Episode 181: The Ins and Outs of the OFA

Dr. Fran Smith, DVM, President of the OFA, teaches our community how canine health testing can benefit your breeding program. She also shares insights into the history of OFA, its mission, and process for selecting health tests.

Watch the video version of this presentation here.

Transcript

Nicole Engelman  00:04

Welcome to the Good Dog Pod. Join us every other Wednesday when we discuss all things dogs, from health and veterinary care to training and behavior science, as well as the ins and outs of Good Dog and how our platform can help you successfully run your breeding program. Follow us and join Good Dog’s mission to build a better world for our dogs and the people who love them.

Nicole Engelman  00:28

Thank you all again for being here. I'm Nicole, Good Dog’s Community Lead, for those of you who don't know me, and today we are going to be leading a presentation on the ins and outs of the Orthopedic Foundation for Animals with one of our favorite guests, Dr. Fran Smith, who is joining us again. We have absolutely loved having her do presentations for us last year, and there is no better person to be leading this presentation for us today, because Dr. Smith also happens to be president of the OFA, and is going to be teaching our community about how canine health testing can really benefit your breeding program. Dr. Smith is going to share insights into the history of the OFA, its mission and then process for selecting health tests. So, lots of great things to cover today. We got a lot of questions from our community already. I'm imagining there's going to be a lot coming through the chat too. So we have so much exciting stuff to cover. Before we get into all of that, I want to thank Purina again for helping us bring you this good breeder webinar. Again, this is a topic that everyone was really asking us to hear more about and learn about. So thank you all again for continuing to share your suggestions with us. Please share more with us as you have ideas about what you want to see us cover next in these webinars. We have a ton of really great ones already scheduled for the rest of the year, but there is always room to add. So please continue sharing your ideas with us, as you have been. Very quickly, for anyone who is not familiar with Good Dog at all, and this is the first time you're hearing of us: we are on a mission to build a better world for our dogs and the people who love them by advocating for responsible dog breeders like yourselves, educating the public and promoting canine health and responsible dog ownership through events just like this. We are a secure online community created just for responsible dog breeders to connect with serious, quality Good Dog applicants from all across the country and find forever homes for your puppies. And then, in addition to all of that, we also offer a number of educational resources, legal resources, business resources, and health related discounts, all really designed to help you run your programs very seamlessly from start to finish. So if any of that sounds of interest to you, and hopefully it does, we would love to have you join our community, if you're not yet a member of our Good Breeder community. So you can always learn more about our mission and apply at Good Dog.com/join. Please let me know if you have any questions about joining our community; you can always reach out to us at breederteam@gooddog.com, and someone will happily help you answer those. And before I let Dr. Smith take it away, I just want to share a little bit more about her. Dr. Smith became a diplomat of the College of Theriogenology in 1986, and since that time, she has been in private practice as a small animal practitioner, specializing in canine reproduction. Dr. Smith is one of the very few board certified theriogenologists in private practice—that word always trips me up. Her expertise in genetic counseling, chilled and frozen semen and reproductive infertility of the male and female canine is known throughout the United States. Dr. Smith frequently speaks to breed groups, veterinary associations and students and the general public. And Good Dog, as I mentioned; she's been here many times before. Dr. Smith retired from full time practice in March of 2023 but maintains licenses in Minnesota, Mississippi, and Colorado. Dr. Smith grew up in a military family that bred German Shepherd dogs. I see we have some German Shepherd breeders here. Her commitment to veterinary medicine began at seven years of age and was confirmed in her high school yearbook when she stated her goal was the pattern of 40 little feet, not human. So there couldn't be a better expert to have here today to really share the ins and outs of the OFA with our community. So with all of that, Dr. Smith, I'll pass it over to you to get the presentation started. 

Dr. Francis Smith  04:18

Thank you, Nicole. Well, first of all, I want to tell you all that this lecture is designed to kind of summarize many of the questions that I get this year and over the years about what really happens at the OFA. There's a lot of myths. There are some mysteries, and there's really no reason for mysteries because we are very transparent in what we do. So I hope to educate you and give you lots of answers about the OFA. So this is all about what you really need to know, and then also what you think you may know about the OFA. What you need to know is the information I'm going to give you, and what you think you know is what you've heard from your friends, which is, well, just send me a copy of the films at your veterinarian's office. I'll look at them on my phone, and we can make an assessment of whether this dog is normal or not. Unfortunately or fortunately, it's just not that simple. So the OFA is the canine Health Information Center. So it is now OFA–Canine Health Information Center. The original title was the Orthopedic Foundation for Animals. How did it start, and why did it start? It was actually started by a wealthy philanthropist and sportsman, John Olin, who owned Winchester arms, and he was very involved in my favorite breed, the Labrador Retriever. His dogs competed in field trials, worked hard on game farms, did a lot of duck hunting, and he had concerns that as they age, some of them became lame. Mr. Olin was concerned about the lameness the dog developed as they age, and some did at an earlier age. He wanted to find out why that happened, and to investigate possible control measures. As you probably are all aware, just from even all the ads that we see on TV, etc, all of the research institutions need funds to conduct research. Fortunately for the OFA, the Labrador breed, and dogdom, Mr. Olin had those resources to provide the early money. So in addition, the first two databases were OFA information on hips, and then the second one was an eye database, which was initiated again through a concerned breeder of Toy Poodles, a woman named Dottie Troutner, who was concerned about the loss of vision in her little Poodles as they age. Ultimately, this disease was diagnosed as progressive retinal atrophy, which we now know is the result of a simple autosomal recessive gene. And so through Dottie, the original eye certification process, which was called CERF, was established. (That's C-E-R-F.) If you've had eyes checked on dogs recently by an ophthalmologist, you will now find that it's an OFA. It's the companion animal eye exam. So the terminology has changed, but it's still done by the experts.

07:43

The original funding took place in a building on the grounds of the University of Missouri in Columbia and today and for quite a long time, the OFA is still located in Columbia, Missouri on Nifong Boulevard, which is not far from the main campus of University of Missouri and the Veterinary College. So health testing, as we know, is triggered by concern for the dogs and actually for the cats that we love. Selection of recommended tests involves a joint venture between breeders and veterinarians and the animal owners themselves. And you need to know, because people say, “Well, OFA must just develop these tests so they make more money.” Nothing could be further from the truth. And additionally, I will tell you, our board is all a group of volunteers who donate many hours and a lot of expertise in many areas so that we are able to function properly and help you all. So when we started out, for Mr. Olin to figure out why the dogs were lame, we went to the American Veterinary Medical Association, and there were a number of early research papers looking for how to diagnose what is wrong or right about the pelvis of a dog. And ultimately, it was decided by the American Veterinary Medical Association that the VD pelvis view was the best way to see if the hips were normal or not. For this position, the dog is positioned on its back with the hips rotated inward and extended. The radiographs then are evaluated by board certified radiologists to see the fit up and it's a ball and socket joint. The dog is normal. It is assigned an OFA grade of excellent, good, or fair. If the drug is abnormal, it is assigned an OFA grade of borderline mild, moderate or severe hip dysplasia. Scientific evidence has demonstrated that 24 months of age or older is the valid age to confirm that a pelvis is normal, and that means, if you were to use the statistical significance, that the test is accurate, hip radiographs performed on a dog, 24 months of age or older have a 95% chance of staying normal throughout that dog's lifetime. Dogs younger than 24 months of age, in fact, as young as four months of age can be evaluated, resulting in a preliminary evaluation of the hips. So what I want to tell you about that, and I recommend it to every client that either was growing up a dog to perhaps breed it, or was sending it away to a trainer, or was going to compete in a show ring before they invest tons of money in that career or training or all of our emotional health (you to get very attached to these dogs): that they do preliminary radiographs at six months of age or so. If you would keep the dog forever anyway, even if its hips failed, it probably doesn't matter, but if it determines whether that dog will stay in your home, or whether you would expend those funds, I would definitely recommend prelims at around six months of age. The right thing to do as a dog breeder is for you to do everything in your power that can be done to produce a happy, healthy dog. And you need to know that not all diseases have a genetic cause, but genetic disease does cause about 25% of all the diseases that dogs get, and nearly that many in cats as well. A lot of people don't know that the OFA database also does contain data on what we call hybrids, which are combinations of breeds. Some people would call them designer breeds, but they're hybrids. And also on any of the Doodles, other than the Australian Labradoodle, and also on many cat breeds. Just as an aside, a piece for trivia on Saturday night, the Maine Coon cat has a very, very high incidence of hip dysplasia. So the OFA is a not for profit corporation known as a 501(c)3, and it's the world's largest animal health database. The information in the database is stored and available for individuals and groups to use.

12:45

And to me, this is one of the most important things that OFA does for you. OFA is basically—you could either call it a semi-closed or a semi-open database. When an OFA radiograph or test comes in, the owner has previously filled out a form that says that if the results are normal, the information may go in our database and be shared with anybody who requests it. If the information is abnormal, that information is only shared if the person submitting the radiograph or test allows us to do so. So it's powerful to allow you to make really good breeding decisions. Again, the OFA provides a diagnostic service, but we do not sell any items. Any test considered for listing in the OFA database has received the support and research data from the appropriate veterinary entity. So the eye data comes from the American College of Veterinary Ophthalmology; the radiologist, the information, the hip and elbow data is recommended by the American College of Veterinary Radiology, etc. The OFA has 5,380,000 individual dogs in the database. There are 21 board certified radiologists who read radiographs for the OFA; that radiographs are assigned randomly, and there is no truth to the old wives tale that the radiologists are most strict on Monday and least strict on Friday. These are randomized, and we don't even tell them what day they need to read the films. I should also tell you that the OFA reads over 2500 cases a year for service dog organizations at no charge. Service Dog organizations don't want to put all the training time and energy into a dog that is going to have long term health effects that allow it to work. You can't have a dog that's going to go blind. You certainly can't have a dog that's going to be lame. So that's really important for these organizations to know. Additionally, the OFA has contributed over two and a half million dollars to canine health research grants, scholarships, and educational programs. We also have partially funded many of the theriogenology residency programs that occur through the Theriogenology Foundation and the Canine Health Foundation. So our contributions support our mission of healthier companion animals. Healthy parents tend to produce healthy puppies. Our three original databases were information on canine hip dysplasia, canine elbow dysplasia and inherited canine eye disease. Hips and elbows are inherited in a poly genetic manner. The evaluation is based on phenotype. I told you we had over 5 million dogs in the database. We have 1,950,000 dogs with hip records, 802,000 dogs with elbow records, and almost 796 records in the eye database. Those are based, some on phenotype and some on genotype. National breed clubs, so your parent club—the Labrador Club, the Cockapoo Club, the Great Dane Club, the Shih Tzu Club—each of those governing bodies for each breed in the US make recommendations to the breeders and to the OFA as to what the most significant health issues are in the breed. Nearly every breed does test for hip dysplasia, and hip dysplasia has been diagnosed in all breeds; very, very rarely in the racing Greyhound and definitely does occur in combinations of breeds and in dogs where the combination is totally unknown. So in Mississippi, we have a fair population of what I would call Mississippi street dogs, and I'm sure there is hip dysplasia in plenty of them. Preliminary hip X rays are just that prelim. The OFA numbers are not given out until 24 months of age, because many animals have changes in their joints as they mature. The OFA knows what breeds are likely to change and how much. And I'll give you an example from two Retriever breeds. If you take a VD pelvis radiograph of a Chesapeake Bay Retriever at 12 months of age, and it is normal, that dog has a 65% chance of being normal at two, and that's because that breed has a fairly high incidence of change in hips. If you do the same thing with a Labrador Retriever, and at 12 months of age, the dog is good, that dog has a 92% chance of having normal hips at 24 months of age. It may not be the same grade that was assigned at 12 months, meaning maybe a good; it may actually be an excellent.

18:34

So when a radiograph reaches the OFA, we record information on the dog and the owner is added to the database. The submission is blinded, meaning the radiologists don't know the dog name or who owns it. That's a question I get commonly. Well, I think there's bias at the OFA, and they know who the people are with money in the breed, and for that reason, every time a radiograph goes in, it passes. That is not true. The radiologist only sees the dog's age, breed and sex, another thing that gets asked to me relatively frequently: how do we know the dog is the dog? And by that, I mean on that initial form that you fill out, there is a place where the tattoo or microchip is recorded. If the dog does not have a tattoo or microchip, when the veterinarian signs the form, it says that you did not verify the identification. If there is a tattoo or microchip, there is a place that the veterinarian initials and then it says, “verified by permanent identification.” Now, theoretically, if you wanted to be bad enough and cheap badly enough, we cannot avoid every and every cheater, but there aren't many, and we do have a system in place, which I won't share with you. It's in secret that we catch people who do. Can't try to cheat. That being said, if falsehood is discovered, first option is, OFA will say, and I'm going to pretend that it's me that did this, “Dear friend, is it possible that the dog X rays that you submitted on this day are from a different dog? Did your husband, John, maybe bring the wrong dog?” Well, for many of us that have dogs that are the same color, that could potentially happen, but most of the time that gives the person who is trying to cheat the opportunity to back out, and the situation is corrected. If they do not, and we feel strongly that deliberate fraud was committed, and believe me, we have our frequent flyer list, the people that try to cheat. We report that to the American Kennel Club who investigates it. Not only does that breeder lose their OFA privileges, they often also lose their AKC privileges. So fraud of that nature is taken very seriously. So radiographs on dogs under 24 months of age are reviewed by one board certified radiologist. Radiographs on dogs 24 months of age or older are reviewed by three radiologists, and it's a consensus opinion.

21:42

So we're going to say that my dog Peaches, tomorrow, who is going to have OFA radiographs taken—three radiologists look at her hip films, and two of them say that she's good, and one of them says she's excellent. It will be reported then as OFA good. If, in fact, two of them said excellent, and one said borderline, those radiographs would go to three totally different radiologists to get a good consensus, but that is kind of our in-house. We do do quality control testing, and we recirculate films to make sure that our radiologists are always doing both a good job and an accurate job. For those of you who breed hybrids, screening tests for all breeds involved in the combination should be performed on both parents prior to breeding. If you breed Golden Doodles, you should test for all of the Golden Retriever recommended tests and for all of the Poodle recommended tests. For those of you who haven't been on the website much at all, there is a header at the top that says CHIC. That stands for the Canine Health Information Center. You can scroll down in that, putting your breed, and it will tell you what the tests are that are recommended for that breed. All radiographs are screened for diagnostic quality. The radiographs must be properly positioned and properly exposed. Radiographs not meeting this criteria are rejected. So what does that mean about who can take them? Positioning of the patient is very important to ensure accurate and appropriate diagnosis. Any veterinarian has been trained and can take OFA radiographs, but will have a better outcome, meaning potentially a better hip rating, by using a veterinary practice that is experienced in taking these radiographs. You can ask your regular veterinarian, “How often do you take OFA radiographs?” They say, “Well, once a year,” that probably would not be the first practice that I would pick when I'm trying to do OFA X-rays. If you're in an area like I am in Mississippi, I called the OFA and I said, “Since I can't take my own films anymore, what practice does the most OFA X-rays?” And it turns out, the practice that takes the most is about three hours for me, but I want the films done well, so I will be driving that way tomorrow with my dog. If you are breeding Bernadoodles or Labradoodles, the same concept applies. Likewise, Maltipoos, Shepoos, or any of those. And the little guys: the major diseases of these are likely to be cardiac and patellas, and we'll talk about mode of inheritance on them as well. So a phenotypic health test—which is what hip dysplasia, elbow dysplasia, the basic cardiac test, luxating patellas are—is based on what we see or hear, so it's a visual or auditory assessment of the presence or absence of a trait. Hip dysplasia and elbow dysplasia are again, two examples of that.

25:38

When it comes to the hip films, the radiologist looks at the radiographs based on how they're supposed to be positioned and how that ball and socket joint is shaped. They decide whether they're normal or not normal. The other thing I will tell you, when we talked about this, the radiologist gets the breed, age, and sex of the dog. The radiographs are compared by the experience that these radiologists have to other dogs of the same breed and sex. So let me give you an idea. You could potentially have a Labrador or a Golden or a Chesapeake or Bernese Mountain Dog that, at two, got an OFA good. If that dog was re-radiographed at age four or five, that dog could potentially—same dog—be moved up to an excellent and the reason, or how that could happen, is because the evaluation is based on breed and age of dog. Again, the assessment of the radiologist tells you if the dog is normal or not. It doesn't tell you anything about the genetic makeup of that dog, and that's why people can get so confused. Well, both parents were good. How could this dog who has two good parents be abnormal and have moderate hip dysplasia, and we'll talk about that further on in the talk. So with a phenotypic trait—so we're talking about health traits, and here we're talking about color as an example—you can look at a Labrador that's in my backyard and it's black, so phenotypically, that dog is black, but we cannot tell visually if that dog carries color genes for yellow, chocolate, or any other pattern. In order to know that, we need genotypic tests. Genotypic tests are all DNA tests. DNA tests allow an owner to discover genes responsible for health issues, to assess many other traits that have a known genetic cause, like curling coats, like hip theosis, like sebaceous adenitis, PRA. There are tests where we can identify a gene that is causative and causing animals to be affected. So many of the health issues affecting dogs are inherited in a simple autosomal recessive pattern of inheritance. That means the dog gets one gene for the trait from each of its parents. An example of this: we talked about Dottie Troutner a long time ago. The disease a little poodles have is called the PRCD form of PRA in Poodles. Interestingly, Labrador Retrievers get the same thing. So as you can imagine, if you were breeding Labradors for guide dog work, and you didn't check to see that the dogs that you were breeding were free of that gene, you certainly could end up with dogs that go blind at five years and up with PRCD form because you had a chance for the gene from each breed.

29:17

DNA testing allows breeders to make informed breeding decisions without unnecessarily removing animals from breeding programs. A carrier or even an affected dog may, under some circumstances, be considered fine for breeding. DNA panels do not address phenotypically inherited diseases such as luxating patellas or cardiac disease. The DNA panels that many of you do do not tell you anything, again, about phenotypic disease, which is very, very important, and they may also discover genes for diseases or symptoms that are unimportant in your breed or combination of breeds. Our staff veterinarians are Dr. Greg Keller (who has been with the OFA for more than 40 years) and Dr. Gabby Bears (who has been with the OFA for six years). They are your go-to people when you have questions about OFA results concerning radiographs. So let's take a few questions. While we're taking questions, I'm going to go back through this presentation, because I had the really good radiographs to show them, and I have not seen them. Any questions that I can answer while I'm looking?

Dr. Nate Ritter  30:42

Yes, absolutely. Thank you, Dr. Smith. I'm sure you have answered a few of these, but always good to review. Can you recommend any resources to help find places that perform the testing? Prior to coming on, we were talking about, you know, the traveling that you have to do to have some of these radiographs done. But is there any place that you'd recommend for breeders to look? 

Dr. Francis Smith  30:59

If you have a question where you live, if you call the OFA, they will gladly tell you who does the most in their area. Now, that doesn't say you have to go to them, but they can say these people give us lots of good films.

Dr. Nate Ritter 31:14

fantastic personal service. Another question—I know you've talked about this briefly. Summarize the difference between PennHIP and OFA testing. And do you have a recommendation or preference for breeders? 

Dr. Francis Smith  31:25

I do, and I'm happy to do that. First of all, I'd like to say—and it is absolutely true that Dr. Gail Smith, who developed the PennHIP technique—is absolutely as committed to decreasing the incidence of hip dysplasia as anybody at the OFA. There is no question. I have two significant issues with PennHIP versus OFA, and the most significant, and the most important to me is PennHIP data is only available to PennHIP and the owner. There is no database where a breeder can go look up a dog and see if, in fact, that dog has had health testing that has been submitted. As it stands now, anybody can go to my kennel name, which is a registered kennel name, DANIKK. You can go on the OFA website, type in DANIKK, and it will give you hundreds of names, because I've been breeding for over 40 years. And you can click on the dog's name and it will tell you what the dog's hip rating was, etc, etc. PennHIP doesn't have that set up. And the way I use that information, or any breeder can use the information, is say I’m going to breed to a stud dog that a friend of mine, or somebody I know from shows, has in California, and I know that he has OFA clearances based on the breeder. I can put that dog's name in, even though I don't own him, and it will tell me what his health clearances are. Additionally, there's another tab on the website that is called vertical pedigree, and if I click on that, it will tell you how many of that dog’s siblings have had clearances, the parents and the grandparents and the great grandparents. And I use that as a tool if I have a particular health concern. So let's say, for instance, I have, for some reason, a concern that some dogs from a particular bloodline had a bunch of bad elbows. So I will click on the vertical pedigree. It will show me the dogs, siblings, and parents. I'll click on them and the giveaway that the dog didn't clear is in the Labrador and many other sporting dogs, if it has a hip number and no elbow number, you can assume (and OFA would tell you this), the dog did not have normal elbows, because Labrador breeders don't do hips without elbows. So if the elbows don't show, the dog didn't have normal elbows, but it’ll also show you on elbows that were submitted, how many of those offspring did not pass because OFA can publish that data as long as the dog is not identified, so primarily from the standpoint of a breeding tool and sharing information. Also, PennHIP requires, according to their protocol, surgical depth anesthesia, which is of some risk. Minimal with today's drugs and expertise, but still a risk. OFA does not require sedation. We recommend it. And I can tell you, in my clinic, we always sedated dogs lightly. It just made positioning easier. When you flip a dog over on their back, I don't care how kind, gentle, well trained they are. Have someone hold their hocks and straighten out their legs. So most of them do tighten up their muscles at least, which can affect the quality of the film you get, so I prefer OFA from the data sharing standpoint. 

Dr. Nate Ritter  35:40

No, it's very helpful. Thank you. One of our questions is about sedation and orthopedic radiograph. So thank you for delving into that as well. We spoke about this prior to the webinar as well, but I think a lot of people have questions relating to the training veterinarians receive, relating to positioning. You talked about how positioning is easier when the dogs are sedate. I was wondering if you could speak to how important the role of positioning is in this process. 

Dr. Francis Smith  36:03

So veterinary students have rotations through radiology in their vet school. Depending upon the caseload and the kind of cases they get, they may not get a day in their two or four week rotation where they actually have to help in an OFA X-ray. Now that being said, they certainly are trained from a lecture standpoint, and they are given diagrams of how the dog should be positioned. The OFA does have educational tools on the site with a video of how to position. So there's really no reason that it can't be done. I will tell you, it's simply a matter of learning to take the time and being calm. The age of digital radiography has helped hugely. In the olden days, like when I started out, when you had to hand tank films. If a film was almost perfect, boy, you were sure tempted to say, “Let's just ship this off and see what happens!” But now films are processed so quickly and so efficiently that there's no reason not to get them straight. The biggest issue that we have at OFA is if the pelvis is tipped; that can bias the pelvis towards better or worse than it actually is. It really needs to be straight and the midline needs to line right up with the spine. 

Dr. Nate Ritter  37:34

Great. Thank you. We had a couple questions relating to that: Will a reviewer inform someone that the dog wasn't positioned appropriately? Can people request to have their dogs re-evaluated? A lot of questions in that kind of topic.

Dr. Francis Smith  37:47

So if the film is not diagnostic quality, absolutely, OFA will say, “We can't read this film.” If it's off, but readable, they will read it. But what I say to people is, and this is to avoid a lot of angst between veterinarians, owners and breeders and the OFA: “It doesn't have to be perfect to be diagnostic.” But say, for instance, I have this star Labrador, and he's now 25 months old, and I think he's the best thing since sliced bread. And I have his films taken and send him to OFA, and I look at him myself, whether I'm a veterinarian or not, or my friends have shared their cell phone pictures with me, and the opinion of them is, “I can't believe he only got a fair he should be at least an excellent,” you can always resubmit. And yes, there's costs involved. I cannot promise you that a veterinarian who has a film rejected would say, “Let's take them again, and I won't charge you.” I can tell you, in my practice, over 25 years, we had films on two dogs rejected for positioning. We called the people, apologized and said, “We’ll re-take them at no charge.”

Dr. Nate Ritter  39:17

Great. Thank you. Relating to that, we have a lot of questions on the prelims versus the final scoring, if you could kind of review the difference there. Also, we have questions of, you know, we've talked about how that scoring can change their grade from prelim to final. You know, in terms of worsening, can it ever improve? That was someone's question. 

Dr. Francis Smith  39:36

It can! Okay. So let's talk about that. As I say, prelims are even more of a screening tool, and they're to help you out in the selection process for who you're going to grow up. Because there is such change from breed to breed, I do not ever recommend breeding dogs based on an evaluation at 12 months, and even worse, at six months. So if I have a Labrador puppy that I'm thinking about sending off to the field trainer, and I do prelims on it, and it's a fair, I probably will wait a while before I send that dog away, when it's going to be $1,200 a month in training to see if this dog is going to do okay or not. Granted that, at that point I had my own X-ray. But even so, a single VD pelvis is not that much money. Twelve months is much, much better, and the closer you get to 24 months, the more accurate it is, and that is because the confirmation of the joints does change. In the hip, it's ball and socket. In the elbow, it's a hinge joint, and with motion, if there's just minor changes in the way the forearm and the lower forearm, humerus, radius and all that—I do know the name of the bones change—you can end up with arthritis in that joint, and it's much more visible at 24 months. Again, the 24 month range is bone growth is complete for breeds. Then cartilage changes that occur have pretty much occurred. And you know what you're going to end at. Toy breeds: most of the toy breeds don't do a lot of hip X-rays. I mean, some do. They're more likely to do a disease called Legg-Calve-Perthes, which is the same positioning as an a VD pelvis, but that is a disease that develops in the young, growing dog, and it's present by 12 months. So if I had Min Pins, which is agreed with a lot of Legg-Calve-Perthes, I'd be comfortable with a 12-month assessment for myself. But would I call that as good as having OFA at two? No. Does that help? 

Dr. Nate Ritter  42:07

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. Another question was: When's the best age to have those performed? Would the OFA site, or if you called in, have any recommendations relating to that?

Dr. Francis Smith  42:18

Anytime after four months. And the reason you can't do four months is there's too much cartilage. There's not enough bone. One of the reasons that PennHIP became popular is because it's a different kind of radiography. It's stress radiography. They really felt that the pressure applied to the hip at a very young puppy was predictive of what they would end up as a mature dog. And so some people say, “Well, I have to wait until they're a year to do OFAs.” No, anytime after four months, OFAs can be done. 

Dr. Nate Ritter  42:55

Okay, great. Thank you. I think we have time for a couple more. One of them, I think being important. Can you speak to why an offspring may have a different score than their parents? 

Dr. Francis Smith  43:04

Oh, again, all right, so we talked a little bit about CHIC and the vertical pedigree and OFA. So we could have two OFA certified parents. We're going to say that both of the parents are good, and they were each from a litter that had six puppies in it. Okay, but for each of them, they were normal. They had one normal sibling and they had four abnormal, so genetically, that dog is geared and set up to have plenty of genes for hip dysplasia, even though, phenotypically, it does not. To have hip dysplasia, it's a combination of a lot of genes, and usually from both parents. So all OFA goods are not the same. I had a client for many years who had Goldens, wonderful Goldens. She had a terrible time with hips, and what she would reliably do would keep the only normal puppy from a litter that had lots of dysplasia, breed it and then be surprised that the offspring of that female had hip dysplasia, and that's because that female was phenotypically good, but genotypically carried a lot of bad genes. Unfortunately, we do not have any gene tests for hip dysplasia. Cornell University and many other universities have worked long and hard at it. Right now, Dr. Muir, I think it is that Wisconsin, is working on a potential gene test for hip dysplasia.

Dr. Nate Ritter  44:49

Okay, amazing. That’s interesting information. One last question, I think we'll just summarize everything. And obviously you've talked about this throughout the presentation and answering the questions, but simply: How can we use OFA scores to improve our lines? 

Dr. Francis Smith  45:01

Okay, that's an easy one. The big thing is: you always want to breed up. And I also want to stress that OFA fair is normal. So if you have fairs, and say, if you have a fair in a Pug, that's equivalent in most breeds to be in an excellent because most pugs don't pass. So if I had a Pug that was a fair, I would try to breed to a good, if I could find one. And also it's going to be breed dependent. And the OFA would verify this with you. In my breed, the Labrador Retriever, which has the most dogs other than the Frenchie, registered every year, I would not ever breed to an OFA fair stud dog. We have thousands and thousands of dogs that have better hip scores than that. So I would breed only to goods and excellents. So you always want to go up if you feel motivated. And in some breeds, you really can't get dogs that really pass. In a Pug, I would tell you I would breed a dysplastic Pug, but there's the place I would find that dog that is at least a fair, so that you are continually striving to improve how those joints are made great. 

Dr. Nate Ritter  46:27

Thank you so much. Nicole, I'll turn it over to you.

Nicole Engelman  46:30

Awesome. Thank you both so much for such a great discussion. One thing I also wanted to add about what Good Dog does to really support breeders in this work that I think will make people very happy is we actually give breeders in our community $10 off of any screening test, be it X-ray, OFA registration, and you can apply that discount up to 10 times per year. So that's $100 in savings per breeder in our community every year. I just wanted to mention that. If that's not something you're currently taking advantage of as being part of our community, please do that, because it's a really great thing we're able to offer. And if you're not part of our community, and that's something that you want to be taking advantage of, you can always apply to join at GoodDog.com/join. I think that about wraps up today's presentation. Dr. Smith, as always, thank you so, so much for being here. This was an amazing conversation. I think everyone in our community really learned so much and really important things that they can be applying to their programs. And I want to give everybody a sneak peek of our next webinar, which is coming up pretty soon. It's going to be on Tuesday, February 18, at 1pm Eastern. Also going to be a Facebook Live, and that's going to be with Dr. Lori J. Larson about how nomographs can improve puppy immunization outcomes. We've gotten a ton of requests to cover nomographs and vaccinations, all of those good things, so we're going to be talking about that in our next webinar. So until then, thank you all so much for being here. Thank you again, Dr. Smith, and we will see our next webinar. Bye, everyone. Thank you. Bye!

Nicole Engelman  48:06

Thank you for listening to the Good Dog Pod. We'll be back in two weeks with another episode, so be sure to subscribe to the Good Dog Pod on your favorite podcast platform.