I would suggest you not get xrays right now unless you are considering a TPO surgery. Saints are not full grown until they are 2 years old, and xrays taken now would be preliminary and are not neccessarily an accurate reflection of her full grow hips. But, if you are considering a TPO (should she turn out to be dysplastic), it is important you get the xrays NOW.
Let me step back for a second here: there are two options for treatment of HD: surgery, or prevention/maintenance. If you choose surgery, there are three surgeries: a TPO, which must be done during the main growth stages (under 10 months), a total hip replacement, and an FHO. The TPO can be extremely effective, so if you see yourself considering surgery (if she has dysplacia), then you need to get xrays immediately because a TPO is only a viable option for another month or so.
If you do not see yourself doing surgery, I would not get xrays now. I would deffinately start with a pevention/maintenance routine though regardless of what you choose. A few of the things that you can do to help:
- maintain a light weight through controlled portions of high quality food coupled with low-impact excersize.
- Prevent jumping
- provide comfortable cushioned bedding
- supplement with a glucosamine/chondrointin/msm supplement
My Saint has HD. She started displaying symptoms very early (4-5 months), and we chose to do xrays. However, we chose not to do surgery because we did not want to put hr through the pain and it was also prohibitively expensive. Because we did not do surgery and were already implementing prevention/maintenance techniques, our xrays turned out useless because we can't even use them to compare to later xrays once she finishes growing.