Spine Scores

These live spine score statistics are updated daily. They are only for dogs xrayed in the last five years only.

If a breed is an official Dogs Australia breed then only results for Dogs Australia registered dogs are used for the results. For non-Dogs Australia breeds the results come from non-Dogs Australia registered dogs and these breeds have an asterisk * after the breed name.

The count is the sample count, i.e. the number of test results for dogs of that breed. The average and median numbers have been rounded to two decimal places. The statistics are updated at least once per day. The average (also called the mean) is defined as "the sum of the values divided by the number of values". The median is defined as "the value separating the higher half from the lower half of a data sample (a population or a probability distribution). For a data set, it may be thought of as the 'middle' value. For example, in the data set {1, 3, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9}, the median is 6, the fourth largest, and also the fourth smallest, number in the sample."

The individual spine scores are calculated as the sum of the scores of all the vertebrae. Each vertebrae has a possible score of 0 to 3 and a score of 3 is much worse than a score of 1 so the method used of simply summing the scores needs to be understood in that context.