Our 1.5 year old dog was diagnosed with hip dysplasia when he was 9months old, and there are other things you can do before you get to surgery.
As a previous poster said, make sure your dog is not overweight, if anything, you want her slightly underweight.
The other main thing I was told & have seen a huge difference with, is exercise. Our dog had started doing the bunny hop, and within a week or 2 of 15-20 minute gentle fetch sessions 1 or 2 times a day, it was gone. The stronger the muscles are, the more they can help keep the bones in the right place. The only caution being since you don't know for sure what it is, you would probably want to check that the exercise wouldn't make the spine issue worse. Walking is also good exercise for hip dysplasia, and if you have access to somewhere she could swim (our part lab won't go near the water with a 10 foot pole, lol), that is great for them.
Even with surgery, there are options. It's been a while so I may not be remembering this exactly right, but I'm pretty sure if you don't want to go for the hip replacement, they can just remove the ball part of the ball-socket joint, and that removes the friction/pain. I think it is not recommended for larger dogs, but my vet said he had a 90 lb dog that had it done on both hips & it did really well afterwards, so I'm sure a lot of that depends on aftercare and how much exercise they get.