hip displacia

[Nancy k]

My female shephard(mommys baby) was checked out last year for hip displacia, because we were considering breeding. That fell through due to piometra(I'm unsure of the spelling).At that time everythiing was ok. Now I've had a few people mention that her hips seem low or shes walking funny. Her vet says shes fine. Are there any telltale signs? Am I being paranoid?

[howste]

I don't have any experience in this for dogs, but my daughter was born with hip displasia which went undetected until she was two years old (major surgery required ). Is it valid to compare human symptoms with canine?

Anyway, if you have another dog to compare with, I would compare the range of motion for the legs. If the hips are both normal, they should be pretty close to another dog's. While dislocation may allow more motion for the leg bone, the tendons would be tighter and restrict motion in some directions.

In my daughter's case, the ball of the femur was outside the socket on both sides, so as she walked she created a "false socket" on the side of the pelvis. She walked with kind of a waddle where she would lean toward the leg she was stepping on to help hold the joint in place. I assume a dog would have some variation on this if one or both joints were dislocated.

[desmocat]

Our female had some problems with it when she was young.
You might notice your pup favoring one leg, like not putting much weight on it while standing on a consistant basis, or limping a bit when first rising from a nap, then it might get better.
She also didn't get up on her hind legs hardly at all before we got her "tweeked"
Meadow had to have a TPO, triple pelvic osteotomy, where the basically saw the pelvis in 3 places, rotate the hip joint/socket to get better femoral head coverage and screw it back together.
It was very expensive( like 1600 dollars!) but the results were great. She runs and plays like nothing was ever the matter.

The breeder that we got our akitas from told me that you can have a preliminary check done at about 8 months, but they OFA will not certify hip grade on a dog less than 2 years old.
Some bloodlines might have "loose hips" when young, but will tighten up as they grow older. This can be an excuse if they have problems with it, but a reputiable breeder should tell you this up front.
The sweet lady that we got our dogs was devestated that we had problems, but I knew it was a fluke, because all her dogs haven't shown any signs of it.
I guess it could be like a recessive genetic thing, and it just happened to pop up in our puppy.
the rest of her littermates have not had any problems either.

Hope this helps out.

[sao95]

my sisters female lab had it. when she was young she had a funny sway, just off enough to where if you've been around dogs enough you think "what a funny sway" as she got older you could tell when she would run and junp, she fell and stumbled all the time... it was a progressive disease that went from a "funny sway" to not being able to squat to use the restroom or climb stairs, or hardly get up lay down, i'm talking less than a year.... we had her put to sleep..... surgery was too expensive, they wanted over two grand where we went...