Hi Murphy.
Sorry to hear your about your dogs problems. I did Labrador rescue for several years and found that the incidence of OCD was rising. My friend has a Lab with OCD in her stifles, she was operated on at 2yrs and although has had a limited life as far as free running is concerned, she has had a fairly comfortable one. However at 10yrs old she is experiencing some problems. OCD is heriditary to a point, I think like HD and I think elbows can be scored like hips now, but what about stifles and hocks ? these joints are affected too.

I hope your dog improves and goes on well whatever you decide to do, but I do agree with John when he says the problem is increasing, in my kennels we are seeing many dogs with it, not good for the future.

Dawn B

Dawn & John

Thank you both for taking the time to reply to my topic, I think OCD is more common than people realise. My understanding is that the symptoms only show in approximately 50% of the dogs who suffer therefore making itextremelydifficult to keep track of dogs who are carriers. In our case the sire and the dam dog are completely clear as far as we know, and a lady from Labrador Rescue looked at our dog's KC certificate and knew most of the breeding dogs on it, apparantely one of the sire dogs is on most certificates in this area, Swindon, Wiltshire. However our dog's grandmother who is owned by the lady we bought our dog from is currently suffering quite severly with arthritic elbows and is having ongoing medical treatment for them. So maybe that is where the link lies, but who knows.

I did report our situation to the kennel club as I knew of another puppy with the same diagnosis from the litter we bought from, but they said that there was nothing they could do. My concern was that the lady we bought our dog from refused to contact the other owners of the puppies to enquire about their dogs, I presume she didn't want to alert anybody to what had happened. We then learned that last year one of the puppies who was now aged two, had given birth to 10 puppies ad the really disappointing thing was that I knew her through a friend of a friend so to speak and she knew all about our dog but still bred hers. I think there is one thing breeding and not knowing and another knowing what you are doing. I think the thing that really gets me is that most illnesses that a dog can suffer from can normally be treated successfully but with OCD there is no cure, it will always be there and I just wish that breeders and dog owners in general were more aware of the consequences.

As you can tell I am quite passionate about this subject, we have put alot of time and money into keeping our dog happy and comfortable and it would seem that even though you carry out all the checks like scoring and you go to a KC registered breeder but this seems like a drop in the ocean as we are living proof there are no guarantees. I think the Kennel Cub could do a heck of a lot more to encourage people to by a KC registered dog by making the breeding regulations more stringent . If I was to buy another labrador dog our experience hasn't made me more inclined to buy from
a KC registered breeder as really in the words of an employee from the Kennel Club "We Are Just A Recording Service for Breeders", I asked this lady at the Kennel Club whether she thought it was right
that KC registered dogs should command more money when bought than non KC Registered dogs as being KC registered did not make any difference with regard to the medical condition of a dog, and that is when she said the above quote.

I really do believe that law should be updated to protect dog owners and not least the well being of the dogs themselves. I did go to our local library and obtain copies of the breeding and Sale of Dogs welfare Act 1999, but there was no reference with regard to the sale of a medically unfit dog, more protection is needed. Both myself and the owners of the other puppy from our dog's litter that has OCD we both paid £450 each and I should think our vets bill's combined are well in excess of £5,000 so somebdy somewhere is making a lot of money i,e, vetinery surgeries, dog breeders, and the pharmaceutical companies and this is all from our dogs pain. Surely this cant be right. I bet you wish you had never replied now! But I would like to thank you again for replying it is always great to know that you are not alone in caring for dogs.

And just in answer to your question John, our dog has been operated on twice by a surgeon who specialised in keyhole surgery, this surgeon who is based in Devizes in Wiltshire firmly believes that if you open a joint that is suffering from OCD then the problems is excelerated enormously and the OCD becomes worse. we also did not want our dog to contend with an open wound and stitches. I can honestly say that you could bearly see the needle holes it was truely amazing. Unfortunately the surgeon did confirm to us that the second operation was the last one our dog could have as there was nothing more he could do and it was now just a case of managing the best we could. So thats what we do, I think it is more the dog manages us but just lets us think we are in charge!!.

Regards

Murphy

Hi Murphy, sorry to hear about your dog & the bad experience you have had,there is a site about glucosamine, www.activeamerica.com & they sell Syn Flex which is supposed to be very good. What do you feed him? I have a dog with ephyseal & I now feed all my dogs a natural diet & the one with the bone probs has shown a wonderful improvement, you could also try that.You are quite right right about the vets,& food manufacturers
& I would also add the drug companies making fortunes out of us & not
keeping us informed and I agree whole heartedly.I wouldn`t touch any"all in one" with a barge pole now!
Please don`t tar all breeders with the same brush though,as there are many that work for the benefit of dogs & its awful that you fell foul of one who sounds rather dubious, to say the least.Sorry I can`t be of more help,
Christine

My 8 month old Golden was diagnosed with OCD in her right shoulder. We decided to go a head with the surgery three weeks ago as the restricted exercise and pain medication was not helping her. She is now recovering quite nicely and should be able to live a normal life. We contacted our breeder and luckily she is reimbursing the money we paid for her. We had her on Metacam but when she became ill after the surgery our vet ran tests and found that her liver numbers were higher than normal. We immediately took her off this drug and within a week her numbers came down again. Have you found that Glucosamine works for your dog? I want something that will not damage her liver and will help with pain. What puppy food were you feeding? Best of luck with your dog.

Welcome to the forum Seattle :-) I am glad that your dog is improving. Please keep us posted on how she gets on.

Hi Murphy. I am sorry to hear about your Labs problems. OCD is not uncommon in my breed, but is usually in the shoulder.Also it is usually a very successful operation but does however, to the honest breeder mean the bitch.dog, should never have offspring. In stating this, OCD is not always hereditary.OCD in the shoulder can be caused by a really hard knock, ie hitting a shoulder hard on a door frame. Your breeder may not be totally to blame for the pup having this condition, but she was wrong not to contact the other puppy owners, and the mother should never be bred from again.
They say that honesty is the best policy, but we had friends who had a young, very nice bitch who developed OCD in the shoulder. She was operated on and spayed and when she was well, the owners wrote to the KC and asked permission to show her telling them about her op and that she had been spayed so the problem would not be passed on. However the KC in their wisdom refused permission. Had they not done the decent thing, nobody would have been any the wiser. So you cant seem to win with the KC.I do hope your pup gets on well, and that once this is over and done with, you will be able to enjoy many happy years with him/her

As the heredity of the condition is not known, you cannot expect a breeder to give up their breeding on the strength of one case. If the bitch should not be bred from again, the same would apply to the stud.

It is not helpful when a condition may or may not be hereditary to restrict the gene pool by removing good breeding animals (throwing out baby with the bath water).

I would not mate the same pair together again, especially if more than one pup had a problem.

A few years ago my friend mated her Welsh Springer bitch and produced a nice litter, repeated the breeding and was agin well pleased, but didn't keep one as no bitches I think. One of the first litters puppy owners reported that her pup was having fits (epilepsy is known in the breed), so she sadly ended her breeding line. A year later the pup died and a post mortem showed a Braiun tumour, which the vet concluded had caused the fitting! By this time the bitch was too old to breed from, and when she dies (9years old now), she will be the last of the three homebred generations.

Hi Brainless, I've just had a boy operated on for OCD of the shoulder, and was given a sheet saying:

Your dog has been diagnosed as having OCD of the shoulder (a developmental abnormality of this joint). This condition is widely accepted to be highly hereditary with a strong genetic basis.

Your dog's parents therefore have passed the genes to your animal either the mother or father or perhaps both. To prevent this condition being perpetuated down generations most Veterinary Surgeons are in agreement that all breeders should take the following precautions.

Do not breed from the affected dog.

Do not breed from the affected dog's siblings.

Do not breed from the affected dog's mother or father.

Do not breed from any progeny the affected dog may already have produced.

These recommendations are far reaching but if a stance is not taken this extrememly serious condition will continue to cause problems in the canine population.

We always advise clients to contact the breeder of their dog so that they can be informed of the situation to enable them to make the appropriate steps for the future.

Hi, is theis note the vets opinion, or that of a scientific study. I had understood that the heredity of OCD was not unlike that of HD, where the heritability is about 35-45% and environmental factors also play a big part.

The BVA/KC have an Elbow testing scheme for grading the front joints of elbow and shoulder, so I don't think it is that clear cut, though I may be mistaken!

Hi Brainless, it is the specialist vet's opinion, but it is lifted almost verbatim from 'Guthrie, S. and H. G. Pidduck. 1990. Heritability of Elbow Osteochondrosis Within a Closed Population of Dogs. Journal of Small Animal Practice. 31: 93-96.

The BVA/KC scheme is to identify animals with sub-clinical/preclinical elbow OCD. I don't know what advice, if any, they give about breeding from close relatives of clinically affected dogs.

I may be wrong, but as I understand it, OCD is multifactorial, and genetics, nutrition and possibly trauma play a part, but that a genetic predisposition probably has to be present before the other factors have an effect. That might fit with my boy in that he was the biggest of the litter, a bit overweight, and he quite possibly did have trauma from play with his smaller but more athletic brother. I didn't breed this lad, so all I can say with certainty is that he won't be bred from, but I would be in favour of following the recommendations. They may be a bit draconian, but I think the 'if we didn't breed from Xhounds that have/might be carriers for A, B and C, then there would be no Xhounds' argument is a bit of a cop out.

I do think that Phillippa has a point about the KC encouraging - or not encouraging - honesty. Now that his shoulder doesn't hurt, my dog is very promising looking conformation-wise. If I apply to the KC for permission to show him, so admitting that he has been operated on for OCD, no one in their right mind would use him at stud, and even if they did his history of OCD would be known. But going on what I've heard, if I apply I'll also probably be refused. On the other hand, if I keep quiet and don't apply I can show him once his coat has grown back - and if I were so minded I could also keep his little problem secret from anyone who wanted to use him! Refusing permission to show dogs that have had OCD or other surgery might have made sense when neutered dogs couldn't be showed, but I can't see any sense in it now.