OFA Thyroid Application Form: Eligibility, Submission, and Results

The OFA thyroid application form is a one-page document you download from ofa.org/applications, fill out with your dog’s registration details and your veterinarian’s certification, and mail to the Orthopedic Foundation for Animals along with the lab report and a $15 fee. Processing takes about a week once the paperwork arrives.¹ The form itself is simple. The work is in the timing, the lab choice, and the sample handling that happen before you ever put pen to paper.

Check Eligibility Before the Blood Draw

Three rules decide whether the test will count. Get any of them wrong and you pay the lab fee for nothing.

The dog must be at least 12 months old at the time of the draw. Blood drawn earlier is for your own information only and will not be entered in the registry.
The dog cannot have received any form of thyroid supplementation in the three months before testing.
The dog cannot have been vaccinated within 30 to 60 days of testing, because the immune response can skew the thyroglobulin autoantibody result.

Have your veterinarian review the dog’s medical record against these windows before you schedule the appointment.²

Filling Out the Form

Download the Application for Thyroid Database from ofa.org/applications.³ The fields fall into three groups.

Dog Information

Enter the dog’s full registered name exactly as it appears on the pedigree. Add the registration number from the American Kennel Club, Canadian Kennel Club, or other recognized registry, plus breed, date of birth, and sex. The OFA uses breed-specific reference ranges, so the breed entry affects the final classification. The form also asks for the sire and dam registration numbers for lineage tracking.²

Permanent Identification

There is a field for the dog’s microchip or tattoo number. The veterinarian must verify this identification at the time of the blood draw and mark on the form that verification occurred. Dogs with verified identification receive a “PI” suffix on their OFA number. Dogs without it get a “NOPI” suffix, which tells anyone reading the registry that identity was not independently confirmed at testing.⁴

Owner and Veterinarian

Fill in your name, mailing address, and phone number. The veterinarian who draws the blood adds their name, clinic address, and license number, and signs to certify that they personally verified the dog’s identity and collected the sample. Write legibly. The OFA processes applications manually, and a smudged registration number or microchip number can hold things up.

How the Sample Must Be Handled

Collection and shipping are specific enough that your vet should read them in advance. Blood goes into a plain red-top tube. No serum separator tubes, no clot additives, no plasma collection tubes. After clotting for at least 30 minutes, the vet centrifuges the sample and transfers at least two milliliters of serum into a plain glass or plastic shipping container.³

Label the tube with your name, the dog’s identification, the collection date, and “OFA Thyroid Panel.” If shipping happens within 12 hours, refrigeration is enough. Longer than that, freeze the sample before shipping. Unchilled samples are accepted only if they reach the lab within 48 hours of the draw. Samples that are visibly cloudy with fat (lipemic) or discolored from ruptured red cells (hemolyzed) will not be tested regardless of how fast they get there.²

Approved Laboratories

The OFA accepts results only from labs that have passed a certification process that includes a site visit by a veterinary endocrinologist and ongoing quality assurance. Send the sample anywhere else and the application will be rejected, even if the lab is reputable.⁵ The currently approved facilities are:

Animal Health Diagnostic Center, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY (607-253-3673)
Animal Health Laboratory, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario (519-824-4120 ext. 54530)
Antech Diagnostics, Lake Success, NY only (800-872-1001)
Applied BioSciences, College Station, TX (979-220-9823)
IDEXX, Markham, Ontario (800-667-3411)
Michigan State University Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory, Lansing, MI (517-353-1683)
Texas A&M Veterinary Medical Diagnostic Laboratory, College Station, TX (979-845-3414)

Only Antech’s Lake Success location is certified; other Antech branches are not. Call the lab before collection to confirm their submission paperwork, handling instructions, and service fee, which is separate from the $15 OFA fee and varies by facility.⁵ Each approved lab runs the same three assays: free T4 by equilibrium dialysis, canine thyroid-stimulating hormone (cTSH), and thyroglobulin autoantibodies (TgAA).²

Mailing the Application and Fee

Thyroid applications cannot be submitted through the OFA’s electronic portal, which handles radiographs only.⁶ Mail the completed and signed form, the lab report, and $15 by check or credit card authorization to the OFA. Make checks payable to “OFA.”²

Two bulk rates can lower the cost. Three or more dogs from the same litter submitted together are $30 total. Five or more dogs you own or co-own, all of the same application type and submitted together under a single payment, drop to $10 per dog.⁷

After the OFA receives your package, staff check that the vet’s signature, lab data, and dog identification all match. Processing runs about a week. Normal results post to the OFA’s searchable online database, and you get a certificate by mail with an OFA number that encodes the year and month of the test.¹

What the Results Mean

The OFA combines the three assay values into one of several classifications. The two most common outcomes:

Normal: free T4 in range, cTSH in range, TgAA negative. The dog receives an OFA number and appears in the public database.
Equivocal: results that don’t fit cleanly into any category. The OFA recommends retesting in three to six months.

The abnormal classifications are positive autoimmune thyroiditis, positive compensative autoimmune thyroiditis, and idiopathically reduced thyroid function. Each describes a specific pattern across the three assays and is used by breeders and genetic counselors to evaluate pairings.²

All results must be submitted, but not all become public. Normal results post to the open database automatically. Positive and equivocal results stay private unless the owner gives explicit written permission to publish them, so a buyer searching the database sees normal clearances but will not necessarily see a positive result.²

When to Retest

A single normal result is a snapshot. Autoimmune thyroiditis can develop at any age, and most affected dogs show autoantibodies by age four. The OFA’s recommended reexamination schedule is at ages 2, 3, 4, 6, and 8.² Each retest means a fresh form, a new blood draw at an approved lab, and another $15 fee. Dogs with equivocal results should be retested within three to six months rather than waiting for the next scheduled interval.

1
Orthopedic Foundation for Animals. FAQs
2
Orthopedic Foundation for Animals. Thyroid
3
Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine. Customer Instructions for OFA Testing
4
Orthopedic Foundation for Animals. OFA Policies
5
Orthopedic Foundation for Animals. Thyroid Labs
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Orthopedic Foundation for Animals. Electronic Submissions
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Orthopedic Foundation for Animals. Our Fees