i have a young pedegree labrador, and i keep hearing about hip and eye certificates.  waht are these, how do i go about getting these / or should he already have them being a pedegree?

If you ever plan to breed from him, after he's 12 months old he should have his hips x-rayed by your vet, who'll send the plates to the KC for scoring. His eye tests need to be done annually by a specialist opthamologist.
:)

Ideally your boys parents should have been hip scored and eye tested and if your dog is registered then it will be on his Kennel Club pedigree certificate. Hip dysplasia is a big problem in labradors mainly due to bad and thoughtless breeding by people who choose not to do it.    An x-ray is taken of the hips and is sent away to be scored, the lower the score the less evidence of hip dysplasia there is. The maximum possible score is 106 (53 for each side)  I think at the moment the breed mean score is 15 and dogs used in a breeding programme should score well below this to be used for breeding, I personally would not use a dog with a combined score of above 10. The score should also be fairly even on both sides eg 2-2 or 6-4, but I would not use a dog that had an very uneven score such as 9-1, this is just personally my opinion.

As for the eye testing, this should be done yearly by a specialist, and any dog that is to be used for breeding should be clear of all inherited eye defects.

Kerry