remember as well they cant have them xrayed till 12 months old, and the brothers hips wont make a differnce in welshie one breeder had a boy of 11 litter sister was 88 and both were reared exactly the same way.

Not strictly true you can have them xrayed at an earlier age but they can't be scored. Some GSD breeders xray their dogs at 6 months & if its obvious they're not going to be good enough they sell them on, the problem with this is that those dogs are often never scored & so the breed average is skewed. Many Germans have now come to the conclusion that the average results of a litter are more important than an individual dogs.ie if one dog is high but all the others are low that is a better indication of continuance of improving hips than using an individual dog with a perfect score whose litter brothers & sisters all scored high. Problem is here where hip scoring is not compulsary, the dogs scored are either the ones who are with responsible breeders who want to do health checks before using them or they are scored because of problems that develop This means that in a lot of breeds the average is not a true indicater though of course its a lot better than nothing.I know in the last litter I bred i wanted to know the hip status of my puppies but in spite of my offering to help pay for it only 2 others apart from my own were scored & they were dogs being shown. Ever one else declined as it meant an anaesthetic & they didn't want that on a dog who was showing no sign of any problems.

I think the whole HD subject is fascinating to be honest.
I know the GS people as well as other breeds affected by this have been trying to eradicate it for many many years, yet it is still prevalent. Would this indicate that hip scoring and breeding only from low scoring dogs is not the answer?
I have heard that you can get high scoring dogs from lines that have many generations of low scores behind them, so would this indicate that it can occur again as a sort of throw back, or is there something else that can influence it?

Just to point out that hip x rays are compulsory in Germany for GSDs as is DNA profiling & Haemophillia testing

I know a lot of GSD breeders in the UK(of the international type I must add)& none of them do more than one X ray for the hips, sadly most of the English type & also pet breeders do not hip x ray at all

A good hip x ray in Germany is required for the dog to be passed for breeding & they do not take an average, median or mean of a litter when deciding this. My import GSD dog was from a long line of hip improving males & females & he himself had a 0:0=0 hip score & was also an improver from hips, everyone of the bitches he mated produced puppies with better hips than themselves. The SV's aim is to have dogs & bitches that improve the breed whether it is in hips & in being nearer to the breed standard than the parents, in the UK most GSDs are bred either for the show ring(both types) or simply as pets with scant regard to improving the breed in general

It would be quite easy for the KC to impose a requirement for the hips to be scored before breeding as they have made DNA testing clear for CLAD in Irish Setters a requirement before breeding if the puppies are to be KC registered, in fact it would be easy to impose an automatic health testing before registering offspring, if they can do it for one breed they can do it for all breeds

yes I find it fascinating that it isn't a KC requirement.
I know someone who has a very elderly GSD with extremely bad hips, a neighbour of hers has a litter sister also with extremely bad hips. The dogs the breeder breeds from are apparently bred for 'temperament' - so thats all right then!!!
If there was a strict requirement that all have a good score I am sure it would go down, a 0:0 score is most impressive - I mean you can't improve on that can you? You would think that GSD breeders would be looking to do that. I know that we now do not put any Utes on the Accredited List unless they have been hip scored, and also there are requirements that govern which dogs can be bred to which in order to keep lowering the scores. We now have some dogs coming in at 4:3, so we are improving all the time. I think focusing on it is the answer, and also making it impossible to register pups from parents without hip scores.
I know the NI do have a survey ongoing on hip scored parents and the offspring, so I am sure that will bear fruit as well, in fact it probably already is.

Our survey is actually on all health aspects of all Northern Inuit dogs scored or not, this will hopefully help flag up any breed specific health issues in the early stages so should any arise they can be dealt with quickly and efficently.

We have seperate detailed charts for hip scores which means that should anything arise that is deemed unusual we can check it out straight away. We are also currently doing research into coat & eye colour and litter size.

oh that is a really good idea, on the subject of eye colour is it correct that yellow eyes can come from the wall eyed gene (don't know if I have put that right, hope you know what I mean!)

Thanks everyone for the replies. I will mention it to the vet but won't put him in for xray unless he shows any problems. I don't want him to have GA just for that.

He has won a few rosettes at shows so his movement must be ok.

A breed record holder in one breed has a score of 46, he won 50cc's!!

Heidi1, please can you PM me the registration names of your dogs parents, the name of the breeder?