Quote:
Originally Posted by TheOtherStormy
My only concerns with breeding him is that all the puppies will have a home and that he has no relation to the female.
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I would have more concerns than that, having volunteered with our local SPCA shelter for a few years. Your puppies might all find homes, but for every puppy in the US who finds a home, six puppies end up in shelters and three of those six never get adopted and get put to sleep. This is my personal opinion, but I would feel totally irresponsible contributing to the pet overpopulation problem by breeding my "pet quality" dog. I prefer to leave the breeding to people who are interested in maintaining and improving the quality of our wonderful Corgis. If I wanted to breed, I would at minimum start with a show quality dog from a reputable breeder, show and do all the health testing.
What's OFA? Sorry, this guy is new. Before him I just brought home little guys from work, most of them mutts.[/quote]
From the Georgia Corgi Club website:
Hip Dysplasia (HD). Hip Dysplasia is where the femoral head doesn’t fit into the hip socket properly, and that can cripple a puppy when it’s only a few months old at it’s worst. Despite the claims of some breeders (“HD is
a problem in big dogs only...oh my lines don’t have that problem...it doesn’t affect Pembrokes much”) HD is a problem in the breed. The Orthopedic Foundation for Animals (OFA) found that 16.9% of Pembrokes who had
x-rays submitted for evaluation had hip dysplasia (based on data collected through 1998). That’s quite a lot, especially since x-rays that show hip problems rarely get submitted because the owner knows they won’t get a
passing OFA rating.
What’s an OFA rating? OFA rates dog hips as normal, excellent, good, fair, borderline, mild, moderate or severe. Normal (a rating that was only given when OFA first started rating hips), excellent, good, and fair are
passing ratings and the dog is given an OFA number if the dog is older than 2 yrs (age at which hips are quite stable). The other ratings are indicative of hip problems. A “Preliminary” (sometimes called “Prelim”) rating can
be given before 2 yrs of age, sometimes as early as 6 months, but usually not until the dog is 1 yr. “Preliminary” means that there is a chance that the rating may still change (for the better or worse) by the time the dog reaches 2 yrs of age. See the OFA information page on hip dysplasia (
Orthopedic Foundation for Animals) for more detailed information.