This is out of Dr. Sherilyn Allens Book The Official Book of the Neapolitan Mastiff Page 215. It may save your pup from surgery! PLEASE READ!

"" The Joints are hyperextensible, such that motor control is difficult in early life. As the individual gets older, the connective tissue strength improves, and together with increased muscle development, motor skills become adequate and in many cases normal.
Like people with Ehler-Danlos syndrome, some Neapolitan puppies often have a tough time getting around for the first year of their life. Everything on them is loose-their skin, their tendons,their joints. They grow so fast and become so heavy that their lax tendons and ligaments barely hold their bones together. The Instability of the loose joints to become traumatized easily. Inflammation results from trauma, and arthritis can be a sequential development.
Invariably, the Neo puppy begins to limp at four to six months of age. It often sags down on its front pasterns, and toes start to splay. The collagen in the tendons just does not seem strong enough to support the weight of the dog. Then it limps behind, and the first diagnosis everyone wants to make is hip dysplasia. The veterinarian immediately radiographs the puppy and invariably sees loose hip joints. Sometimes the heads of the femurs can be pulled way out of the sockets/ Already programmed to look for the dreaded hip dysplasia, that now-household word thanks to effective advertising and scare tactics employed by certain organizations to assure financial gain, veterinarians and owners alike immediately jump to the diagnosis of doom.
Owners are often immediately given only two choices as to what to do for their dog. They are told that they can have the dog undergo very expensive orthopedic surgery to correct the problem, or they will have to have the dog put down because it will suffer intractable pain. Next begins the entire unhappy saga of distraught and irate owners finding someone to blame and from whom they can extract recompense.
Lets hold on, back track and look at the real story. We just finished saying how most all neo puppies have loose connective tissue and joints, or they would not be Neos. They will inevitably do damage to their joints roughhouse uncontrollably while they are in this growing period.
Because they have loose connective tissue, they will always radiograph with some degree of joint laxity. This joint laxity includes the hips. But Hip dysplasia is not just joint laxity. True joint laxity can predispose a dog to develop hip dysplasia, but the term hip dysplasia is by definition the arthritis that develops from excessive wear on incongruent joints. Not all dogs with loose joints go on to develop arthritis or hip dysplasia. Of the hundreds of Neos I have radiographed over the years, all of them had loose hips even the ones that passed ofa certification. I have seen only five with arthritis of the hips, or hip dysplasia. and of thes five, all were extraordinarily sound to the degree that all of them had won championships in the show ring.

I am stating that I have reason to believe that loose hips do not cause as sever clinical problems in this breed as they might in other breeds. I believe that more research needs to be done on the effects of loose hips and hip dysplasia in the breed. Producing sound Neapolitan Mastiffs is of utmost importance to the breed. Judging a dog by the results of a radiograph on an anesthetized animal, which has no reflex muscular tone to hold his joints tight and which is placed in a totally abnormal position simply because that is the easiest way for us humans to get standard pictures of the pelvic area, is to me, an example of tunnel vision it causes amateurs to judge the neo only by picture of its hips. It causes neophyte breeders to forget about everything but a neos hips so that they can cater to a hip-fixated public. I suggest that people interesed in breeding look at many other characteristics of the breed in addition to hips.
Stretching muscles and tendons causes soreness. Crushing and tearing immature cartilage causes pain. So what do you do for this dearly beloved prize on which you have spent a lot of money and who now can barely walk?
You wait, you avoid watching him while he is limping so that you do not get ulcers. You give him aspirin. You let him grow up. You can also give Vitamin C, in addition to the proper food and multi vitamin .Some people also swear by beta carotene with vitamin e, for the anti-oxident anti-inflammatory properties. I have also found shark cartledge and or perna canaliculus mussel products to be very effective in preventing these developmental joint disorders and allowing the joints to develop in a healthy fashion. You keep the puppy light in weight to make it easier for him to move around-remember, he is already too heavy for his age just because he is a neo. You may have to start thyroid hormone replacement therapy. And you wait.
Then, as the puppy grows, and your are feeding him properly and giving him the vitamins and other products mentioned, and not letting him stress his joints with too much exercise or stair climbing or roughhousing with other dogs,you will begin to see him coming up on his pasterns. By ten or eleven months of age, his toes will start to come together again. The limping will be more intermittent. The muscles will begin to develop. By a year of age, things should all be back to normal again. The growing pains will stop, and the dog will be able to get around quite well.
However, I am amazed daily by dogs that I see as puppies and would swear they will grow up to be crippled wrecks. These puppies usually have osteochondrosis of every joint and totally deformed legs. They are dogs that even I would think would have to be put down.But surprisingly, or not so surprisingly, as I am learning where neos are concerned , these dogs grow up to be just fine. They may not become so sound that they are going to be show winners, but they walk and run around fine. I always reserve judgement on limping neos until they are 12-18 months of age. They just seem to get better with age."