 20+ or poor genes on the bitches side. The point I am making is the stud dogs ebv is poor but actually he might well be a amazing stud dog just and has a great history looking back at pedigree and health tests. Also had a look at a mates labrador today he scores -22 on hips and 65 percent confidence despite only half of the health pediree having ever been tested?? Look forward to hearing other peoples views and experinces
Hello there I'm sure EBVs aren't at all perfect, just better than only the results of the parents. I don't know enough about how the EBVs are calculated to answer the detailed questions about why a certain dog got the result he got. Possibly they might not always be a true representation of the risk but I wouldn't discount them - since there are plenty of dogs around with fantastic EBVs, I'd just go with one that had really good results. I'd just walk away from any dog without, not look for reasons why really. I think if there are no historic records for a certain dog, the starting point is a straight average of the parents and then the scores are calculated from that starting point as more information becomes available. So missing health records don't contribute anything. I wouldn't say a 65% confidence is great though (just the dog's own scores give a confidence of 60% so 65% doesn't seem to be a lot more accurate than that).
Thanks Julie. Having read all this when we get our puppy home we are going to make sure we have a good pet insurance in place just incase, it certainly seems a mine field Does anyone know through breeding how quickly hd can be improved through sensible breading? ie great grand parent to puppy etc?
I don't know if any one can say for certain how quickly HD can be improved. It is entirely possible for parents with 0/0 scores and with grandparents with 0/0 scores to produce a puppy that has HD. Although parents and grandparents may have good hips they could still be carrying the as yet unidentified genes which cause both HD and ED - it's a little like various conditions in humans, colour blindness for example, which suddenly appears because hens have been inherited from both parents. In our dogs the best hip and elbow scores give us confidence that they should be fit and healthy pups with no problems, sadly it's not a guarantee.
