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College of Veterinary Medicine

Breeder Evaluation Information

Same day specialty consultations to help responsible breeders screen breeding dogs and make informed decisions about breeding stock.

Small Animal Primary Care offers same day consultations with multiple Specialty Services to help responsible breeders screen their breeding stock at reduced consultation fees.

Owner Needs to Bring with the Dog:

  • Dog’s Registered Name
  • Dog’s Date of Birth
  • Dog’s Tattoo # or Microchip # (If dog is not permanently ID’d, we can microchip the dog here)
  • Dog’s registration #
  • Sire’s Registration #
  • Dam’s Registration #
  • Results of any previous hip x-rays (OFA or PennHIP)

What Happens during the Breeder Evaluation Appointment?

  • This appointment is to evaluate the potential of this dog to be used in a breeding program. Occasionally, an individual will want to evaluate spayed/neutered dogs to help evaluate breeding programs, this is acceptable also.
  • The dog will have to be heavily sedated/ anesthetized for the hip evaluation. Therefore, it is important that the dog not have eaten after 10pm in the evening prior to the appointment. It is important that your dog remain well-hydrated, so please allow access to water until the time of the appointment. We will also perform a physical exam and some baseline blood work (packed cell volume, total solids, and glucose) to determine if your pet is a good candidate for sedation/anesthesia. PennHIP can be performed any time after 16 weeks of age; however, OFA films are only preliminary until the dog is greater than 2 years of age.
  • The forms that are necessary for each of the tests can be filled out and signed during the visit. Many of the OFA forms can be found online and can be filled out ahead of time by the owner.
  • Your pet will stay the day so that it can be available for each specialty service to evaluate. Depending on the genetic prevalences of your breed, we may recommend elbow radiographs, a cardiac evaluation, and an eye exam. Hip radiographs, but not necessarily PennHIP, may be recommended for small breeds prone to Legg-Calve-Perthe’s disease (avascular femoral head necrosis). These procedures are usually performed in the order of least expensive to most expensive. If your pet fails any of the exams, we will call you and you may elect not to continue.

OFA (Orthopedic Foundation for Animals) and PennHIP models represent alternate technologies for assessing dog hips. OFA uses an extended hip X-ray view to measure the presence of osteoarthritis in the hip joint at the time of the examination. PennHip quantifies hip laxity as a precursor to hip degenerative joint disease.  Purdue University Veterinary Hospital recommends the PennHIP method as the best assessment of hip joint laxity.

Here’s why:

Objectivity: PennHIP patients’ X-rays are assessed via objective measurements while the OFA X-rays are graded by a panel of radiologists based on subjective impressions of the dogs’ individual hip conformation.

Evidence-based: PennHIP requires any owner who undertakes this method to have his or her X-rays included in a database of cases, regardless of hip quality. Dogs are compared only within their own breed.  Result accuracy for individual dogs is continually refined as more enter the database.  This improves not only the value of the database but its value to dogs at large for its more accurate representation of the real incidence of hip disease.

The OFA’s approach allows owners to decline to submit poor quality hips for evaluation, thus skewing their database towards better hips. This selection bias renders this database less useful.

Early prediction of future disease: PennHIP can be employed as early as 16 weeks for an accurate prediction of future changes to the hips. Therein lays its most valuable asset: its ability to eliminate loose hips entirely from the genetic pool if everyone used this method on their pre-pubescent dogs. 

The OFA method does not claim to accurately predict future disease. Moreover, it cannot be undertaken until an animal is 2 years old and well into its breeding years. This means that many dogs will enter the show ring before its hips are evaluated, thus increasing the chance that poor hips will enter the genetic pool through award-based incentives.

But PennHIP does have some downsides:

Expense - OFA requires a fee for evaluation and certification on one X-ray. If the hips are judged obviously poor by the veterinarian taking the X-ray, many owners elect not to send in the film (although, to encourage submission of all X-rays, the OFA does not charge to submit X-rays of poor hips).  

PennHIP requires the dog’s owner to commit to the entire service: anesthesia, three X-rays and the evaluation fee.

  • Anesthesia We would not undertake OFA X-rays without anesthesia or sedation, however, some vets do. At Purdue we require sedation/anesthesia for the OFA radiograph because it allows for more precise positioning of the patient for the X-ray and we always perform a correlating hip exam (flexion, extension, rotation), which is more accurately performed on a relaxed patient.   Dog owners unwilling to have their dog anesthetized can usually find veterinarians to perform drug-free OFA X-rays.

    Not so for PennHIP. With the PennHIP evaluation the dog must be under heavy sedation/anesthesia for the procedure to be accepted and evaluated. 
  • Ophthalmic (ophthalmic exams are only good for 1 year) and Cardiology evaluations will be performed first, and if your dog should fail these exams, you will be contacted to see if you want to proceed with the PennHIP evaluation.

    If the cardiology evaluation reveals a murmur, or is equivocal, the cardiologists may recommend an echocardiogram (ultrasound of the heart) be performed on your dog. You will be contacted to see if you want to proceed with the echocardiogram. Due to the prevalence of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (which can cause severe illness without a heart murmur) in their breeds, the cardiologists recommend that all Standard Poodles and Doberman Pinschers receive an echocardiogram before breeding.

Other less frequently needed tests, depending on breed prevalences, are BAER (hearing tests) usually performed on breeds that are primarily white or merle, thyroid panel, Von Willebrands Disease testing for primarily Doberman Pinschers, greyhounds, Italian Spinone, whippets, and other affected breeds.

All breeding stock should be tested for brucellosis prior to any breeding (this can be done by your regular veterinarian).