How Better Hip Testing Helped Improve the Hips of Working Dogs

Hip dysplasia is a common problem in dogs. It means the hip joint doesn’t fit together quite right, and over time this can cause pain and arthritis. For dogs that work and train every day, such as detection dogs, healthy hips are very important. Veterinarians and breeders want ways to pick dogs for breeding that will have better hips in the next generation.

There are two main ways to check dog hips with X-rays. One method is from the Orthopedic Foundation for Animals, called OFA. It looks at how the hip looks when the dog’s legs are stretched out. Another method is called PennHIP, which uses special X-rays to measure how loose the hip joint is. This measurement is called the distraction index, or DI for short.

A group of researchers looked at the hip records of 615 detection dogs over many years. At first, they only used the OFA method to decide which dogs could be parents. Later, they used both OFA and the PennHIP distraction index to pick breeding dogs. When they only used OFA, the quality of hips in the dog population didn’t change much. But once they added the PennHIP measurement to the breeding selection, the hip quality improved a lot over time.

This means that picking dogs that not only look good on the OFA test but also have a low distraction index helped produce puppies with better hips. The study also found that age and sex made a difference in hip scores, but the main takeaway was that using both tests together worked better than using the older method alone.

For dog owners and breeders, this study suggests that using tighter, science-based measurements like the PennHIP distraction index can help reduce hip dysplasia and improve the long-term health of working dogs.

Here’s the entire paper:https://avmajournals.avma.org/view/journals/javma/257/3/javma.257.3.299.xml