Marshfiel's Atalanta "Jenny" -- PennHIP
I got a note from one of my owners today. Marshfield's Atalanta "Jenny" has been PennHIP'd and her scores are .32 Left and .52 Right. .52 is in the 20th Percentile. In some breeds, this would make her a breeding candidate (because it would be in the top half, not bottom fifth), but certainly not GSP's. There's no way for me to guarantee my pups will work out as breeding prospects, I do guarantee that if you train them, they will hunt. Her owner has hoped she'd be his foundation bitch and so did I. He's a special kind of owner. We'll work something out.
Her lifetime probability of developing hip dysplasia remains pretty low. Assuming GSP's are like Labrador and Golden retrievers, it's going to be like 10% to 15% chance of having trouble. Of course, we like to see that closer to zero percent chance. Here's the chart:
I had talked with other breeders who told me that the PennHIP scores of the pups "always" come back between the Sire and Dam's scores. So with .19 as a theoretical high and .35 as my theoretical floor, I felt very confident that we'd throw hips that were tight enough. A .35 is average for the breed and the odds of having trouble with that score are very low. Obviously the conventional wisdom was just wrong.
I'm going back through the literature on PennHIP and they estimate that the heritability of hips is .64, meaning it is less than 100% heritable. As this is swirling around in my mind, I know I'll need to sleep on it and discuss it with a few folks before I know exactly what to do about the information as it applied to breeding dogs.
Now everything I thought I knew about PennHIP is in question. Fortunately, my past two litters have been with sires who's hips are tighter than Dove's (Dove and both sires are in the 100th percentile) and the one pup that's been screened is also in the 100th percentile. We do everything we can to breed for tight hips.
I know other breeders who have swept this kind of information under the rug. We make it public here because it's too important. We feel if knowing this makes you want to go to another breeder, then you probably aren't the kind of owner we want anyway. If you are looking for openness and honesty, you are in the right place.
Her lifetime probability of developing hip dysplasia remains pretty low. Assuming GSP's are like Labrador and Golden retrievers, it's going to be like 10% to 15% chance of having trouble. Of course, we like to see that closer to zero percent chance. Here's the chart:
I had talked with other breeders who told me that the PennHIP scores of the pups "always" come back between the Sire and Dam's scores. So with .19 as a theoretical high and .35 as my theoretical floor, I felt very confident that we'd throw hips that were tight enough. A .35 is average for the breed and the odds of having trouble with that score are very low. Obviously the conventional wisdom was just wrong.
I'm going back through the literature on PennHIP and they estimate that the heritability of hips is .64, meaning it is less than 100% heritable. As this is swirling around in my mind, I know I'll need to sleep on it and discuss it with a few folks before I know exactly what to do about the information as it applied to breeding dogs.
Now everything I thought I knew about PennHIP is in question. Fortunately, my past two litters have been with sires who's hips are tighter than Dove's (Dove and both sires are in the 100th percentile) and the one pup that's been screened is also in the 100th percentile. We do everything we can to breed for tight hips.
I know other breeders who have swept this kind of information under the rug. We make it public here because it's too important. We feel if knowing this makes you want to go to another breeder, then you probably aren't the kind of owner we want anyway. If you are looking for openness and honesty, you are in the right place.
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