It’s a good question, and it’s one that probably has quite a few answers there. Signs of pain can include but are not limited to what I’m about to say—panting or biting at either you or themselves. Sometimes if their hips are hurting, they’ll turn around and try to bite at those or look at them. You can have swelling in a certain area; depending on the nature of the injury. You might experience vocalizing, crying, barking, and growling. Dogs have a hard way, at least in our language, of letting you know they’re in pain, so sometimes it’s those simple things. If you’re going to make a simple day-to-day motion or you’re petting them or picking them up like you might’ve done every day for their entire lives—if they hurt and have, say, a back injury and you pick them up by the front legs or something, they’re going to let you know it hurts.

And the flip side of that is sometimes a sign of pain might be a lack of something. So again, referencing a back, consider the example of dogs that are on and off of furniture all the time or they’re on and off of your lap 20 times a day. If their back is hurting, they’re not going to want to jump up and certainly not going to want to jump down. So all of a sudden, the dog is going to sit there and look at you as if, “Oh no, no, I don’t want to go.” And they’re going to sit there and do that 10 times when they normally would just hop right up onto the sofa. That is a subtle sign that they’re telling you something hurts.

So again, depending on the intensity of the pain, where it’s located, there’s a lot of variability with that question. But I think those are some of the most common signs that we see that tell us a dog’s in pain.

That’s a hard question to answer because almost anything can cause pain; let’s be honest. It could be a sprain, arthritis, trauma, intestinal obstruction, you name it. So many of the things that we see daily cause some sort of pain in general. One of the most common ones we see is a dog that’s overweight or even obese—how does that cause pain? Because now you have a dog that’s walking around on their hip joints, and he’s supposed to weigh 40 pounds, and there is supposed to be 40 pounds of pressure on his hips. Well, now there’s 65 pounds of pressure on the dog’s hips and everyday activities—running, jumping, those kinds of things, are causing a lot more stress on the joints. So that can cause pain, particularly in older dogs that already have arthritis and are overweight. It exacerbates the signs that much more and makes them much more evident.

If you see any of the things that we just talked about, get them in. Would you want to walk around hurting if you didn’t have to? No, of course not.It’s same thing with a dog. If you see any of those signs, get the dog looked at. You don’t know whether anything needs to be done or can be done, but you should let your veterinarian decide that. If you don’t take them in then, you’re pretty much answering that question for your pet, and it’s not fair to them. Get them in, get them looked at, and you and your veterinarian can come up with a game plan, what works best, and what’s available to you.

With a physical exam. It’s what we do, all day, every day. When you see dogs for a living, you get very used to seeing what normal is. You can read body language. You can read the posture of the tail, the posture of the dog. How are they standing? How are they moving? What’s their facial expression? Are their ears up and perky? It starts with a basic observation and then when you put your hands on them. Again, pain is such a vague word. The pain of what? If they come in three-legged, well hello, that’s where the problem is, so we’re going to start on that leg. But if they come in just kind of not moving right and a bit sore, we have to start looking. You can check the range of motion. You can check the neck, the spine, the hip, etc., as It’s what we we’re trained to do.

And in some cases we’ll need an x-ray to tell you, “Oh, that spot equals pain.” But sometimes, you can see lesions on an x-ray to where you know that’s a painful process that’s going on. Sometimes we might need additional tests beyond just a physical exam. But I would say about pain, 90% of it is probably recognition and a hands-on physical exam.

If you still have other questions and you’d like to reach out to us, you can call us directly at (337) 223-9581, you can email us, or you can reach out on Facebook. But please do reach out, and we’ll get back to you as fast as we can.