Nothwithstanding injury - the prediposition still has to be there - I know of many dogs who've been subjected to far worse than you describe and thrown hips below 10 with perfect elbows - from dogs walked miles from the age of just 3 months, to jumping 4 foot deckings as a puppy doing retrieves - to living in upside down houses and storming up and down the stairs several times a day - and all been scored and come back with good results.

Two of my home bred girls, despite my best intentions, have defied every rule we've tried to put enforce - one injured her leg and was limping severely at 6 months - to the point she was at the emergency vets.

She spends around 50% of her life walking around on two legs - she's like a performing seal - we witnessed her scaling a 9 foot gate with no run up at 4 months and regularly dive bombing a 12 foot room in one leap. Her summers are spent diving in and out of the pool - total nutter she was scored at 2.5 - I was dreading the outcome - her hips were 4/3, elbows 0. Her niece is also very active - we tried to keep the two of them apart from playing to no avail - and my god did they play hard, fast and rough - the niece scored at 18 months, came back 5/4, elbows 0.

The reason we advise not to do all these things with pups is because we have no way of knowing which dogs will be predispoed to HD - and even where both parents have low scores, statistically, a very small percentage of pups (less than 1 pup ber litter) can go on to develop problems - scoring reduces, but does not remove the risk.

One of my own girls, as on an earlier post, has a score nearly 3 times the breed average - had we done any of the things described above with her - she probably wouldn't have had any hips left and a very different outcome

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What you need to know before buying a Labrador puppy

This is not actually worse than my example - which was that the person had subjected the poor pup to a regime of 'training' culminating at 6 months old to it being able and doing courses of jumps at 2'6" with ease. The poor dog had been 'training' over obstacles from day 1 it was home - it is impossible for any dog to have done what it did without damage. I would imagine it was 'trained' most of the day with tight turns and high jumps. Whilst you're right to an extent the torture this dog was subjected had an impact on its hips undoubtedly. It still competes (now at 2' 2") so it's not got severe HD but it's not undamaged. Without the torture I'm sure that it's hips would be fine. You can damage dogs which aren't predisposed to HD by stupidity.

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Penny
Funfastquick Agility Dogs

You are 'imagining' the dog was trained day and night - but you don't actually know - as with anything, some dogs presumably have a greater aptitude than others. Presumably the dog has been hipscored and come back with poor scores? but from what you say, has asymptomatic dysplasia.

It's the landing position that would put most pressure on the joints because it's not cushioned, therefore such an activity would quite probably do more damage to the elbows than hips - one reason why dogs are more vulnerable to elbow dysplasia as the environmental impact from dogs jumping on and off hard surfaces are clear.

One of my pups - I wouldn't even like to hazard a guess at how many times a day she did this (from the off, she never once tried to climb the steps - she cleared them to land halfway onto the decking) - I baulk when I think about it now her hips and elbows are fine, as are her daughters and grand-daughter.


Conversely, when we used to do retrieves (no decking) with my girl we now know to have the bad hips, we quickly saw that the 'landing' position of her hips was very very 'different' to the girl in the photo and stopped - nevertheless, we no longer do it with any of my youngsters. Had quite a job blocking off the decking though - and never managed to stop madam clearing the obstacles.

ETA - the constant motion of a dog going up and down stairs and the position that places the hips in when coming down stairs has HUGE capacity for damaging hips - few activities put the type of pressure on joints as using stairs regularlly as a young pup - you only have to look at a dog coming downstairs to realise the hip positioning is anything but natural

That's something else the girl in my picture did on a regular basis as she somehow managed to open the stairgate despite everything we tried.

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What you need to know before buying a Labrador puppy