Flying Poodles

OFA Hips–A Comparison of Dancer and Elly

OFA stands for the Orthopedic Foundation for Animals, which is dedicated to improving the skeletal structure of companion animals. (This is their web site: http://www.offa.org/) They provide, for a fee, an evaluation of hip xrays. They recommend to breeders that such evaluations be done before dogs are bred. In my case, both dogs are spayed, so breeding isn’t an issue, but agility is. I wanted to find out how healthy the dogs’ hips were, so that I could understand what to do long term for their training.

Dancer’s hips are good; Elly’s hips are not. I’m sad about that, but it explains so much. It explains why some days she is the best, fastest dog out there; other days she just doesn’t want to do agility at all. Would you, if your hips hurt?

Take a careful look at the hips in both pictures; you can see that Elly’s ball joint is just not as well formed as Dancer’s.