hips question - Page 2

We sold a puppy to a pet owner and when the pup was almost six months old the owners told us that the dog needed a Hip Replacement. The dog had not been x-rayed but did walk rather strangely. I asked the owners to have the pup x-rayed which they duly did and when I saw the x-ray plate I thought it didn't look to bad, so I asked them to wait until the pup was a year old and get him x-rayed and scored. About 10 days after the dog was x-rayed the owners rang me up and said they had got the score back (very quick for the UK!!!!) It was 3:2 Total Score 5 (In the Uk THE BEST SCORE IS ZERO AND THE WORST SCORE IS 106). The dog obviously had a strange gait during the developement months and this corrected itself and the dog was as sound as could be. We had another case where the Vet wanted to put to sleep an 11 month old male as he said the Hips were diabolical. In this case he had actually x-rayed the Hips before making this Statement. I asked the owner to get the dog re-x-rayed at another Vets and have the plate scored, which she duly did and guess what the score came back at 3:3 Total Score 6 In the latter case the Owner had over exercised the dog when she went on holiday for two weeks and ran him about five hours a day with another dog!!! So, two cases, one would have had a Hip Replacement unneccessarily and the other would have been put to sleep, and of course the Breeder would have been blamed (quite wrongly) of breeding two dogs with HD. This shows that the average Vet cannot be accurate about a diagnosis, it is best to see a Vet who is an expert in this field, and always score the Hips first before taking any drastic action. Because of these two cases we now put on our Sales Contract that we will only consider problems re: Hips if the dogs have actually been scored. Ann Robinson Hazelgrove GSDs

I believe the idea of a contract for UK breeders of the sort that Annie is mentioning is a brilliant idea. She is quite right when she quotes those experiences, and i am sure that most breeders in the UK can quote similar, as vets here see lame GSD`s and think HD - of course, the owner believes his expert (the vet) and comes down on the breeder. A contract explaining that hip consideration for faults will be dealt with accurately on hip scoring would eliminate any 8 or 9 month wait and moans until the eventual score comes in - usually good. It also educates the owners as to what scoring is all about. A vet once told a new puppy owner of mine that because her 16 wk old puppy "sat funny" (his quote) she must be dysplastic and she should speak to me about an exchange as I may still have a sibling left..... where would have been the sense in that - and by the way - I went through those 7 months with the owner concerned til hip scoring time - she came back with a full score of 9. What did the vet have to say??? "You are lucky she has developed well" Mo - Mascani