When Zoey was 5 months old she was bunny hopping and we took her to a surgeon to have Xrayed. The Xrays came back saying hip dysplasia, and TPO was one of the options presented to us. However, the vet said that she was probably bunny hopping because she was growing through a growth spurt and having growing pains, and that she would be suprised to see a saint (or a newf) with perfectly normal hips. We chose not to do the surgery for three reasons: 1. The surgery is very intense and recovery is difficult. Most surgeons reccomend to do hips seperately and there is a long recovery. We didn't want to put zoey through 2 painful surgeries with 3 month recoveries from each. 2. The surgery is prohibitively expensive. If I had the money I wouldn't think for a second about whether or not I would spend it on zoey, but most of us just don't have a few grand to spend no matter how much we would want to. 3. The tpo has to be done at such a yound age that you don't really know if it is neccessary - some dogs have bad xrays but show no pain, while others have decent xrays and exhibit a ton of pain. You don't really know how severe it is until they are older which is one of the reasons many people dont xray until 2 years old. So the tpo may really help your dog, but your dog might have been fine without it.
We chose preventative maintenance as our treatment method. From day one we have monitored her food intake to make sure she is not overweight - the less weight that a dog has on their hips, the better. Also, the slower that an HD dog grows the better their ability to grow into their hips and the better their chances at a pain free life - for this reason, zoey has always been on adult food (puppy food encourages fast growth). You also need to make sure not to let your dog jump, so we use a ramp for the truck and keep her off the bed. Excersize is important to build up the muscles in the hips and legs, but you want to make it low-impact excersize; walking or swimming are best. Finally, jiont medication is really helpful for dogs with hip pain. We used to feed a liquid glucosamine/msm/chondroitin supplement, and have recently switched to cosequin because it is supposed to be the best. Zoey is 15 months now and even though she has a bad week here and there that terrifies me, she is in the most part a happy dog who show little or no pain most of the time.