I would really appreciate some advice.  My 18 month old lab was diagnosed with HD a couple of months ago after having some xrays taken under sedation.  The xrays were sent away for a specialist opinion, but was told that the positioning was not good enough to be sent away for scoring and that he would need to be put under a general anasthetic to enable them to get the correct positioning.  I would like to get him hip scored so I have some idea of how severe the HD is.  Should I have the xrays done by my vet or go to someone who specialises in taking xrays for hips scoring?

I would definitely go to a vet that has experience in taking good quality plates, my GP vets are very good, but I never allowed them to X ray any dogs after I saw the quality of one set of plates they had taken for the old scheme of pass, letter or fail they were actually rejected & they couldn't understand why

Depending where you live I know an excellent vet in North Yorkshire

Oh dear. I don't think anyone can really answer this. It really depends on how good your vet is at taking plates for scoreing. Positioning does need to be very accurate for a true score, anything second best will reduce the possibility of the score being genuine. Do you know any other dogs who have been x-rayed by this vet? Did their dogs scores measure up to their expectations? Is there a good spread of scores? (You would expect that amongst a reasonably large number of dogs to have scores covering the full spectrum. If most of the scores were poor I would be worried. Trouble is, most of the info which you could use to make a decision is not available to you.

Sorry, my answer is not much help to you.

Regards, John

Hi - I can't really help, but when I had Willis x-rayed the vets tried to do it under sedation but actually ended up putting him under a GA (which is what I wanted in the first place!) there was no way there is enough sedation in the world without a GA to make Willis lie still enough for a hip x-ray and get an accurate picture - I changed my vet very shortly afterward....

All vets can make mistakes in taking X-rays, and seens the first ones where not good enough for sending off I would expect them to do it again free of charge.  If the position of the dog was wrong they cannot take the measurement and therefore giving you funny scores. 

I would go back to my own vet...but would be expecting it free of charge, of course!  Overall the reason you want the hips scored is a good idea, and somehow you need to get the x-rays done again!

Thank you all for your replies.

John - I have no idea, although I wouldn't have thought that many given the type of practice and location - but I may be completely wrong.

Chloe - yes my vet said to have hips x-rayed under GA.  He was having something else x-rayed while under sedation, and the hips were done because I was worried about them.

Ice Queen - probably didn't explain properly - these were done foc (he was being x-rayed for something else at the time), and it was my vet that said they weren't good enough to send away.  To get them good enough he would want him put under GA