How Old Must My Dog be to Have a PennHIP Radiograph?
PennHIP has studied the efficacy of this method from the eight weeks up to three years of age. The PennHIP method can be reliably performed on a dog as young as 16 weeks old. Passive hip laxity at 16 weeks correlates highly with later hip laxity. In other words, a dog’s hip laxity at 16 weeks will be much the same at one year, two years or even three years. The accuracy of laxity measurements for German Shepherd Dogs less than 16 weeks of age is not high enough to be of clinical use. Other breeds require study to determine the earliest reliable age of evaluation. The looser the joint, as determined by the PennHIP method, the greater is the chance that the hip will develop DJD. (The standard hip-extended method can actually mask true hip joint laxity). There are obvious advantages to screening dogs for hip joint laxity at 4 months of age (or six months, 1 year, etc.) as opposed to waiting until 2 years of age. The reliability of the PennHIP method slightly improves with age, with one ye
