Worried about puppy now!
 

I have a 7-and-a-bit month old male GSD puppy and we visit the dog park near us quite regularly. A couple who lives near us has the sister to Teddy from the same litter and we caught up with them recently. They mentioned that their girl went in to be spayed and the vet had brought them in since they had spotted some hip problems on her. This has me worried!

Teddy has been in to be neutered (to the same vet I think), but they never said anything to me.

Do you know if vets tend to do xrays for male sterilisations? I have spoken to the breeder and apparently the parent/s did have the recessive gene so Teddy may have problems...

I have been told that I can't get him checked fully til 12 months but was wondering if there is something I should be on the look out for? He is on Royal Canin GSD Junior (which has glucosamine etc for healthy joints) already and I haven't noticed any issues with movement - he plays like a maniac with my 15 month old WGSD!

You can have xrays done around 6 months of age. But the vet doing the positioning and diagnosis should be experienced. My female went to be spayed at 6 months and started limping a day before she went in. The vet took it upon himself to xray her and then told me she had 'severe' HD. I panicked and went for a consult where I took photo's of his xray. The positioning of my pup(under sedation) was horrid, she didn't have HD but Panosteitis. My vet should have had his license pulled for his incompetence.
Don't start worrying or panicking until you actually have a qualifed vet assess your pup.

For healthy hips, the best things to do is to go with adult food, not puppy food, to supplement (I think others probably have a better list of things to give the dog, I think vitamin C is really good for this, but there are other things as well. Usually the glacosomine and chondroiton in dog foods is really not enough. It might be better to go with Nupro or something like that.), keep the dog lean, regular- low impact exercise -- let the puppy be a puppy, run, jump, swim, etc; but do not school the pup over jumps or agility equipment until he is old enough and has had his hips and elbows checked.

All the puppies in the litter may be affected, but it is not necessarily so. It is very possible that only 1 or 2 have the problem. All the things I just suggested will not hurt your puppy. You can x-ray early if you want, 4 months, 8 months, but they will not certify hips until 12 months -- PennHip or 24 months -- OFA. My understanding is OFA used to certify at either 12 or 18 months but they had enough dogs have problems that they did not detect that early, so they changed it to 24 months. Penn Hip checks them differently.