As we need to come over to the UK for a few days for family reasons Juno has gone to our dog trainers for a few days as she is the only person I am comfortable leaving Juno with at the moment, and Juno gets to be with her bestest friends in the whole world . While collecting Juno, Rosanne told us that she had some not so good news - Jen, her chocolate lab who is a month younger than Juno, has been diagnosed with elbow dysplasia in her right leg as well . She has still to make an appointment for a scan to find out the extent of the dysplasia while Jen remains on restricted exercise. Our vet says she is seeing more and more cases of elbow dysplasia, as this is a subject close to my heart, I was wondering : 1. How prevalent is elbow dysplasia? 2. Is it more common in a particular colour or sex? 3. As ED is normally attributed to genetics, is there a commonality of lineage? 4. When will breed clubs, the KC etc., make stronger recommendations regarding breeding from dogs where ED has occurred - I discovered last month that Juno's breeder is expecting a litter of pups at the end of June from the same sire and dame as Juno. I informed the breeder of Juno's diagnosis the day that I received it, and my fear is that more pups will be born with dysplasia which could have been avoided. Thoughts, comments, personal experiences?
Charlie's orthopedic vet says that elbow dysplasia is the real problem these days - he says that hips have improved in Labradors, and overwhelmingly he sees cases of elbow dysplasia. That's anecdotal of course, but he is a busy orthopedic vet. Charlie's surgeon says that single health scoring of parents is very flawed, and the way forward is EBVs. It annoys me a bit when people say Chocolate Labradors are more prone to problems - I do not believe that orthopedic problems are related to coat colour, but more some Chocolate Labradors were the subject of bad breeding. It's not the case though that genetic problems only result from puppy mills, when we had the threads on here about our dogs sharing common ancestors I could not resist looking up the EBVs of the popular sires...those popular sires appear again and again in our dogs' pedigrees, and some of the health results are not great at all - although perhaps for the time good, don't know.... I have no idea at all about how valid this data is, particularly for dogs long gone (I don't know if the data is bad because the dog lived long ago, or good because there is now a long line of offspring with health results recorded). pr by julieandcharlie julieandcharlie, on Flickr cs by julieandcharlie julieandcharlie, on Flickr
This is such a great use of data- it seems that the Kennel Club are definitely trying to help inform breeders and buyers. Julie, do you know what the little envelope shadow areas are? I assumed they were related to the confidence interval, and on the examples you showed that makes perfect sense, but when I tried Merla's, her 'envelope' was completely separated from the 'spot' for hips:
I concede that we are moving forward in the struggle to eliminate disease in our pets, but not being a statistician I find the data provided by the Kennel Club difficult to understand. For example, Benson who is 5 years old received a good score on hips and is rated EBV -16, Confidence 70% and a disappointing elbow score of 108, confidence 56%. As the owner, who was well-informed and bought from an Authorised Breeder, it was easy to take the decision not to breed from him but more importantly is the worry that he may suffer elbow dysplasia in the years to come. I realize that there are other factors that influence this risk than the initial X Ray score and apart from making sure that he is not over weight and over exercised there is not much that one can do than keep ones fingers crossed. However I and others live with a sword of Damocles hanging overhead and must accept that it will take another generation before this condition is eradicated? .
Most dogs with ED will limp before they are 2 years old. If Benson is 5 years old with no symptoms of elbow dysplasia, that's good.
Out of interest, what would people look for in terms of EBV when buying a puppy? I have in my mind better than -60 with tight confidence. But if we all started looking for that, would we restrict the gene pool even further risking other, untested for, diseases?
Well, it would be good to have everything in the green, at least! It's worth noting that the confidence is likely to be better for the parents who have actual test results than pups who don't if you're looking at pups already born and registered. Also, confidence will be better for lines who have had test results logged for several generations. I'd be looking for a working line pup, and I guess many of those wouldn't have many generations of testing behind them as they've traditionally been sold on field trial results and working ability of parents. However, I'd definitely look for hips and elbow EBV in the below average range (-20 or less) for both parents in addition to working history and obviously temperament. Health scores were one of my crucial deciding factors when I was looking for my last pup (Merla).
I don't think that's quite right - pups start (if untested) at the average of the parents, with the same confidence intervals but the data can change over their lifetime as more data becomes available. Charlie's results are the straight average of his mum and dad.
Oh OK, yes you're probably right. Definitely for values it would be the average of the parent values in the absence of test results for the individual. I was thinking more of the confidence which I think would decrease in the same dog if you submitted actual test results for that dog, compared to when it was calculated purely on the parent values. Sorry, not explaining myself well. What I'm trying to say is that I wouldn't preclude a dog because the confidence wasn't particularly high, if the scores themselves were low, as that might just indicate that not many of the ancestors and relatives had been tested. Ideally of course I'd look for low EBV scores with high confidence.
The EBV scores are just based on probability, so the confidence interval (black fuzzy area) is a very important part of the statistic (because it more or less tells you the range that the 'real score' might lie in. You don't just want the black dot to be in the green band, you want the whole black fuzzy area to be in the green band too.
I wish I could agree. Under the KC assured breeder scheme, for Labradors they only insist on mandatory hip scoring and eye exams of the parents. Elbow scores are still, in 2015, only a recommended optional extra! This could easily explain why hips are now being managed successfully through selective breeding, but elbows are becoming the new problem.
I definitely think the kennel club should be doing a LOT more. But even so, there just might be a problem with closed gene pools. After elbows, and hips, and eyes...what's next? I look again at the results for Charlie's mum and dad - they look great. The results for his siblings that are health tested look great. His own x-rays look great....still ££,£££s and a huge amount of my time dealing with cruciate disease....I'm thankful, of course, it can (more or less) be "fixed", but still....
Just to join the party, here are Gemma's results. Her parents were 3/3 hips and 0/0 elbows on both sides.
Do you think the higher incidence in elbow dysplasia could be due to the fact that the 'hype' so to speak was all about hips. So everyone concentrated on hip scores etc etc and reducing hip dysplasia whilst the elbow aspect got overlooked? And now we're seeing a rise in this condition as incidences of hip dysplasia are falling. Just a thought
In France, as far as I have discovered, there is no EBV system. All you have to go on is the parents hip and elbow score although it is compulsory for the parents to have been hip and elbow scored (and eye-tested) prior to a mating otherwise the puppies can not be registered. One of my main concerns is that where a case of ED, or HD, has been diagnosed in a litter there are no constraints to prevent a future mating of the same parents despite, to my mind, an increased risk of producing one or more puppies that are affected. Elbows are the new problem in Labradors, and it seems is being diagnosed, younger and younger in our puppies - Juno was only 5 months old when she first stared limping and my trainers dog is only 10 months old but has been limping off and on for 2 months and just for extra fun our pet insurance excludes ED as it's "hereditary" or "congenital", but I think it's time that organisations like the KC and the SCC here in France started to take more action to help eliminate ED in the same way that the incidence of HD has improved.
I am not sure that elbow dysplasia is being diagnosed younger - I think it was always the case that elbow dysplasia shows up at a young age in dogs. We do need some realiable data on the trends for ED and HD, I think we did find some when this topic came up before - I'll try to search and dig it out (I don't find the search on the new forum all that easy to use, no doubt I need to just get used to it though).
