pdt

I have always thought it would be cool to train a dog to "shake". But when you say shake, rather than offering a paw your dog will literally shake as if drying of.

Although I do feel sorry for the poor girl I also feel sorry for the next poor jack russel male who she meets. He has some rather large shoes to fill so to speek.

Just wanted to comment on this. I will start from the premise that the breeder wants to do the right thing. It has been a standard rule of thumb, if you get a score that is getting close to not acceptable in your breed at 12 months of age, that you re x-ray again at after 2 years of age to make sure the hips have stayed in the acceptable range. However, if you get a score in a the lower numbers, meaning 10 or under and no area of high scores, then this dog is not going to have big enough changes to become dysplastic over the next year. It is possible it might get a few more points but not enough to affect the opinion on the hips. the benefit of screening early far out weights the risk of not catching those few dogs with borderline scores that got worse (and their breeder should have retested anyway). The benefit for the breeder who has an active screening program is great and vital. They need to look at all offspring as soon as possible before breeding the parent dogs again. They (Cornell Uni) have even come up with a test that can be used at 8 months of age that is 98% accurate in the normal range if repeated at 3 years. The whole reason for developing this test was to allow screening offspring ASAP to prevent breeding more affected dogs and to allow moving forward with all the information needed. Now if the breeder is not doing an active prevention and screening program, so they are not looking at all of their offspring hips prior to breeding the parents again, then it make no difference by increasing the age of screening anyway, does it? Edited to add, only a handful of ANKC breeds have any restrictions on hip or elbow scoreing or breeding score directives. Thank you shortstep, You are right I didn't take into consideration catching the early signs by testing early. I know the rule of thumb you mention at the begining, it is a good way of doing things and perhaps is what should be looked at as an official rule rather than increasing the min age. Thankyou for your reply

I wouldn't expext to much from the breeder unless they offered a health guarentee when you bought the pup. There seems to have been a standard set,(weather by breed clubs officialy or by the community morally), That if the parents were hip and elbow tested then the breeder has done the right thing. However this has raised a good point which may need its own thread. Are the current health test regulations and breeding practices tight enough?????????? I am sure we all have ideas on what should or could be done and it would be good to get those ideas out there to put pressure on the breeders to do as much as possible to fight against ALL hereditry problems. Personaly I will be implementing some practises in my own dogs and would hope to get some opinions on my ideas. Alot of breeders will get the hip scores done at 12 months old for the best score possible and breed regardless of the score. Many are bound by a club or breed max score which stops people breeding regardless of scores. I believe that the we should lift the min age for hip scoring to 18-24 months. Perhaps it would also be a good idea for breeders to do another score at 4-5 years old to try and get an idea of how much the hips are degenerating over that period of time. I will be doing this with my own dogs but I am not sure if it will be usefull or not. Time will tell I guess. As others have pointed out here. The parnets can bboth test well and throw pups with problems. It is for this reason I would like to see breeders sell dogs on limited register and not sign them over untill a hip score has been done (at the breeders cost) and a copy sent to them for record keeping. This will help us know if our breeding stock that tested well is throwing pups that are testing poorly. These tests should not just apply to hip and elbows but all health testing and even temprement testing (perhaps in some cases more importantly). There is s much more I could go on forever but I dont want to hijack your thread. Contact the breeder so she is aware and hope for but dont expect some compensation and assistance.