Backed by Dr. Meghan Barrett, Dr. Laurie Coger & 4 others...
Joint disease is one of the leading causes of chronic pain in dogs today, yet many of the risk factors are entirely preventable through informed early intervention. As a dog parent, you have more control over your dog's joint health than you might think. Simple lifestyle choices throughout the different stages of your dog’s life can slow joint damage and keep your dog moving well.
Being proactive with nutrition, controlled exercise, and lifelong joint support is far more effective than waiting until your dog is already showing signs of stiffness or lameness. Pain often doesn’t look like limping or crying out. It may look like subtle weight shifts, compensatory movements, and inefficient gaiting. These are ways that dogs learn to cope with their pain. Investigating any potential pain or discomfort should be part of every dog’s care, and should be revisited often.
Check all symptoms you’ve noticed to discuss at your next vet appointment.
| Symptom | Observed? | How Often? | How Severe? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Slowing down on walks, sleeping more, decreased activity and playtime | check_box_outline_blank | arrow_drop_down | arrow_drop_down |
| Taking longer to go from laying down to standing | check_box_outline_blank | arrow_drop_down | arrow_drop_down |
| Changes in sleeping positions (can't curl into a ball anymore, stops lying on their back) | check_box_outline_blank | arrow_drop_down | arrow_drop_down |
| Quick paw shaking after standing up | check_box_outline_blank | arrow_drop_down | arrow_drop_down |
| Muscle loss, particularly in thigh muscles | check_box_outline_blank | arrow_drop_down | arrow_drop_down |
| Restlessness, can't get comfortable, shifts positions in bed, has difficulty settling down | check_box_outline_blank | arrow_drop_down | arrow_drop_down |
| Shaking (not from cold), reluctant to move | check_box_outline_blank | arrow_drop_down | arrow_drop_down |
| Hesitating before stairs or jumping on furniture | check_box_outline_blank | arrow_drop_down | arrow_drop_down |
| Behavior changes (anxiety, hiding, loss of appetite, aggression, resource guarding) | check_box_outline_blank | arrow_drop_down | arrow_drop_down |
| Slipping on floors, such as losing their footing on hardwood, tile, or slick floors | check_box_outline_blank | arrow_drop_down | arrow_drop_down |
Prevention of aging starts early in your dog’s life. Joint health problems often develop silently long before dogs show obvious signs of discomfort, making early prevention crucial for maintaining your dog's mobility throughout their life. Proactive care during puppyhood and young adulthood can prevent or significantly delay the onset of joint problems later in life.
There is a fundamental shift in veterinary medicine to move from reactive treatment to proactive prevention, especially during a puppy’s critical developmental window. While we cannot prevent all joint problems due to genetic factors, we can significantly influence their severity and timing through proactive care. The goal is to maximize both the quantity and quality of your dog's active years. The most effective joint health prevention plan combines multiple strategies:
Why It Matters:
Maintaining an ideal body weight throughout your dog's entire life is one of the most critical factors in joint health prevention. Excess weight puts additional mechanical stress on joints, increases inflammation throughout the body, accelerates cartilage breakdown, and significantly worsens arthritis progression.
One study demonstrated just how significant this impact can be. Dogs with 25% caloric restriction (with enhanced nutrients) had dramatically lower arthritis rates. By age 8, only 10% of the calorie-restricted dogs had arthritis, compared to 77% in the control group.
What You Can Do:
Why It Matters:
The right type and amount of exercise maintains muscle strength, promotes healthy cartilage, prevents stiffness, and builds endurance in your dog. However, inappropriate exercise can cause injury and accelerate joint degeneration, especially in young puppies. A study of 500 dogs found that daily use of stairs in the first three months of life increased hip dysplasia risk significantly. Outdoor exercise and off-leash activity on soft ground actually decreased the risk for developing hip dysplasia.
What You Can Do:
Why It Matters:
The timing of spay/neuter procedures significantly impacts joint health because sex hormones play crucial roles in bone development, muscle mass maintenance, and cartilage health. Early spay/neuter can compromise skeletal maturation and increase the risk of joint disorders and osteoarthritis later in life. The traditional "one-size-fits-all" spay/neuter recommendations (around 6 months) are being challenged by newer research from UC Davis showing that optimal timing may vary by breed, with considerations for cancer risks, joint disease, weight issues, behavioral changes, and other health factors.
What You Can Do:
Why It Matters:
Early joint support can help prevent cartilage damage before it becomes irreversible. Once cartilage is significantly damaged, the goal shifts from prevention to managing existing arthritis. Starting support during puppyhood or at the first signs of risk factors allows intervention while joints are still healthy and responsive to protective measures.
What You Can Do:
Why It Matters:
Subtle changes in movement and posture often occur gradually over months or years, making them difficult to notice in daily life. Having baseline documentation of your dog's normal movement patterns and posture when they're young and healthy provides an objective reference point to detect early changes that might indicate developing joint issues before they become obvious or painful.
What You Can Do:
Why It Matters:
Overgrown nails not only reduce your dog’s traction while walking, it also changes the angle at which your dog is placing their paws down when walking. This forces them to compensate with altered gait patterns and abnormal joint positioning, which can cause pain and joint issues.
What You Can Do:
Why It Matters:
Environmental modifications can prevent slips, trips, and falls that cause acute injuries or worsen existing joint problems. Simple changes to your home environment reduce the risk of traumatic joint injuries and make daily activities easier for dogs with mobility challenges, supporting their independence and quality of life.
What You Can Do:
Why It Matters:
Digital thermal imaging can detect inflammation and circulation changes before they become visible to the naked eye or cause obvious symptoms. This technology allows veterinarians to identify early joint problems, monitor treatment progress, and screen healthy animals for developing issues that might not yet be causing pain or lameness.
What You Can Do:
Diet plays a fundamental role in your dog’s joint health. Feeding an inflammatory diet is going to increase inflammation in the body and impact your dog’s mobility. For optimal joint health, focus on reducing whole-body inflammation through diet. Switching from highly processed foods to fresh diets is one of the quickest ways to improve mobility by eliminating the daily inflammatory burden on your dog’s body. Fresh, varied diets support healthy microbiome development, while ultra-processed foods damage gut bacteria and create chronic inflammation throughout the body. There are several foods and supplements that have shown to prove to be helpful for joints.
When your dog is living with joint disease, a multimodal approach can significantly improve their quality of life and may even reduce dependence on pharmaceutical interventions. The goal shifts from prevention to managing existing conditions while supporting the body's natural healing processes.
Why It Matters:
Physical rehabilitation is irreplaceable in joint disease management, focusing on targeted exercises to strengthen muscles, improve range of motion, and build endurance. The philosophy is clear: there is no pill that can replace the physical act of moving the body to repair, rebuild, and restore musculoskeletal function.
What You Can Do:
Why It Matters:
Acupuncture helps treat a variety of issues. It’s best known and most studied for its impact on painful orthopedic conditions such as arthritis, back problems, and other soft tissue disorders. It involves placing very small needles into the skin and underlying tissue at specific points along the body. This stimulation promotes blood flow and releases chemicals such as endorphins that reduce pain and inflammation, and promote healing.
What You Can Do:
Why It Matters:
Small changes to your dog’s environment and exercise routine can greatly improve your dog’s quality of life with a joint disease. They help make daily activities easier for dogs with mobility challenges, supporting their independence and quality of life.
What You Can Do:
Why It Matters:
NSAIDs have an important place in pain management. They can be a necessary addition to managing pain humanely, especially after a surgery. Some vets warn against their long term use as research has shown that chronic NSAID use can shut down the enzyme that protects the stomach, leading to ulcers and lacerations. There are steps a dog parent can take to minimize this risk.
What You Can Do:
Why It Matters:
PEMF is a technology that establishes an electromagnetic field to stimulate cellular activity. Stimulating cellular activity helps promote healing and improve overall wellbeing. PEMF therapy is non-invasive, drug-free, and safe for long-term use in most patients. It’s great for chronic pain, inflammation, or recovery from surgery. It’s even useful with cancer patients because it will not negatively impact the animal or cause the cancer to grow.
What You Can Do:
What It Is:
Ozone therapy is the use of ozone gas, a naturally occurring form of oxygen containing three molecules instead of 2, to treat illness. Ozone therapy improves oxygen delivery to tissues, especially those that are not normally getting enough due to decreased blood flow from injury or illness. Poor perfusion (blood flow) to tissues and oxygenation of those tissues is a major cause of pain and disease. Ozone also increases the cells’ ability to create ATP (the body’s energy molecule) which typically declines with age, leading to less optimal function such as aches and pains.
How It Works:
In veterinary medicine, the most common method used is rectal insufflation. A small volume of gas is instilled into the colon with a small, soft catheter (think: narrower than a thermometer) inserted through the anus. Another fairly common method is IV use such as Major Autohemotherapy, when blood is taken from the pet, mixed with ozone gas so that it’s absorbed, and then the blood is given back to the pet slowly.