2007 - CCCI Health Database Report - 2007

There are currently 22682 + individual Chows recorded in the CCCI Health Database. Of these there are approximately 3934 Hip registrations, 296 Elbow registrations, 119 Patella registrations, 34 Thyroid registrations, 21 Cardiac registrations, 253 CERF registrations, and 34 CHIC registrations. Many chows have multiple certifications. There are also about 2790 chows that have photos included with their information in the database.

Below are the summations from the OFA's annual report. It covers the last three years and includes the total submissions over the entire time that the OFA has been recording these records on chows. The percentages are the percent of the total submissions for that year. For example: Year 2006 there were 10 chows with excellent hips which is 7.7% of 130 total radiographic submissions to the OFA.

I have added a new column starting this year showing the OFA Ranking of the Chow Chow as compared to other breeds that have health data from the OFA.

Hip Registry Summary by Year

Percentage in Open database

Elbow Registry Summary by Year

Patella Luxation Registry Summary by Year

Cardiac Registry Summary by Year

Thyroid Registry Summary by Year

CERF statistics are not provided here because those are not sent to me directly.

It should be noted that submissions increased in most cases substantially in 2007 indicating that more breeders are testing for these issues. I think the board should publicly praise the membership for this increase and continue to aggressively encourage testing.

Statistics compiled by the OFA indicate that the chow chow is ranked number one for incidences of elbow dysplasia, number three for patella Luxation, and number thirty five for hip dysplasia.

Elbow dysplasia can be extremely debilitating. The onset is often early and patients are bilaterally affected in a significant number of cases. There is no satisfactory medical protocol or surgical procedure to significantly alter the progression or cure the disorder. This makes it increasingly important to reduce the incidence of the disease through selective breeding. To see a reduction in the incidences of elbow dysplasia, and patella luxation it is important to selectively breed phenotypically normal dogs. In the case of hip dysplasia it is important to breed dogs with good or excellent hips.

To help breeders better their breeding programs with respect to selectively breeding to reduce the incidences of hip, elbow dysplasia and patella luxation, I encourage the membership to utilize the Chow Health website. The website contains health articles from various sources such as the OFA, and CERF. The website also contains CCCI club member contributed articles such as how hip x-rays are scored in England.

I also encourage the membership to use the CCCI Health Database which is available free online to use as a research tool. The database contains all the OFA and CERF information I have collected for the club that is contained in the CCCI Health Database. CHIC numbers are included in the Health Database. The Chow Pedigree Database from the old CCCI website is being incorporated into the Chow Health Database in order to reduce duplication of data and increase the accuracy of the Chow Health database.

I think members will find the online health database very helpful in researching pedigrees. A few of the features are: 1) Regular pedigrees with photos and links to other dogs in the pedigree. 2) Reverse pedigrees with links to other dogs. 3) Offspring of sire and dam shown for dog displayed with links. 4) Siblings of dog displayed also with links. The online database thus gives the user the ability to see where a dog came from, what it produced and with whom it was bred with. Searches may be narrowed down by selecting the field to search on. There are also a number of pre-made searches such as "Recent Entries" to help in quickly finding information.

The health and pedigree information form can be filled out with information about a dog and any health certifications the dog may have. The form user can include a file attachment of a pedigree and a file attachment of a photo of the dog. This information gets emailed directly to me. I can then verify the information and enter it into the Health database and upload it to the web database.

A dog does not have to have a certification to be included in the database. The more chows the database contains, the more accurate research on a chow is due to more complete pedigrees. Please submit your pedigrees!

The cost and maintenance of the online Chow Health Database and the associated health information website is being donated to the club by myself, Phil DeGruy as I believe it is a natural and very useful extension of the Chow Health Database.

I hope that you find this site a useful place to resource and contribute information. Our goal is to educate and to increase awareness of owners, breeders and admirers on the health and temperament of the chow chow.

As a reminder, the CERF numbers in the online database use 'ER' as the prefix instead of 'CC'. This change was made in 2005 to prevent any confusion with OFA numbers. This change was also made in the Health Database.

Please encourage everyone to submit their health information, pedigrees and photos..

Sincerely,

Phil DeGruy

CCCI OFA Representative
CCCI Health Database
Email Me