I am about to go and visit a litter of labrador puppies on Sunday and know I should ask what the hip scores of the parents are!!
but I dont know what would be an acceptable answer and what should I accept as proof.
Should they have some sort of vets certificate?????
Also is there anything else I should ask about the parents.

P.S
Just wanted to say thankyou to everyone whos answered my previous posts.
you are all so generous with your time and information :)

Hi Rachael,

Last published mean (average) score for Labs is 16, so ideally both parents should be below that. Breeder should be able to show you the KC/BVA hip scoring sheet, which gives various numbers for both hips, adding up to a total such as 4/4 = total hip score 8. They should have this info for both Mum & Dad.

As a tip, why not phone and ask this information first. If you get an unsatisfactory answer, it's far easier to make a sensible decision when not faced by a litter of cute puppies ..........

(In case you don't know, hips are scored from 0-106, with 0 being perfect and 106 being awful - so numbers above 16 are worse rather than better.)

Marina

just a generalisation here~ do any dogs ever get a perfect hip score ?and what do the numbers stand for ??

Hi,

Yes, dogs do get perfect hip scores - although not very often in most breeds.

All very technical and won't attempt to explain as I'd surely get it wrong without a text book to hand, but numbers represent the degrees of hip dysplasia present in different areas of the hip joint.

Scores can be different across the two hips, and an unbalanced score (i.e. Dog A at a hip score of 2/14:16) tells us something different to a more even split (i.e. Dog B at 8/8:16) - I was told years ago that this normally represents an environmental influence on the bad hip, so personally I would be more confident of Dog A's genetic influence than Dog B. Don't make any claims for the accuracy of this, though, just my personal view.

M.

Yes, dogs do occasionally have perfect (ie LH0/RH0) hips scores. I have had two of these and currently have a 0:1 (my breeds mean score is 10 but ranges are between 0 - 76 so far)

Christine

Yes a few do get a perfect hip score.
My dog was scored just before Christmas and has
a score of 0:1 The breed average is 13. But not
a lot have such a good score.
Nutkin

My lab's parents weren't hip scored as the vetrs charge a fortune (hence puppies with hip scored parents are more expensive) However I was able to see the parents and grandparents which are all working gun dogs and hence can see that they have no problems with their hips otherwise they wouldn't be able to work for 8 hours a day!

If I was paying full price for a lab then I would obviously go for the one that had been hip scored and had the best results.

Hope that makes sense.

I know of old dogs within my breed with high hip scores (50/60/70+) which are still alive & kicking so don't take it that these dogs hips were sound, muscle keeps the joints together too. I knew of a Boxer with only 1 hip but because she was so well muscled, you'd never know (And she belonged to a vet too who bred her!!!)

Hhhmmm, maybe not an issue if you don't intend to breed, but still a bit dicey - cost of hip scoring is not really a sensible argument, and seeing parents and grandparents is obviously good - but I have personally known a German Shepherd with a hip score of 64 who looked completely sound. (My boyfriend had two litter sisters - one of them we knew from an early age would have a problem - she scored at 63 and her sister, who never gave any inkling of trouble, scored at 64!

Obviously not judging your situation, and you may be fine in your case, but seeing parents and grandparents could show you dogs up to the age of 4/5 years - what if they're crippled by the time they're 7/8 years?

M.

The grandparents were 13 and still working dogs but appreciate what you are saying.

This is such a difficult area,you would think because we get an actual score everything would be black and white but that is far from the truth in reality.In our breed (large heavy gundog) we have a stud dog with a score of 80+ who produced a 0:0 score and the reverse,so it is not as clear cut as you would imagine.I am of the opinion that it is not only the parents scores you should take into consideration
when buying or breeding,you should look at the broader picture.For e.g.you can have a litter of low scores with the exception of one that is above the mean average for the breed and according to a vet I heard speak at a K.C. seminar a few years back non of those puppies should be bred from,or any of its relatives which I think is ridiculous.Yes you would probably end up with a line of dogs with superb hips
that both for breed type and conformation bear little or no resemblance to the breed you started of with.
Hips are just one consideration of many when trying to breed pedigree dogs(hope you don`t think I`ve gone off at a tangent because without breeding.....no pups to consider buying.
I think the reverse is the correct approach if the dog with the higher than average score(within reason)
is an excellent speciman and has been bought in for the purpose of improving a line, as long as due consideration is given to its potential mates I do not see any reason not to use it .The genetic make up of this dog is exactly the same as its litter mates.
With regard to the actual score very small changes at each marked feature can add up to a considerable score.So you need to see how the final score is acumilated.
There is a web site with a section on about the positioning of the dog when being exrayed that might be useful to look at:- http://leerburg.com/hip.htm
This could be the start of another thread,`Do all vets know how to position dogs correctly when exraying for
KC/BVA scoring?`I think not.
Regards
Carole

Hi all, in a bit of a rush at the mo, but tend to agree with Carole. Have a look at this site, I thought it very interesting.
http://www.filadog.com/The%20Error%20of%20the%20Millenium%20in%20Veterinary%20Medicine.htm
Christine, Spain.

Just nosey. Which breed Carole?

Hi Kate
No I don`t think you are being nosey,my breed is Italian Spinone.
Carole

Noseyness satisfied.

Someone on our shoot has a working spinone - I think it's name must be "Come here you b*st*rd" :D

Bet it still doesn't though ;-)

I have to agree with Carole, hips are one part of a dog and I know of folk producing pups with good, well below average hip scores for the breed, in their litters but I wouldn't say they are quality animals and the show record is very poor.

I would breed from a dog with low 20's hips (My breed average is 16) if the animal had excellent conformation, temperament etc. This happened to one dog I bred, Crufts BOB (Now a Sh.Ch.) but hips of 5,19=24 (Now I begin to think it was the vet that couldn't X-ray properly). I have her litter sister, she's 7 in total!

Just out of interest
How much do you pay for hip scoring.And is it the same price for all breeds that are hip scored.
linda

There are two elements to the cost of hip scoring - the BVA scoring fee, which is a flat fee of ?£25.70? if my memory serves (believe you can get a volume discount).

The other element is the x-ray fee, which is dependent upon your vet's charges, size of dog for anaesthetic, hair colour, wind direction, day of the week ......... you get the picture - get a quote from your vet for his part first.

M.

I had a rotti x-rayed yesterday for scoring and it costs £67.81 plus £25 something to be scored. I don't think this is expensive. My labs have cost the same. The vet I use only does x-raying and eye test so he is very good and will normally give you a rough score. In the past he has predicted scores of 4:4 and they came back 4:3. other times 4:5 and they were 5:5. and 6:4 and they were 6:3.
I live in Devon so am probably paying less then most.

ok, how i see it you pay £25 flat fee for BVA.And price differs from vet to vet and area.
thanks guys

If you look at the The Labrador Retriever Club Website and look at the section about Buying a Puppy it tells you what you should look for and ask and explains all about the Hip Scoring system and eye testing (Both Parents should have tested clear in the last year).

And it is a good idea to phone with questions first then you won't be tempted to buy an unsuitable puppy. You can't resist those cute eyes :D

Tracy

Go to http://www.bva.co.uk/pdf/chs_hip_procedure.pdf and click on Hip Dysplasia Scheme. It will explain in full what is being looked at.
Jackie

Just chipping in with another Link which gives a rough aproximation of what the different ranges of numbers can mean, and gives what they mean in other countries too. It is the wrong breed though, but I thought it might be helpful :)

Thanks for both links they were very interesting.

My breed is Labradors and one of the top dogs in the breed (Whos name I will not mention) had something like 52CC (at last count) but had a very high hip score. I have heard it was around 70+ . Every critique i read about this dog said "....... moved out soundly" or "......Moved with Drive" or similar words to that extent. HOWEVER, i have known people to have dogs or bitches with VERY low hip scores and they are awful movers. The owners said that the reasoning behind that maybe that the hip socket is very tight, therefore not allowing proper comfortable rotation in the socket. What are other peoples thoughts on this?

Don't think movement comes into it, it is the build up of bone & calcum deposit in the joint that can do the damage. Some dogs get away with it, but I have know dogs who have been PTS because of their poor hips, not because they can't move (although some cant) but because of the pain they were in. Whether or not a dog can move is surely not the point the breeder should try to breed the best joint structure posible. The fact that a high winning dog may have been used at stud many times over does not IMO bode well for future generations of that breed. Jackie

Correct hips are not "tight" they are properly formed.

Don't know the dog you are talking about Pam but I do know of several high scoring dogs regulaly shown in both Labrador and Golden rings.

I would take issue with you over the second part of your post though. Movement is not just about hips. so many other points come into play and for example, poor geometric conformation and muscle development to name just two. A correctly formed hip cannot be "Tight"! If it were tight then it would not correctly formed!

Working Labrador people are very careful of their hips for the very obvious reason that our dogs live a far more physically stressfull life.

Regards, John

John,
Thanks for your reply. I dont know a lot about HD and therefore it was not my opinion about the sockets being "Tight" just what i have heard from others. HD is something i would really like to learn a lot about, but between work and showing i havent got much time. My new years Resolution is to learn about HD :-)

Kind Regards
Pam and Benboee Labradors

As a lot of people have said, the correlation between bad hips and hereditary problems is not hard and fast. So much so that it is difficult to decide whether to breed from a dog with bad hips or not. A friend put her 0/1 Flatcoat bitch to a 0/0 dog and had a litter of puppies which by and large was good with the exception of one which scored 26! I've seem dogs 0/46, literally perfect on one side and virtually with no hip on the other!!! In most cases where the score is very much different on one side to the other there is a very good chance that the bad side is damage rather than a hereditary problem but a 46 hip? I think not! I really don’t see how a hip can suffer so much damage!

As I guess you know, hip scores are made up of 9 features (Angles, Shapes and Clearances of the various parts of the ball and socket, pelvis and femoral head). 8 of these are allocated a score of between 0 and 6. The other feature is allocated a score of between 0 and 5. This makes a maximum total of 53 for each hip or a grand total score maximum of 106.

Obviously the lower the score the better but even that is not the whole story because a hip scoring for example 9 for one hip could in fact be made up of a loss of just one mark for each feature whereas a dog scoring 6 could have lost the total on just one feature, that part being so bad that it was awarded the maximum possible score!!

We all talk about over exercising a puppy causing hip problems and although over exercising an adult with good hips will do no harm to the hips, it can adversely affect movement by literally making the dog muscle bound! Particularly front end movement can cause trouble this way with the muscle literally wedging the shoulders forward and making the dog stand pin toed.

There is so much to go into breeding a good dog and even then, after doing all the homework and taking the absolute greatest care it is still a lottery! The best you can do is to try to stack the odds your way as much as you can.

Best wishes, John

Having had a dog with HD I would never buy from non-scored parents.I know that some dogs cope extremely well with this problem but given the choice I would rather have a dog who was HD free .As Jackie says ,movement is a different matter-bad movement is mainly due to poor confirmation IMHO.
Archer

All dogs have HD to a greater or lesser degree apart from the ones with a 0:0 score.I think we all forget and some are confused between PERFECT and
NORMAL hips as I said in an early post on this thread
Very small changes at each marked feature that is individually scored can add up to a considerable score and be a perfectly NORMAL pair of hips.
The mean average in each individual breed is only as accurate as the uptake of scoring in that breed and with a voluntary scheme it must be an artificial statistic.Really only to be used as a guide line and not a ridgid rule.No good throwing the baby out with the bath water and dismissing good dogs as potential studs when they have everything going for them apart from `perfect hips`.
If we carry this scenario a little further with regard to the ACCREDITED BREEDER scheme that the KC have come up with,we will be lucky to find a dog to use at stud who conforms to all the tests etc.Hips, elbows, eyes and the various blood test screening that some breeds have, it will be a good way of decreasing the gene pool for all breeds.There won`t be many dogs and bitches left to breed from at this rate and like I said before they won`t resemble the breed they started off as!
Bet the breeders of yesteryear are looking down with a frown at what is happening at how nature is being interferred with by science.
Carole

You have raised a number of points Carole. I accept that all dogs have HD to a greater or lesser extent except a 0/0 but how much of the score is due to hereditary factors and how much is down to environment, accidental damage, feeding, over exercise and the like?

I don’t believe there is such a thing as a normal hip other than a perfect hip, all else contains a degree of abnormality. If you accept that premise then the next question is, just how much abnormality are you prepared to accept?

It is often said that the breed average is some sort of a cut off point whereby you should not breed beyond but think about this for a minute. Is that a good figure to work to? It may be but again it may not! Around 10 years ago the great Dr. Malcolm Willis, talking to some of the Flatcoated Retriever Society members, warned them that they were discarding some dogs with a lot to offer the breed by sticking to that ruling. (Flatcoats average is 9) and that dogs up to 16 would not unduly harm the breed. The other side of the coin is, do you think sticking to the average in, say for example, Clumbers, who’s average is 42 is acceptable? Will this improve this average or just maintain a poor score?

We all have our own aspirations. A hip score of 25 may be acceptable to a person with a show dog where it’s only exercise is a gentle trot in the park but to a working person it would be a disaster! Faced with a score like this I would be afraid that after a couple of seasons in the field working my dog would break down into a cripple! Horses for courses? Again, the breeders of smaller breeds often say that because of the lighter loading HD is not a problem in their breeds so they can safely ignore it. Just because the dog is smaller is that true? The joint is also smaller so the loading per square inch of the joint is not so very much different!

We must never be so trapped in our thinking that we forget that hips are only one aspect of the dog. A perfect score may not be worth striving for if the rest of the dog is rubbish but by the same token, the most beautiful dog in the world is not worth a damn if it is in constant pain from bad hips.

Interestingly HD was diagnosed in humans many years before it was first found in dogs. Our advantage is in having a much larger gene pool to draw from. Very necessary when you think no one gets us hip scored before we breed!!!! Again, some of us have hip problems which allow us to talk on the subject from bitter experience. In my case it was the result of a motorcycle accident many years ago which has left me with a grumbling hip joint.

Please don’t think I am having a go at anybody or any breed or group of breeds, it’s just my thoughts on the matter.

Regards, John

fortunately my breed does not need a hip score but i just wondered if there was a point at which the kc would refuse to register pups from a dog/bitch with a hip score over a certain level.i realise the breeder should really not breed from very high scoring dogs but is there anything in place to stop the breeding from these animals with very high scores.excuse the ignorance, as i said i am owner of a breed that does not require hip scoring.thanks

What breed is that. Hip Dysplasia occurs in all breeds, and I have seen some horendous scores listed in small breeds like Cavqaliers, shelties etc, right upto the maximum.

The KC's stated attitude (When it suits them) is that they are not there to police the breeders. They then come up with a whole raft of rules to do just that.

May I ask what breed you have Cooper? To my knowledge there is no breed, in fact no animal, including the human animal who is immune to HD.

John

sorry my mistake.i meant it is pretty unusual in my breed SBT.personally i know of no staffords,although i am sure there will be some that have been hip scored.all my dogs are tested for HC/PHPV as this is advised by the breed clubs and breed council for the breed but never have i read anywhere that they advise a hip score.i would like to hear more if anyone knows.

The latest Hip score fact sheet I have is dated to Oct 99 and shows that up to then only 20 Staffs had been hip sored. The range of scores (total of both hips) is 7 to 23, giving an average of 13.

Obviously the above sample can hardly be representative, and many more staffs would need to be scored to check if this was a true picture.

My own breed has a breed score average of 13 to 14, similar to the average of the few staffs tested, but with more having been scored actually have a range of 0 to 61, and our breed club insists all breeding stock is Hip Scored. There have only ever been I think 3 Elkhounds scoring over 40 in the UK, and if they had not been scored the picture would appear to be similsr to the staff, as I think 90+% score better than 25! Your breed cannot know with so few scored what the true picture of HD is in your breed.

Buhunds have the same average score but have had dogs scoring higher (2 to 72).

The doberman with a very good mean score of only 10 has had dogs scoring in the range of 0 to 70.

Irish Wolfhounds have an excellent mean score of only 6, but again few scored (62) but the range is 0 to 86.

From the above it can be gathered that all dog breeds ought to be Hip scored, as the high scores in some breeds with excellent hips generally, show that there is no room for complacency.

Also the fact a dog has excellent movement does not mean they will have excellent hips.

A friends bitch has a score in the low thirtys (though it is a lopsided score, 9/25, so the higher side may be caused by environmental factors). She is acknowledged as being one of the best movers in the ring, and has a CC and 2RCCs. The owners have chosen not to breed from her, butr have bred from her4 litter sister, who has a score of 14, but were careful to choose a mate with a low score, bearing in mind the sisters score.

If you don't score you cannot take such things into account, and down theline may find that the number of poor scores has increased beyond the point where the trend can be reversed.

BVA Breed Mean Scores This is an excel spreadsheet showing the breed mean scores from the BVA website.