Questions of the hip dysplasia scoring of the Hungarian small shepherd dogs

SUMMARY The authors publish data based on the scoring of hip dysplasia of Hungarian dog breeds according to the statistics of MKOE. They describe their experience that Hungarian small shepherd dogs' (Puli, Pumi, Mudi) X–ray anatomy well – noticeably differ from that of big dogs’ in ventrodorsal radiographs – which is the basics of HD scoring, according to FCI assessment. These small dogs often have joints which in every respect seem to be free from HD, and these joints are connected to the Norberg–angle less than 105°. This fact makes a problem in consistent, objective rating of the radiographs. The authors try to find out whether the smaller Norberg-angle by itself is accompanied by higher susceptibility to hip dysplasia in case of these breeds. If their assumption is true ’that it is not’, then the question is where to set the limit between certain levels? For the sake of this, as the first step, they have worked up 194 radiographs of scored Pulis taken between 2005 and 2010 from the archives of the association. For substitution of Norberg-angle and the analysis of its connection, they measured the divergence of joint space, and the distance between dorsal acetabular rim and the centre of femoral head. The resulting data were statistically assessed by them. The test results are not sufficient at the moment in order to decide on the question asked. They have to be complemented by additional research, primarily the most important thing is to analyse the hips of older Pulis