> The hip dysplasia figure came from OFA a few years back. Has anyone called > OFA recently to see if there has been any improvement?
The OFA web page lists breed statistics through December 2000. 11% of the Cavaliers had hip dysplasia and 4.5% of Cavaliers were rated as excellent. One of our Cavaliers had surgery for hip dysplasia last year. If someone wanted an attractive, low energy dog that spent a lot of time sleeping, a dysplastic Cavalier might be just the ticket (not really). Toby was only rated as mildly dysplastic, but did not want to move around any more than absolutely necessary. Medications and supplements were not helping, so he had surgery at age 4 to remove the femur head. (Cavaliers are too small for hip replacement surgery.) We had him swimming and doing stretching exercises for several months after surgery. He's getting around well now and is a new dog. Toby's surgery was done at Colorado State University's vet school. Both the orthopedist who saw him and a resident who had been practicing in California said they had seen a number of Cavaliers for hip dysplasia. There aren't a lot of Cavaliers in this area, so I was surprised to hear that. One Cavalier puppy here needed the femur heads removed because it was already having trouble moving around. One of the heads grew back and needed removed a second time -- one of their more unusual cases. Another Cavalier we know moved well in her younger days and her owner received a number of compliments about how well built her dog was. After she turned 5, she was having trouble moving at all and was diagnosed with bad hips. Still another was diagnosed as a puppy when her owner realized she suddenly quit dancing on her hind legs at dinner time. Carolyn Peterson Colorado ========================================================= "Magic Commands": to stop receiving mail for awhile, click here and send the email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?body=SET%20CKCS-L%20NOMAIL to start it up gain click here: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?body=SET%20CKCS-L%20MAIL E-mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] for assistance. Search the Archives... http://apple.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ckcs-l.html All e-mail sent through CKCS-L is Copyright 2002 by its original author.
