Vet: hip dysplasia confirmed - Page 3

Uschi..she has a nice even muscle tone, so you have time to let her mature and check/follow up at a later day...pay attention to her muscles on her rear end...If she starts loosing her muscle on rear legs and you can see and feel the difference than I would get serious about doing a surgery, you just dont want to wait till she has no muscle tone to provide support if you do choose to have FHO. But i honestly dont see bone on bone contact, so she may do just fine for many years to come... :)

As it turned out my very first purebred large breed dog had hips worse than Shelby's. This was not the same dog I spoke of in an earlier post. I didn't know her hips were bad until I had her xrayed for OFA at 12 months. Very shallow sockets and sub-luxation. That dog never took a lame step in her entire 12 1/2 years of life.

Well, we will be sure to be more careful with her now. In terms of her playmate Wiley, he is a 3 year old shepherd, and while he certainly has more stamina for play than Shelby, he prefers to actually herd her around :-) If she starts to wander off in one direction, he moves to her other side, presses his body against hers, and herds her back to us :-) I will definitely be careful though to watch her and make sure that they don't rough house too much. 

The anti-inflammatory is only going to be for a month, during which time we will do hydrotherapy. 

Also, about her training, we aren't doing Schutzhund training explicitly, but are/will be doing standard obedience (such as having her always look at me when I say her name instead of ignoring me, or not doing something when I tell her no, etc.). 

Additionally, I generally agree that 6 to 6.5 months is a little early for hip xrays. However, the bunny hopping was not the only concern, and I prefer to nip problems in the bud (if there is a problem). One of the things that the vet checked was her spine, to make sure that her discs weren't compressed or something like that, so that it could be fixed while she's still young. Since we've had the xrays, we now know generally what we need to do to help her. If we had waited another six months, how would her hips be then? I'm not being defensive with this paragraph, but this is just the way that my thought process works. A better to be safe than sorry approach.

FWIW, I think you did absolutely the right thing. Your noticed an unsoundness with her rear, she's a GSD, and  you didn't overlook the obvious. Sounds like you have a good, sound plan for her.

A month is a long time for a daily NSAID regimen.  I don't think its necessarily long enough to do harm, but a weekly Adequan injection for 4 weeks could be a better choice for young dog who is still growing.