I cringe at the thought of guaranteed hips, or health guarantees in general. It isn’t that I’m against doing all you can to assure you are producing the best dogs possible, its just that there are no guarantees with living things. I realize in today’s world a breeder of high-quality, high-priced dogs almost has to have a health guarantee. With that being said I’m not a big fan of them. Too often owners take them to mean there is an absolute guarantee their dog will not develop the “guaranteed” against health conditions. Also too often those same owners haven’t read the fine print of the guarantee that may discuss returning the dog, euthanasia, replacement value, etc. The unfortunate reality of health guarantees is that by the time a problem has developed or been identified you are no longer dealing with a guarantee on a piece of paper, but rather a living thing to which I hope you now have an emotional attachment. This makes sorting out the details of the terms of a guarantee a very delicate and often anger-provoking situation.

I don’t have all the answers to how to deal with this situation, but if I was a breeder, I would jump through every health clearance hoop (i.e. OFA, PennHIP, CERF, genetic testing, etc.) to show potential puppy buyers that I am doing everything in my power to produce for them a very healthy puppy. They could take that information and make an informed purchase decision, but in the end they would be making a contract with the dog they purchased…for good or bad.

That lengthy introduction brings us to a young, sweetheart of a little labrador I saw earlier this week. Despite her breeder and owner’s best efforts, her preliminary OFA films had come back with dysplasia of the left hip. I was seeing her for a second opinion and a retake of the films.

She was a petite and well-muscled little dog. We sedated her to get the best possible view of her hips. She was not sedated for the first go around and so we hoped the sedation would allow for a truer picture of her hips.

I zoomed in on the hips so that you can take a look at what they looked like:

In the above picture her left hip is on your right and is the problem hip. In the image below I have illustrated the differences in the two hips and the problem locations with the left hip joint. The red arrows show a lack of contact on the left side with the “socket” of the ball and socket joint, the right hip (your left) shows a more normal hip joint. The brown line is placed over the reminents of a growth plate (it is a faintly distinguishable white line in the above image). The yellow line is drawn from the two points of coverage of the socket and in a good hip the “yellow” line should intersect the brown with >50% of the brown line on the side of the dog’s body. As you can see the right hip (your left) has very good coverage, where the left hip (your right) has very poor.

I decided to illustrate this case for a number of reasons.

1. Guaranteed hips aren’t always guaranteed hips.
2. This dog was very well-muscled and extremely athletic. She had NO symptoms of hip dysplasia. It was a diagnosis made by an x-ray and may never actually cause the dog problem…though she will be at risk. It is this reason that hip dysplasia is NOT always a death sentence or career-ender AND it is also the reason that ALL dogs should be x-rayed regardless of their athletic ability. You won’t ever know the truth unless you look.
3. Is this genetic and should she be bred? That’s a tough one since it is clearly confined to only one side. It is possible it was related to an injury the dog had early in life, this dog had suffered a very long fall during a crucial stage in development, it is possible as a result there was an injury to only the left hip.Are you willing to take that risk? I’ll be honest here in that I don’t know that answer and there are a number of factors that should be taken into account.
4. A lot is made about bad x-rays making “good” hips bad, or clever x-rays making bad hips good. To a certain degree both statements may be true. Truly bad hips are never going to be made to look good and really great hips will never be made to look bad. It is the borderline good or borderline bad hips that can be affected by technique, positioning, etc. In the top picture the dog appears slightly slanted across the frame, but that has to do with her positioning in relation to the film and my crop of the picture not a rotation of the dog on the film. After multiple x-rays of the same dog by different veterinary clinics producing the same left hip problem it is fair to say this dog has an issue with just the left hip.