# hip testing



## Melodyp77 (Mar 4, 2012)

Personally what do you breed against when it comes to hips? to be more clear do you breed to fair or above? or good and up. Jax's hips for penn hip is mid 65% I don't know what ofa considers that.


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## outwest (May 1, 2011)

65% is too high to breed in my opinion (so sorry to say that), but people do it. 

Under 55% would be my personal cutoff with under 40% ideal. The Penn hip specifics is why a lot of people refuse to do it. They don't want that percentage staring them in the face. It is not subjective like the OFA hip (and it costs a lot more). 

I would think your dog would be borderline or fair on OFA. You should probably do an OFA hip. Maybe it would be rated better that way? People do breed poodles rated OFA fair and do breed dogs with Penn hips in the 65% range, but usually it is an exceptional conformation dog with lots else going for it. 

In my opinion (and this is ONLY my opinion -don't want to raise any hackles here), if you breed a dog with fair hips or one in the 60's, then you better find a mate with OFA excellent to counteract it. You should not breed a dog with borderline hips unless it has something else really compelling. The idea with breeding is to IMPROVE the breed. 

Good luck with whatever you decide, but I might suggest you try an OFA hip. Who knows, you might be happy with the outcome. You should still have the film to send to them? It can't hurt!


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## Melodyp77 (Mar 4, 2012)

Oh wait, I'm way off, I thought the higher the number was better. so he has poor hips not good hips. holy cow this sucks.


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## outwest (May 1, 2011)

Maybe not poor, maybe fair.


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## Melodyp77 (Mar 4, 2012)

also the vet said penn hip send it to ofa. I'm waiting to hear from ofa on their analyzes of the xray!


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## outwest (May 1, 2011)

OFA just posts the Penn hip results on their website. They will read it if you pay them to. You should check to be sure.


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## outwest (May 1, 2011)

The DI (which stands for distraction index) of the hip joint is given as a value between 0 and 1, with the closer to 0 the better (i.e. the tighter the hips.)


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## tintlet (Nov 24, 2009)

the percentage is based on the dogs tested. a 65% means the dog is rated better than 65% of the poodles tested. So above average.

the higher number the better. 

What is the DI ?


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## Melodyp77 (Mar 4, 2012)

i just pulled Jax hips results and it says that his hips are 60% tighter then his group of animals, 40% of the group has tighter hips then him. so in reading this it seems that they are saying his hips in ofa standard would be good or average but not fair. phew!!!


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## Melodyp77 (Mar 4, 2012)

DI is 0.48


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## Yaddaluvpoodles (Mar 20, 2010)

Holy Moly,

Hold on a minute!

The Percentile on PennHips is how the poodle is compared to other poodles. If Jax's hips have been rated as a 65th percentile, his hips are better than 64% of the poodles who have had PennHip Xrays done. 50% is average. His hips are better than average.

Too tired now to do a comparison of Pennhip and OFA (probably a few threads on that on this group already), but Pennhip and OFA look at different things. You can't really compare them except in the instances where there is blatant hip dysplasia. Kinda like comparing apples to oranges..


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## outwest (May 1, 2011)

DI= 0.48!!!
Ah! Then he does have nice hips.  The OFA site only records the DI. When you said 65%, I assumed a DI of 0.65 (or 65%)! LOL Why does the Penn hip do that?! Jeez. Talk about annoyingly misleading! Maybe they think people won't understand what DI is so they give a percentage? I have not personally seen what you receive from Penn hip only what is recorded, which is never that percentage. That must be for the owners information. 

Here is what you see for a PENNHIP on OFA (this is her dams sire):
registry: PENNHIP HIPS test date: Feb 14 2006 report date: Mar 1 2006 age in months: 16 Final conclusion: LDI=.39, RDI=.39

Sorry to cause you so much stress.  I would think your dog would have at least an OFA good rating, although OFA hip looks at the shape of the ball and socket and space between for any evidence of dysplasia and the Penn hip measures the loosness of the joint (tighter is better). At least everyone understands what the DI number is now.


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## CharismaticMillie (Jun 16, 2010)

Thanks for clearing it up, Yadda!

So, yes, the DI (distraction index) is a measure of how much the hip comes out of the socket. The closer to zero the better. 

The percentage is the percentile the dog is in. So as said above, 65% means the dog has better hips than 65% of standard poodles.


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