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Any dog guardian will tell you how difficult it is to know if their dog is in pain or suffering an injury or illness. Oftentimes, you will only recognise discomfort in your dog once it has progressed to a stage where your dog stops eating, can’t relax, or shows signs of stress. By this time, your dog may have been experiencing high levels of pain for quite some time, which is something none of us want for our four-legged best friends!
Here, we’ll discuss various reasons that your dog may hide his pain or illness, and how to tell if your dog is in pain before, it gets too serious.
How do living organisms experience pain? Generally, it starts as a physical reaction to a sense or stimulus. For example, consider what happens if you mistakenly touch a hot stove. Your initial reaction is to physically pull your hand away from the heat. This is known as a reflex response. Next, your brain responds to the pain with information of the stimulus, in other words, registering that your body has received an unpleasant feeling. While we aren’t lucky enough yet to be able to ask our dogs how they perceive and experience pain, we can look at similarities in physiology, behaviour, and biology to make informed assumptions. We know that dogs share similar physiological mechanisms related to pain, such as pain detection, pain processing, and reactions to pain. This leads scientists to believe that animals like dogs experience pain in a way close to that of humans.
Have you ever heard someone say that animals don’t feel pain like humans do? If you have, there is a good reason for this belief, which we’ll discuss now. However, the belief that animals don’t feel pain is a myth. Animals, including dogs, definitely feel pain, much to the same degree that people do! The reason some people think dogs don’t feel pain as badly as humans do is because they are adept at hiding their pain. There are several reasons for this.
The reason that some people (even vets) believe that dogs and other animals don’t experience pain to the extent that people do is that animals have evolved to hide their pain. You may wonder what the benefits could be for hiding pain, especially for a domesticated animal like a dog. Surely, your dog would want you to know he is in pain so that you can help him. Remember, dogs are animals, and the need to hide their pain is a direct result of biological evolution. The ancestors of dogs were wild animals, hunting predators that are closely related to the grey wolf today. Predators have evolved to hide weaknesses, illnesses, injuries, and pain as a means of survival. A predator in the wild that is injured, ill, old, or weak is more vulnerable to attack. Dogs have retained this evolutionary behaviour as a result of their descending from predatory canines – it is simply a survival instinct!
While humans communicate mainly through talking, dogs communicate primarily through body language. These different communication styles are what sometimes result in a misunderstanding of pain in dogs. Subtle changes in facial expressions, placements of the tail or ears, movements in the eyes, and body posture could be missed if you are not observant of your furry friend. This means that we may miss the initial signs of discomfort in our pups that will only become more obvious to us when they get worse. Being more observant of how your dog communicates can help you notice when your buddy is in pain or ill.
Research has shown that there are slight differences in the way that certain breeds of dogs experience pain. This doesn’t mean that some dog breeds don’t feel pain, or that we can leave certain dogs in pain for longer. All it means is that some dogs have a higher pain sensitivity threshold than others. The same can be said of humans! While scientists are not quite sure why this is, it presents an opportunity to further investigate why some dogs can tolerate slightly higher levels of pain than others. Could it be that certain breeds of dogs have developed the ability to tolerate pain more than others because of selective breeding? Maybe a guard dog has, over thousands of years, evolved to tolerate pain slightly better than a dog bred to be a companion, because their ‘line of work’ requires them to be more tolerant of discomfort. This is not to say that a dog like a rottweiler should be expected to endure higher levels of pain than a chihuahua. All dogs deserve, and have the right to, effective pain treatment and health care, regardless of their breed or temperament. However, it does raise the question of why some dogs are a little better at enduring pain than others.
You can learn to identify signs of pain or illness in your dog. A dog that is suffering from some form of discomfort may behave in the following ways:
Many canine behaviour specialists will tell you that cases of unexpected aggression in dogs are a result of undiagnosed pain. In fact, the first thing a good canine behaviourist will tell you if your dog is displaying problem or abnormal behaviour is to take him to the vet for a thorough health check.
If you are struggling to identify the early signs of pain in your dog’s body language and behaviour, consider if your dog is behaving differently from normal. Is he eating less than he usually does? He is more grumpy than normal? Is he doing anything differently from what he usually does? This can be anything from not playing with his favourite toy, to eating grass, to sleeping more or less than normal. Remember, a dog will never behave in a certain way for no reason: a dog always does something for a very good reason, so any changes in your dog’s personality or behaviour are an indication that something is amiss.
It is vitally important to learn how to recognise the early signs of pain, illness, or injury in your dog. Besides the fact that you don’t want your pup to suffer, extended periods of illness or injury can result in serious health complications, including increased stress, decreased sleep quality, and a reduction in the body’s ability to heal. It can also lead to chronic illnesses that are difficult to treat or injuries that may not fully heal. Also, the longer you leave an injury or illness without treatment, the worse it will get. You wouldn’t walk around for days with a broken leg, and we most certainly wouldn’t want our furry buddies to do the same.
Most importantly, if you suspect that your pup is in pain take them to the vet immediately. All too often we see people going to social media for advice on how to treat their sick or injured animals. In most cases, by the time you notice your dog is in pain, there is a good chance that a vet visit is overdue. Coren (2011) states: would you ask a lady who has recently had a hysterectomy to sleep it off without pain meds? Then why do we expect a dog that has just been sterilised to be back to normal the day after? Think about that!
All in all, the best way to know whether your dog is sick or injured is to look out for changes in their behaviour or personality. This is your dog’s way of letting you know that something is wrong, and it is our responsibility as guardians and companions of our four-legged friends to get them the medical help they need, as soon as possible.
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