By Gemma Hodson
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09 Sep, 2021
It’s everywhere at the moment and rightly so. However, the emphasis always seems to be that pain and discomfort creeps up on a dog, but this is not the case for all. In fact often the subtle signs were there long before the more obvious, but we were too blind to see. I want to highlight the dogs that have always been slow, lacked enthusiasm on a walk, the ones that have been labelled difficult, aggressive or reactive. The ones with the funny looking gait, who sit or stand slightly odd and ALWAYS HAVE.Just because they have always been like that, doesn’t mean it should be classed as normal and certainly doesn’t mean we should do nothing to help. I spent years at Hartpury College (UWE) studying horses where, even at a basic level, you get taught what made up a horse from the inside out, how each system worked, and why this was important information to know so we could keep our horses in optimum health for optimum performance and how all this impacts on behaviour. Not one system within the body operates on its own without it involving or impacting on another. It is exactly the same for dogs. A lot of the physical issues with dogs are developmental meaning that the condition developed as the dog was growing … right from puppyhood. Owners are unaware of how the health of their dog impacts on the emotional wellbeing and find it hard to make the connection between pain and behaviour. You only know, what you know and that’s fine, but there is a lot more we can do as dog professionals. We focus too much on the outward behaviour - even when we know there are contributing factors to it; diet, environment, past experience, equipment, handling and health (to name a few), but we are in a world where the physical affects the mental - pain affects behaviour. It is to a point that I have spent the last 5 years of self-employment working with those dogs and their humans. For those that don’t know about the study on Pains Affect’s on Behaviour in Cats & Dogs by Daniel Mills in Lincoln University - he found that approximately between 50 - 80% of dogs in the study that presented with behavioural issues had some form of undiagnosed pain. It is a rapidly growing concern. If you are a dog trainer or behaviourist and you think that you don’t need to know canine anatomy & physiology to do your job then sadly, you are missing so much of the dog in front of you. If you think that understanding how a dog moves and uses their body in day to day life is boring and has nothing to do with what you do then you are mistaken. Get Interested, start looking. The amount of time trainers and behaviourists spend with their clients compared to Vets is infinitely more! Those that do puppy and follow on classes, socialisation classes, hoopers, agility, 121 sessions, you could potentially help spot conditions before they negatively impact on the dog and help support the client alongside the Vet. Why are we waiting for a dog to go lame before we consider they might be in pain? I encourage you to learn about other things that will help you to understand what’s going on for a dog; crazy coat, body & facial tension, what healthy movement looks like so you can easily see the poor, weight shifting, loss of muscle mass and tone, good/poor conformation, breed specifics. Thankfully there are an ever growing number of my students that have graduated my course with this new knowledge and are changing the lives of dogs who were previously mis-labelled due to their behaviour. Those dogs are now on adequate pain meds, getting the support from a therapist such as a physio or hydro and the dog and human are getting relief. A little bit of information can go a long way in changing everything for a dog.