My next door neighbour has a 4 1/2 month old GSD pup.  When they first got him home I said it was not wise to let him run up and down the huge garden steps due to his hips etc and the guy said 'na he is ok, his bones are still supple'  so I said no I would deff advise against it because he will suffer later.  He claims he has had GSD's for 40 years and thinks he knows it ALL - black is black as far as he is concerned, he hates the fact that I actually know more about dogs than him!  They also allowed him to climb some other steps in order to climb on top of his kennel - I had a heart attack when I saw this one day and he shrugged it off so I commented 'Floyd will be the one to suffer when he has HD'!  They also let him up and down stairs, took him on walks even my 2 adults would be tired from and let him run riot!  I have told them about all of this and when recently watching him we commented on how he is practically walking on his hocks so he goes in to the vets today for x-rays and they have confirmed that he has a 'form' of HD!!!!! 

Well I just don't know what to say than poor Floyd :(  Now I understand that it may be coincidence (seeing as parents have hip scores of 3:3 and 8:6 - not great but not that bad either) however if they had restricted him more then maybe we could say that, the fact that all of the above has happened has made me so angry - why can't people just listen!

He has a consultation with the specialist today!

Rant over....thank you for reading :)

This is terrible :(

I didn't realise this sort of over-exercising, could cause damage so quickly.

RSPCA? In fact I wouldn't waste your phone bill.

Hi Emfiel....running and jumping does not cause hip dysplasia.the best thimg they can do now is resrtict the diet to keep him thin.. correction of Anecdotal Misinformation
There are currently no proven environmental factors which cause canine hip dysplasia (CHD).
There is currently no scientific evidence supporting that megadoses of vitamin C or any other supplement is beneficial in reducing the effects from or preventing hip dysplasia.
High caloric intake resulting in rapid growth may exacerbate changes in dysplastic hips, but will not create hip dysplasia (more studies are still in progress).
Exercise, running, jumping up and down, and slick floors will not cause hip dysplasia.
Prior injuries to the femurs and/or pelvis may be detected radioraphically, and are taken into account when evaluating hip status.
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For more information, visit OFA's official website. [TOP]

Contact OFA directly for specific information on the OFA registries:

Just looking at the breeders web site and one of their bitches has a score of 21 and one has a score of 25, both over the average of 19!  I don't think walking a dog for an hour + is going to help the situation, are you saying that allowing a 8 week old pup to run, jump etc will not contribute to bad hips???

This dogs parents have quite good hip scores one of them I'd definitely be happy with, actually I wouldn't be too unhappy with the other, although not perfect.

Actually it is proved so the KC genetecist said at a talk on Sunday that 60% of HD is caused by environment, such as exercise and feeding, the other 40% is due to genetics!!!!  This has been proven with a number of one breed which were bred by dogs with HD in an experiment, the ones that had less food and were exercised less either had perfect hips or low scores, the ones that were allowed to eat as much as they like and exercise as much as they liked had high scores!!

I agree the parents hips are pretty good, well the sires (3:3) are great and the dams are still below average (I got my numbers mixed up) so do not think the breeding can be blamed - I also feel so strongly towards over feeding and over excercising which is why I show the owners no sympathy, just poor Floyd!  I have always been careful not to do those things and my dogs so far have had great scores!  My parents were not too lucky with their Leo although (she was fed on Eukanuba before coming to us) and as I was young when we got her I was not cluded up on hip scores but was led to believe by the breeder they were good scores (turns out he was dodgy and scored different dogs under different names) so she has a score of 26 to her left hip and 6 I believe to the other but she suffers with the bad leg from time to time - my parents never over excercised or fed her as they were cluded up on this - some people listen to good advice!

Genetic influence on HD can be much more subtle than merely the score of the parents. Within labradors there have been some heavily used stud dogs that have had good and excellent hip scores, yet sired far more than their share of very high scoring progeny (even when mated to low scoring bitches). 

>Exercise, running, jumping up and down, and slick floors will not cause hip dysplasia.

Over-exercise and incorrect feeding has been proven to have a detrimental effect on hips.

It looks like in not so many years time we will be able to ge more information re. the incidence of HD and what causes it, if we can wait about another 5 years or so.

Jeangenie ...i would be interested in seeing the studoies where they were able to cause hip dysplasia in a dog...the last i knew there were no known enviromental factors that cause dysplasia,,its inherited only..if it wasn't there would not be dogs with unilateral dysplasia and proven studies of predilection to side in lines and breeds regarding unilateral dysplasia..did they only run on one side??

        this is by Fred Lanting       The facts about HD, if they can be reduced to bare bones, are as follow: It is a developmental and variably
progressive disorder with incidence and severity that are related to breed and body type as well as pain threshold. It is completely genetic in origin (dogs do not get HD unless they have sufficient "bad genes") but the expression of those genes can be modified somewhat by environment, notably overnutrition but also e exercise and weight. In the days before X-radiography, when tending dogs (for example) worked hard for 18-20 hours a day, the worst carriers of HD in such working dogs were weeded out by not breeding (or even allowing to live) those dogs that could not perform. As sheep gave place to urbanization and modernization, there was less vocational culling, and people needed an alternative means of detecting carriers. Fortunately, the Curies had paved the way with X-rays; by the World-War-2 era, diagnosis of canine and other animals' degenerative joint diseases by casting X-ray shadows onto photographic film became that means.

this is from OFA Can environment or food cause hip dysplasia?
No, hip dysplasia is a multiple gene, inherited disease. Environmental factors, like high caloric diet during the rapid growth phase, may exacerbate changes in dysplastic hips but will not create hip dysplasia. There also is no evidence in the scientific literature that supplements (i.e Vitamin C) will prevent hip dysplasia. Reduced caloric intake and glucosamine products in immature animals genetically predisposed for hip dysplasia may lessen the pathologic changes associated with hip dysplasia.

Kelly,

The following link documents some scientific support for food & environment being a contributory factor to HD : http://www.ilovemypet.com/jackart.html

Kelly, your best bet would be to contact Malcolm Willis, a KC member and geneticist of world renown, who will no doubt be able to point you in the right direction.

By the way, many vets consider 'unilateral dysplasia' as being due to trauma, either in the womb or after birth, not heredity.
:)

My understanding is that environment/exercise/feeding cannot cause hip dysplasia, but can certainly exacerbate it.
Kat

i didn't see anything in that article stating excerise caused dysplasia..if that were the case they would be able to take greyhounds and make them dysplastic they can't..unilateral hip dysplasia is heriditaryin humans it affects the left ten to one compared to the right.it follows a similar pattern in dogs..in labradors it occurs more frequently in the left.also in newfies akitas and goldens in rotts it occurs more freqently in the right..its frequency is higher in some genetic lines when several or influential relatives have it in the left progeny that are unilaterally affected will invariably have it in the left

Kelly, I don't think anyone's ever said that exercise can be the sole cause of HD. It's agreed that there is an hereditary factor to it - generally reckoned to be about 40%. Inappropriate exercise and/or feeding can however make hips worse than they otherwise would be, which can result in higher scores (using the UK system) or dropping a 'group' (from Borderline, say, to mild dysplasia) in the OFA system.

This, although about labra- and golden-doodles (where the heck do they get the 'd' from in that name, just out of interest? ) should make the connection between all the elements clearer.

Hi Jeangenie..the d is for dum dum .i think we need to consider the source..labradoodle people are not an authority on anything ..the leading authority on hips and genetic diseases for that matter is OFA they do 50-60 thousand radiographic studies a year,,they have a tremendous amount of money to spend on research..the university of Utah has located a genetic marker for unilateral dysplasia in portugese water dogs one for the right one for the left.they will hopefully be able to locate markers in other breeds soon..i am also speaking from experience my puppies run hard an d play hard and i have several genrations of dogs with good or excellent hips..people need to realize this disease can be greatly reduced through selective breeding and that you must know more than just the parents hip scores you must have depth and breadth in the pediGree    http://www.offa.org/vertpedigree.html?appnum=1135834#animal

>the d is for dum dum

LOL! :D

>people need to realize this disease can be greatly reduced through selective breeding and that you must know more than just the parents hip scores you must have depth and breadth in the pediGree   

Absolutely! But also the degree can be reduced or exacerbated by outside influences.

Both those parental hip scores are pretty good.  6 is actually very good and if would be in the 'good' range but nearer the 'excellent' (0 to 4 with no more than 3 per hip) under the USA gradings.  The other score of 14 is perfectly respectable and would still be in the Fair bracket which would cover up to a score of 18.  19 to 25 would be borderline scores, and 25 to 35 Mild dysplasia.

I would agree that the rearing has been the problem here.

Yup, shame though for him huh, 4 1/2 mths old!!!!  They have told me that they have 'now' blocked off the steps that lead up to the garage - I told them to do this weeks before they got him :( Poor boy!

regardless the rate of dysplasia in GSD's is high close to twenty percent i doubt that the littermates of this dog are all incredibly sound even if the people totaly confined them to a cage.this puppy was going to be dysplastic no matter what.a few years back raised two GSD pups together exactly the same way and had one severely dysplastic the other one went OFA good at two.that certainly doesn;t bode well for enviromental causes.also dogs with fair hip staus are at risk for throwing large number of dysplastic progeny,and not knowing any farther back than the parents there could easily be dysplastic relaitives,

Any genetic related disorder requires environmental influences to activate in the body.  HD is a prime example being 40% genetic 60% environmental.  Many factors work together - IE, A genetic predisposition interacting with environmental factors that bring about the symptoms.

Even if you have two pups from the same littler, living in the same household, treated in the same way, fed the same food etc it does not mean that both will develop/ not develop HD.  In the same way that they will not be clones of each other, physically or mentally.