Mom has D hips - would you buy a pup?

[Estelle Meiring]

Hi Everyone

After a lot of research and thought, my husband and I have decided to ad our first Irish Setter to our family.  We are very excited!

We live in South Africa and, unfortunately, there are only a hand full of reputable breeders in the country.  I have found a wonderful breeder who really seems to care about her dogs and the breed as a whole; she has also had all her dogs cleared of PRA and CLAD and hip scored.

She has just had a litter of beautiful pups from two of her show champion setters.  The problem is that the dad's hip score is B and the mom's hip score is D.

The mom is just over 4 years old now and she is not showing any signs of discomfort or problems with her hips.  Same with the dad.

My question is, would you buy a pup from this litter?  How high would the risks be for major hip dysplasia?

I need to ad that we would consider breeding with the pup (we are looking for a female pup) if she is healthy.

I would greatly appreciate your advice on this.
Thanks

[Vojna Medvedec]

We are in 21.century so knowledge about breeding as about so many things connected with medicine has developed so much.Genetics is the top science for my opinion and we should engage the known veterinary scientists to give their opinion about the problem with HD.
Ok I agree with Margaret D. and Eva C.and would never buy the puppy with high grade of dysplasia by parents,but I am not quite sure if we can be quite satisfied with the parent,s scores as there were so many grand,grand etc.parents that have not been ever scored in the past as simply nobody did it.
We have to be cautious with parents and possibly grandparents if they are younger dogs and have been x rayed,but surely nobody can grant that even from the best lines and exc.scored parents some HD speciman in the litter can not happen.On the other side as Eva says beeing stud dog owner she certainly knows the scores of her dog and she as responsible person would not give her dog to mate an unknown bitch,but are all the stud dogs, owners so responsible and do not give her stud dogs for matings with unscored bitches,not to mention those brood bitches,owners who with the idea of not breaking the line would continue to use such females in further reproduction???!!!
Every breeder would like to have the healthy and standard typy litter what is not easy but not impossible if we forget money interest which is devil,s business!In any case breeding is a hard and responsible work!
We all know there are so many anomalities which can happen in breeding....... high tails,carriage a lot of breeders say can also be connected with bad hips?Hockney movers?And how many champions we all know allover and also used for breeding- is there not also possible to be the influence of the recesive gene?.
I am happy to find such discussions and think they should be carried on for the benefit of our lovely breed and for the higher degree of knowledge for irish setters,breeders and owners.

[Pat Aldridge]

I will tell you something that may throw a little light on HD & its heritabilty. In New Zealand there WAS a breeder of many years' experience in their chosen breed (which I will not mention but it was not a Setter breed LOL!), an experienced judge, an intelligent person who did a LOT of winning with dogs bred & kept, & whose new puppy owners did very well in the showring. I knew this breeder. Puppies were well reared. exercised sensibly, adults kept in wonderful condition whether show or retired. ALL stock was xrayed for HD. Only CLEAR stock was used for breeding - no exceptions made. For years all went well - then a mating between 2 HD CLEAR dogs, ****that were clear for over eight generations****, produced an entire litter of dysplastic puppies. The breeder stopped breeding in that breed. As they said, until a genetic ID of the genes causing HD is available, there is no point in attempting to deal with a condition that is not understood, nor identifiable genetically.

If you are in a country such as Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, where the genepool is small, AND one is dedicated to preserving what little English lines there are, one has to be VERY VERY careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater...

[Bridget Simpson]

Estelle

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