Dog Lameness Diagnosis: Why It Is Essential to Figure out What’s Wrong

Why does it matter why is my dog limping? Isn’t the treatment is the same?

There is a long list of why your dog might be lame and different causes require different measures. Potential lameness causes further break down into two categories depending on whether the limping is acute or ongoing.

When your dog suddenly becomes lame, you might be looking at anything from toe or toenail injuries, foreign bodies, stings, and infections, to joint injuries or broken bones. Chronic limping, especially if it keeps getting worse rather than better, is a whole different story.

Further information: Why Is My Dog Limping? Causes of Lameness in Dogs

Acute or chronic

How can you tell whether your dog’s limp is an acute, chronic, or progressive problem? Further, when more than one leg is sore, you might not even see a limp at all. Rather, there might be other subtle changes in your dog’s behavior, such as stiffness or reluctance to move.

And sometimes, to complicate things further, you might have an acute trauma on top of a chronic problem. For example, just because your dog has arthritis, it doesn’t mean they cannot rupture their cruciate ligament. On the contrary, compensation leads to altered use of the body, increasing risk of injuring other parts.

Further reading: Injury and Compensation in Dogs

Figuring out the cause

First, check for any obvious wounds or foreign bodies. You may or may not need to see a vet with pad or nail injuries, infections, bites, or stings. If you doubt whether you can provide appropriate wound care, see a veterinarian.

If you find no external signs and your dog is not in severe pain, rest and exercise restriction are a common measure. Often, lameness can improve with rest. However, if your dog is not improving, it’s time to get a diagnosis. That, however, can be trickier than you think.

Further reading: Why Is My Dog Limping? Causes of Lameness in Dogs

If you’re lucky, your veterinarian will diagnose your dog’s problem during physical examination. Although, they might recommend x-rays for a better picture of what’s going on.

However, findings from both can be misleading. For example, your veterinarian might find a sore muscle and diagnose it as a muscle injury. But the sore muscle can be secondary to the main problem—a compensatory injury. Such as in Cookie’s case, she had sore biceps and back muscles compensating for her sore elbows. It can take work to peel the onion.

Additionally, your dog’s x-rays might show arthritis in one or more joints—that’s why he’s limping then, right? However, what shows up on the x-rays doesn’t always reflect how the dog feels. The pain level and the radiographs can be a substantial mismatch. And it doesn’t mean that there isn’t a new problem on top of the old one. A dog with arthritis can still suffer other injuries; in fact, existing conditions make it more likely.

Different lameness causes require different interventions. Therefore, getting to the bottom of the cause is essential. Often further diagnostics are warranted and can include:

• stride and weight-bearing analysis
• x-rays
• CT scan
• MRI
• arthroscopy

For example, muscle sprains and strains might need just rest, activity restrictions, and perhaps some anti-inflammatory medication. However, what if you dismiss lameness as a minor strain and it’s a spider or snake bite instead? Or dismiss progressing tick-borne disease or even bone cancer as arthritis?

Example stories

Further, sometimes what might look like lameness might have nothing to do with the limbs. For example, with larger dogs, what might look like their arthritis acting up could be life-threatening splenic tumor.

In closing

What have you learned from the above stories?

It is true that rest and pain management helps with many garden-variety sprains and strains. But other causes of limping might require a whole other approach. Rest and pain management won’t resolve venomous bites, infection, foreign bodies, cancer, and so on.

Make sure you get to the bottom of the cause behind your dog’s lameness.

Have you dealt with a limping dog? What was the diagnosis?

Related articles:
Why Is My Dog Limping? Causes of Lameness in Dogs
Common Limping Misdiagnoses in Dogs

Further reading:
Why Is My Dog Limping?
Dog Lameness – Causes and Treatment of Limping in Dogs