Hello all,

We have always been very care in how we breed our Labrador's last year my cousin decided that her show chocolate labrador was the dog for her, after having a chat with my girlfriend we decided that we would buy her and breed from her and breed with our chocolate labrador which he has a hip score of 15 in total. Having looked at her pedigree her mum was 7/7 and dad was 8/4. she is around 17 months old, small as she is a show and bloody gougerous to say the least. She has no trouble at all with any hips and is a total active dog. and we have just had her result back and she is 19/4 = 23 she was scored in all 8 categories,also their parents were below 10 we are now very upset that the scores have returned these results. We made a telephone call to the kennel club and they think that the gene has come from 3 generation back, We have said at the moment that we are not going to breed from her as the average score for a lab is 14. I would really like everyones opinion and advise on the matter above and really would love breeders to get in touch.

best regards

Because labs have such a big gene pool and there are LOTS of low scoring dogs, i would say that you shouldnt breed from her. The high score on one side may be the result of an injury, but it may not. You will never know.

I would go with 9 above BMS as being too high, given the high number of labs that there are. KC may be right re 3rd generation genetics, however, there are many academics out there who are still undecided about HD and it's causes. Yes it does seem odd that there's a very high number on one side. Justification to have a re-count? Yes, probably. However, if it comes back as a true score then I would think that you need really EXCPETIONAL cirucumstances to justify breeding from this score. Sorry. 

Sorry, I also wouldn't breed from this bitch with a score that high, and double digit scores going back in her pedigree, and using a dog with a score of 15.  She would need to be exceptional and there be extenuating circumstances.  Labs have such a huge gene pool, it would be better to find a really good example of the breed (both health, temperament and showing/working wise) and breed from that instead.

I see you asked the same question on Lab Forum, and obviously didn't like the response you got there either.  Hopefully this will help you reconsider.

Think I may be miss reading the OPs first post  - do you say you were considering breeding two browns together? I must have been misinformed as I thought this was not done can someone explain the breeding of browns please

>I must have been misinformed as I thought this was not done can someone explain the breeding of browns please

What were the reasons given to you for not mating 2 chocs???

> Think I may be miss reading the OPs first post  - do you say you were considering breeding two browns together? I must have been misinformed as I thought this was not done can someone explain the breeding of browns please

Chocolate to chocolate is a perfectly acceptable mating! LOL  I think you may be confusing it with some people who prefer not to mate yellow and chocolate, because it can result in lack of desirable pigmentation (Dudleys).

I'd always been told that mating chocolate to chocolate is okay done once, but the next two or three generations should be to black, to maintain good depth of coloration and pigment.

Think my thought may be based partly on JG's post and partly on the yellow/liver mating not being a good idea. Have noticed that some of the pale dilute browns are from brown x brown matings but that may be luck of the draw or breeding dogs of poor colour in the first place.

Thanks for putting me straight.

I can't help but think that with such a high score on one side it is down to an injury perhaps as oppose to being genetic.

> I can't help but think that with such a high score on one side it is down to an injury perhaps as oppose to being genetic.

The OP said that the scores were in all categories though, so that is not likely, as injury would only affect one or possibly two of the composite scores.  Angles, subluxation etc would not be affected by trauma. 

> Have noticed that some of the pale dilute browns are from brown x brown matings but that may be luck of the draw or breeding dogs of poor colour in the first place

Breeding from poor colour, does not neccessarily produce poor colour.. in fact there is no poor colour in liver, only personal preference, in which most prefer the dark colour... what can become a problem is the pigmentation, nose, lips and eyes, they can (not always) lose pigmentation and with this, you lose the soft gentle expression... This can happen with yellows also, usually knows as Dudleys.

Mating 2 paler coloured livers, can and have produced the most beautiful dark coloured coats... and likewise 2 dark liver matings have produced paler coats... in most cases, you will find a range of colours in the litter, similar to yellow pups... which can range from a pale cream colour to a lovely deep rich Fox Red... all of which are acceptable...

A pup resulting from a liver x liver mating is ideally bred back to black, only to maintain good pigmentation... nothing to do with coat colour

Hope this helps explain a little more :-)

Thanks very much for the info we are not breeding from
Her and will live with us as a pet we couldn't part with any of our dogs no matter what the condition. Thank you all for your inputs. :-)

Just a quick post about HD - it would be impossible to say that it came from '3 generations back' unless they've had extensive investigations into the pedigree and all relatives of the parents.  HD is multi gene caused and can 'hide' in lines where 2 genes are present - then if those 2 genes meet with the other gene/s required for HD then the pups will have HD.  This means HD can 'hide' in line bred dogs and then come out when an outcross mating takes place.  It doesn't mean one parent is 'to blame' and we wont solve the problems until we can identify the genes causing HD so we can avoid them in matings.  We can of course make decisions based on low hip scores and check the relatives of the dogs we're interested in to see if a mating may hold HD causing genes - but at the moment it's definitely an art rather than a science.

Bad hips can be caused by environment - I know of one collie whose hips have been damaged causing a similar problem to HD by jumping too high/much as a young pup (under 6 months).  This dog doesn't have hereditary HD so could be bred from, but you wouldn't know what his hips would have been if he hadn't been treated so badly.  His relatives have reasonable hips.

Penny aboves advice is great.  Don't get sucked into breeder snobbishness and unscientific analysis of data.

http://jhered.oxfordjournals.org/content/97/1/13.full

http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:PQ3o7ZwQpxIJ:www.gsd-online.ru/articles/HIP_finland/HD_in_GSD.pdf+hip+dysplacia+german+shepherd+study+hip+score+validity&hl=en&gl=uk&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEEShIwMsn-wCsr-qtzQYr4zvJsNPTuBy2Tdmc5annIjwYZQXmjKwzAkKjg6yKR4U-kDB7Qg332jVUY43UDlxO_v5UXclchlLHHxWQ5y3S8WEjeeie-D49BoASX52AWfVsAaOz6atr&sig=AHIEtbRzNPYDZ-Hj9q93ZEfB7D33NAF_lA

Essentially ... we are still a long way off and simply hip scoring isnt making much difference statistically.  This position is at odds with the level of importance/weight many seem to give these hip scoring schemes etc when talking about dog health.

Considering the many other health issues any dog could have / inherit / develop etc ... it is problematic to put so much apparent emphasis on hip scoreing.  Rember we are talking hip scoring here not discriminate breeding of animals that have clear symptoms of CHD.

One has to take a balanced holistic view of a dogs health and if we just look at hip dysplacia it is arguable that it is far more helpful to focus on minimising environmental factors via education than pushing genetics on buyers, especially when the information given is often so pious and selective.   As far as breeders are concerned we have to be careful not to use health screening schemes as primarily marketing and sales tools or become too close and concerned with relatively few dog health issues