Just found this thread and have to disagree!
My Shadow is black and at the age of 8 months tore the ligament in his left hip that holds the ball & socket joint together. We were having a bit of playtime at a favourite walk around a reservoir when his back leg slipped off the paving flag at the edge and over extended. After a heart rendering cry Liz and I managed to carry him back to the car and take him home, where aftera few hours he seemed fine. The next morning as I was out with him I could hear a clicking noise coming from his hip, although he was walking fine on it. We took him straight to our vets who x-rayed him and examined him, and told us that the clicking was the hip dislocating and then re-locating. She said he must have been in some pain but never made any fuss. It was only the second time that our practice had carried out the operation which without going into gory details entailed the joint being held together with a fishing line type cord. This was the week b4 Christmas, so we all had a miserable time, Shadow with his bald hip and leg with a huge scar running down it and not being able to use the leg for several weeks and us because we felt sorry for him

. After a month or two he was back walking properly on all fours and we thought that was the end of the proble.
18 months later Shadow started limping on the same hip out of the blue, so off to the vet again, who decided after running tests, x-rays etc that the best course would be to refer Shadow to apparently the best doggy leg vet in the UK - sadlythis was in Shirley near Wolverhampton and we had to get Shad there for 9am. Anyway, we had to leave our little man on the wednesday and by the time we got home there was a message for us to ring the vet. He had found an infection that was all around the cord used for the original op, so had cleared it up and put Shadow on an antibiotic drip. I drove down on the Friday to pick him up and so far so good (touch wood) He does have slightly reduced movement and doesnt like cold wet mornings, and is on Synoquin for his joints everyday and Rimadyl if it gets bad. After the second op, our vet reckoned that Shadow would probably need a full hip replacement by the age of 5 - he is now nearly 7 and going strong on the original hip. the moral of the story is 'Thank goodness for Pet Plan insurance' they have paid for all his bills and ongoing treatments to the tune of over £5000. The irony is that as a puppy, at his first injections trip to the vet, she pronounced that he had one of the best hip scores that she'd seen recently!!