23/01/2025
Pain and Behaviour ⚠️
Let’s talk about why there is such a strong correlation between dogs in pain and behavioural problems 🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐
As I have talked about before, many of our dogs suffer from “Silent pain” - their natural instinct is to hide pain, to carry on, to pretend all is ok (bless).
When it gets to the stage where a dog is showing physical signs of chronic pain, this pain is usually well established and has been ramping up for a long time.
Chronic pain will often initially manifest as changes to behaviour before any clinical signs appear as the dog tries to cope with what he/she is feeling.
I see many dogs in my clinic that have been referred to a behaviourist for problem behaviour involving a wide range of issues including reactivity, anxiety, resource guarding, repetitive or obsessive behaviours, sensitivity to new things like noise or traffic or hyper-vigilance.
Before working to address their behaviour the first thing to do with these dogs is to be sure that pain is not the cause or at least a contributing factor.
We know that up to around 80% of behaviour cases can be pain related - that’s massive 😱
However, chronic pain is notoriously difficult to assess and issues causing such pain often won’t show on up on an X-ray.
To add to the complexities, studies have shown that when owners are asked if they think their dog is in pain they will generally focus on changes to movement and have difficulty associating behavioural changes with pain in their dogs.
A common phrase I hear from owners is that …if it hurt, their dog wouldn’t do it……….this is simply not true‼️
Dogs will often still be performing activities they are highly motivated to do such as play, run, chase, jump etc. despite having underlying pain.
The only changes that may happen might be to their general behaviour or demeanour. This may include subtle things like restlessness, excessive sniffing, licking, yawning, air licking, scratching or frequent body stretching or shaking or it could be the more obvious changes like aggression or reactivity.
So why do these dogs have these behavioural changes ❓❓❓
At a very basic level- dogs do not have the ability to distinguish between acute pain that may kill them and chronic pain that won’t. They therefore assume that the pain they feel is dangerous and as a result can feel constantly under threat.
They live in this heightened state of stress until we take that pain away .
We know that heightened stress levels results in reduced serotonin and increased levels of cortisol.
Cortisol is the primary stress hormone and increased levels can be linked to such as hyperactivity, reactivity, compulsive behaviors, and increased aggression. Serotonin is the hormone that helps regulate emotional responses. A reduction of serotonin has been linked to aggressive behaviour in dogs. These stressed dogs have increased levels of fear and anxiety which in turn makes them more nervous and reactive 😣
Sadly, we can’t teach our dogs to not see pain as a constant threat like we can with people.
As a human physiotherapist when patients come to see me with chronic pain, I can reassure them and I can tell them their pain won’t kill them.
We don’t have this ability with dogs so the only option we have is to take their pain away .
The right medication and treatment can do this.
Adressing the pain can then lead to improvements in problem behaviours as the dog starts to relax, the cortisol levels drop and the serotonin levels increase 😃
We can then work on what caused the pain in the first place .
📣 So please please always consider pain as a potential cause for your dogs behaviour and seek the advice of your vet or physiotherapist 📣📣
Thanks for reading - please share to spread awareness and just to finish- a picture of my beautiful arthritic girl living her best life 💕💕
