as I am doing some research here for a future pup....with all the information on this forum, I am looking at the parents and the health clearances etc. A question, if one of the parents had a hip rating of fair rather than the good I see all the time...what exactly does FAIR mean with concerns to the pups which would be born? I wont even get into all the titles and classifications of the show dogs awards ..that will be another post at some point..ha ha hah

Take a look at the OFA website.

OFA: Hip Dysplasia Grades

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"You own what you condone." ~ Mike Lardy

An OFA "Fair" rating means that the hip is properly formed, so it is not by itself a cause for concern at all. I would much rather see a breeding where both parents were fair and passing hip clearances went back for several generations than one where both parents were excellent but there were no other clearances.

The clearance history of the last five generations is more important to me than the individual rating of the parent.

Many breeders will only put two fairs together if they are otherwise very confident about both lines, but it is definitely done.

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What he said So often people ignore the history of hips in a pedigree, and as Brian said, the history can be more important than the individual hip rating.

Many borderline or worse breeders will buy dogs with no clearance history behind them, get all the clearances on the one they bought, and breed it with no further thought. Unwary purchasers see clearances on the parents and think all is well whne there may be serious problems in the pedigree.

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Linda
Tahnee Golden Retrievers

It's good to just note if a dog has elbows recorded as normal but a big blank on hips when you're checking OFFA.ORG. While it is not proof the dog in question had hip problems, it is a tip off to ask questions. The reverse does not hold true as much.

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I should add that a great breeder will often get PennHIP done in addition to an OFA clearance. If the OFA is a fair but the PennHIP shows a nice tight socket, that gives you more confidence in the breeding.

My dog Gus was a good/fair match, but the fair was a PennHIP .42/.50. He was an extraordinary athlete with great motion his whole life (but he only lived to 7 because of a rare cancer).
Jax has a similar good/fair matchup, but the PennHIP on the fair is .61, .45, which isn't as strong but is still well within the margins of a careful breeding with an excellent chance at disease-free hips. He's closing in on 2 years old, and there are no signs of problems.

Still, it's the consistency of the passing hips all the way back in each pedigree that gives me the most confidence. 59 of the 62 dogs in Jax's five generation pedigree have passing hip certs (it's not actually 59 separate dogs because a couple of dogs show up a couple of times each in the line breedings, but I don't feel like counting by hand). One dog in the fourth generation was never tested and neither were her parents, but that's it.

Also, if I view a vertical pedigree (one that includes siblings), I can see that many of the uncles and aunts are disease free, which gives me yet another indication that these lines consistently produce well formed hips.

60 of Comet's 62 ancestors in the 5 generation pedigree have certs, and the two that don't are in the fifth generation and were bred in the early seventies, before hip testing was a common practice.

That's the kind of thing I'd look for when it comes to hips, and you don't have to break the bank on the dog's purchase price to get it.

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so I am looking at a littler coming up and the mother has a fair rating on her hips, when I look back on her pedigree..on both sides the hips are good and also few excellents. I have seen the mother and shes a very active award winning dog. so the mother is a fair and the father is a good..and family history is good to excellent on both sides going back to great grand parents......would anyone hesitate thnking about this pup with this family history??/

One thing I didn't see mentioned here is check to see if the siblings of either parent have been checked. The more in the litter that have been checked, the better. Also on the OFA website, check to see offspring of both parents.
The "flaw" in clearances is this....
Suppose that you have a litter of 10 dogs. 9 out of 10 have hip dysplasia. The 10th one has excellent hips. If you breed that 10th one, you run a very high risk of the dog producing dysplastic puppies.
On the other hand, if that same litter has 9 dogs with excellent hips and 1 with very mild dysplasia, the one with the mild dysplasia will stand a better chance of producing puppies with good hips than the one from the above litter whose littermates all had bad hips.
So it's more complicated than it looks on the surface, which is why if you can get any information on the siblings and/or offspring you are stacking the odds in your favor.

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The way you've described it, it sounds like a great hip pedigree. Obviously, there are a lot of other things that go into a breeding, but that sounds like a good start. I would like to see more than three generations, personally, but you can't always get that.

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I agree-not a bad start but there is no reason not to have clearance history going back more than 3 generations.

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Linda
Tahnee Golden Retrievers