Puppy Lameness & Limps - Ep 12

A common concern among Dog owners is puppy limps and lameness. This episode will help you navigate the complexities of these issues with practical insights and advice that you can confidently apply to keep your beloved Bulldog healthy and happy.

• Effects of Poor Conformation: Explore how structural flaws in Bulldogs can contribute to lameness, emphasising the importance of proper breeding practices and understanding breed standards.
• Dangers of Overexercising Puppies: Learn why balancing exercise and rest is crucial for Bulldog puppies and how excessive physical activity can impact their growth and joint health.
• Preventative Measures and Treatments: Discover a range of preventative measures and treatment options, including supplements, chiropractic care, and cognitive enrichment activities, to promote your Bulldog's well-being and mobility.

Tune in to this episode for practical advice and expert tips to keep your Bulldog healthy and active for years to come. Visit BulldogBroadcast.com for show notes, community forums, and additional resources.

📝 Click to read Show Notes

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Transcript

[00:00:00] It can be challenging to determine why your Bulldog has started limping or gone lame. In this episode, we'll delve into the effects of poor conformation and the dangers of overexercising puppies. Also, explore preventative measures and various treatment options to keep your Bulldog healthy and active. Welcome to the Bulldog Broadcast, the Pure Talk Pedigree podcast. Join me Sara Lamont as we delve beyond the pedigree, propaganda and misinformation surrounding the beloved Bulldog breed. Together, we uncover the real life realities of bulldogs, sharing insights with admirers, owners and breeders worldwide. Hello and welcome. Honestly. Come on. Honestly. Sorry about that. Bleeding puppies. In this episode, we're going to look at puppy limps or, well, limps and general lameness and the how and why they might occur and how we can fix them and possibly prevent them. Majority of the time, as a new owner and you've got your new puppy, you might see them start going intermittently. Lame. If you see this, the majority of the time it will be due to a growth spurt. Let me take you back to a time when I was a good old young'un, and I was showing it was back around 1999. Yeah, probably like 1997 to 99. We're showing the dogs. No problem. Bull dogs are shown for anyone that doesn't know. Bull dogs are shown front onwards, and generally the handlers kneel on the floor to set the dog up and position them right.

[00:01:54] Basically. Thankfully, nowadays we do also use a low level ramp. Most places nowadays there's a low level ramp, so you're not rolling around on the floor and the judge isn't rolling, rolling around on the floor, which is quite nice. Apart from if the judge is not assessing you generally, then your your dog's got all four feet on the floor and you've got your knees on the floor because you're down with them trying to present them as best as possible, unless it's somewhere really horrendous, where it's like wet sand, or there's horses poo everywhere, and then you'll see a lot of people trying to balance on their feet and sort the dogs out at the same time. Going back to 1997, after showing the dogs, I used to get really bad knee aches. I was young and so I was like, oh, I don't know why. And my knees didn't actually hurt when I was doing it. It was only like the day after I'd be like, oh God, my knees really hurt. Anyway, looking back now, I realise why that was, because apparently I was probably going through a growth spurt, which made sense because I'm. I think I'm five. I think I'm 5'10". I thought I was 5'11", but I'm already shrinking, so I think I'm at 510 nowadays, which for a female I think is fairly tall in the scheme of things. I was probably going through a growth spurt, and apparently, there's a condition called anterior knee pain, which a lot of teenagers experience, and it's because they are going for a growth spurt, also known as a KP.

[00:03:19] Obviously there's us humans go through it. Anything that grows is going to go through potential growth spurts and the dogs are no different. So you may experience with a puppy intermittent lameness. Growing pains are generally because of a like a muscle joint development imbalance, where one's growing quicker than the other and is probably putting some stress on on a particular point until it catches up and evens out. But there are other reasons a dog could go lame. The whole point of showing a dog is to match up that dog as close as possible to the breed standard, and the breed standard is the blueprint of what a Bulldog should look like. So basically we're looking at the conformation of a dog. So structurally, how they're put together and what can happen is poor conformation could also cause lameness. So for instance, if a dog is out of kilter at some point they're going to show that discomfort, which potentially could be lameness. Now with Bulldogs I think this could be something like if they don't have the correct straight fore legs, so they don't have the straight front legs, maybe their legs are bent and their feet point out in the wrong direction.

[00:04:30] That could impact their movement of them not moving correctly, possibly having an uneven top line. So maybe Bulldogs don't have a flat topline. Anyway, they do have a rise over the loin. But say for instance, say it was too extreme where the dog's too short in the body and the increase of the top lines too significant. Or maybe the front legs are too short and the back legs are too long, and that's given a really excessive top line or something that you do see quite commonly in Bulldogs. Is that, well, in in poor quality bulldogs. I suppose I should caveat that with is that they can have straight rear quarters. So if they've got no bend and flex because their knee-thigh positioning angulation isn't right, it's almost like they're walking on stilts. And then obviously that tension and pressure of that movement is going to ricocheted through the body. And then is that shown as potential lameness or are they trying to hide that discomfort. So they're moving in a certain way that makes them look lame. That's why it's really important for anyone that's breeding bulldogs. They really should know what the correct conformation of a bulldog is, and how some of those points could impact a dog's movement, and generally how comfortable they are as a dog moving around, and how freely they are able to move around. Typically, you have to be careful when you've got a new puppy not to over exercise it.

[00:05:52] I think we'll finally, and I'm sure I've mentioned this in other episodes, but we'll finally realising, as a dog owning community that you don't have to exercise your dog non-stop to entertain it. There are enrichment practices where you can use your brain of your dog, like the cognitive side of their thinking, to be able to wear them out. I guess it's a bit like doing like, I don't know, Sudoku or crossword or something or other. I'm sure I listen to a podcast the other day where the guy was like, yeah, I just get really tired just thinking. So that would feed into that ethos, wouldn't it? But yeah, it's not all about go, go, go. And especially as a baby, like the joints are, aren't formed. You could easily overexercise a puppy to the point that they then become lame. So there is like a general rule of thumb of you shouldn't be exercising. And to me, exercising is like a constant movement for a set amount of time. So for instance, the general rule of thumb is this is really, really general, but it should be no more than five minutes per month. Age of the dog. So if you get your puppy at eight weeks, they shouldn't be doing any more than ten minutes solid exercise. Now, even to me that's a lot because your Bulldog can't go out and about until final jumps anyway.

[00:07:06] So say that we said that was 12 weeks, then they're allowed 15 minutes. Solid exercise. To be honest, most show people are quite selective on that kind of solid exercise because what you end up doing is you end up changing the condition of that dog because of the extreme exercise that you're putting it under. So the body will go, oh my God, if we're going to be doing all this exercise all of the time, you know, I need this food. And if you're only feeding them guideline food amount, then you're going to be underfeeding the dog. So then they're going to run lean blah blah blah blah blah. Now there's one lean and Bulldogs aren't really in the same category. So where other breeds you would expect them to like, you would expect a whippet, a greyhound to be lean because of what they need to do as their function. The Bulldogs don't fall into that condition. That said, the breed standard does say they should be in. I'm sure it says hard condition if I remember correctly. So soft condition is where like if you squeezed and your fingers just disappeared into them hard as if you touch their muscle tone, it would be hard and firm. So most bulldogs are probably especially pet Bulldogs are probably too soft. But then most people are, aren't they? So no shocker there.

[00:08:21] Don't start too much exercise too soon because you could totally impact the conformation of your dog. However, socialisation is important, so you should still be taking the time to take them out and about. Maybe puppy training classes is a really good thing to do because that's all cognitive. That's all enrichment without running the legs off of them for 15 minutes. Instead, they're actually doing an hour's worth of brain training. So that's going to tire them out so much more and obviously give you much more positive benefits at the end of it than just having a dog that just trots around the park for a significant amount of time. Puppy training is probably better than a long walk. I wouldn't be doing any serious amounts of walk really until the pups four months old, and then I'd build that up to six-seven months old and then they're on, you know, the adult exercise amount that I would have deemed suitable for my dogs. Also, something you should be aware of with Bulldogs is that their front end heavy? So I don't know. I don't I'm not like massively into like sports activities, canine sports activities and that kind of stuff. But I imagine most dogs are balance wise. If you stood them on a pressure plate that they'd put roughly the same weight through their rear paws as their front paws. However, bulldogs are front heavy.

[00:09:45] They're big ribbed and big boned and big headed. So that's all front end. And they're actually pear shaped where most breeds are the same width at their hips as they are their shoulders. Bulldogs actually have a narrower pelvis. So surely by being like a bit like Johnny Bravo, I always think the cartoon character, but not so extreme, obviously. But if that tells you automatically that they're going to be lighter on the rear end, doesn't it? This is why you have to be super careful about Bulldogs jumping, because they're not evenly distributing their weight. So if you have a dog jump up and then land on their back feet, all that extra force of the front is going to go through their back legs, which is not going to be used to because it's not built to take that extra weight that it's not accustomed to. So you have to be really careful with jumping bulldogs because they're, they're they're going to damage themselves more than most dogs because of their weight distribution. To be fair, this is why you see online bulldogs find it quite difficult to go down stairs because again, they're all front heavy. So they feel like they're going to go head over, head over heels. And likewise, if you were to pick a bulldog up, you need to pick them up correctly, which is putting your hand on their chest and fore leg and scooping up like sort of holding their back leg/thigh.

[00:11:08] Because if you were to pick them up in the middle, they're going to tip forward. They're naturally just going to fall forward. And you're more likely to drop them obviously because of that. So. If you let your Bulldog jump, you're probably going to do cruciate ligament damage, which is ACL damage. I don't know tons about this because I don't let my dogs jump. My dogs are allowed on my sofa. I even actually bought a stall that's square. So it was big enough for a Bulldog to get on to without because the rectangle, it might not necessarily be the right shape. So a square stall, that's actually the intermittent height between the floor and the sofa. So they can go on to the big stall and then onto the sofa rather than launching themselves off of the sofa. So that's how much of a lunatic I am when it comes to jumping. If you're going to let them jump around crazy, you are definitely make get your dog insured. Well, I talked about insurance before, and if you're one of those, you're going to let them do crazy stuff. Then make sure you get them insured because ACL damage is serious and it's expensive to get fixed. I think it all depends whether it gets torn, whether it's ruptured, whether it snaps. But none of that sounds pleasant in any way, shape or form.

[00:12:18] Sometimes you can get away and a vet will say you need to do crate rest, and it's a very long time of them being bored in a crate. So again, you're probably kind of retrospectively thinking, oh, maybe we shouldn't have let them run around like a lunatic because now they're going to spend the next three months crated. Maybe we should have done enrichment activities anyway and we would have prevented this issue. And let's hope you crate trained your dog, because otherwise that's going to be another complex part of your rehabilitation. So to me that sounds like a void. Acl damage at all costs. Sometimes the vet will say it's surgery. I'm guessing if it's snapped, they're actually going to have to try and reconnect all the ligaments and stuff back together again. That sounds very expensive. I'm sure I've heard like prices are three £4,000, so it's definitely for one leg. That's definitely not a road you want to go down if you don't have to. I know there are some vets and I'm sure this doesn't work for snapped, but maybe if it's torn or ruptured you can do stem cell treatment. And this is where they actually pull a load of blood off of the dog. They send it off to some really fancy lab, and from that blood they can grow stem cells. Which stem cells are the.

[00:13:27] I don't even know much about this. I've done A-level biology. I should know more. From my understanding, stem cells are cells before they decide what type of cells they are. And so basically they can grow these stem cells, send them back to the vet, and then your vet can or maybe not your vet, but there are vets that can then inject those stem cells into the site that's damaged. And the cells will go, oh, we're meant to be these type of cells. Let's repair this area. From what I last heard, that was actually a cheaper option. I think it was about £1,000 and a really high success rate as well, and obviously a lot less invasive because it doesn't require surgery to open the actual area up. You're just injecting cells into the right area. Bobby does still require sedation and that kind of stuff, because probably best that the dog is as relaxed as possible and they can get to the actual injury point. Again, that's options that are all expensive or impractical. So let's just not let our dogs jump. Now, if you do have a puppy that just gets intermittent lameness or has gone lame and they are puppy age and you're thinking, let's not freak out, we haven't seen him do anything stupid, then it probably is. Growth spurts. There are supplements you can buy such as glucosamine with chondroitin, and these basically help to lubricate the joint, reduce inflammation, maintain healthy joint cartilage.

[00:14:57] Have a look around for those supplements. Just be aware of the quality of the actual supplement. If you're going to give a human version of. Make sure the fillers are dog safe and ultimately with any supplements, make sure you're getting the dosage right. Otherwise you can say, oh, this stuff is rubbish, it doesn't work, and it's probably because you haven't been given the correct dosage. So there are, I know without a doubt, there are dog versions and human versions of these products. So have a little look around. If I find a decent one that I'm happy to recommend, I shall put them into the show notes. And my final point to make in regards to puppy limps and overexercising is about using a canine chiropractor. Now, I had never used one of these until I was speaking to a Saint Bernard breeder and basically she said, oh yeah, no. Once my pup hit 12 weeks, I take them routinely until they reach adulthood to make sure that they grow correctly, like they grow in alignment. So I'd never really thought about this before, to be honest. So I was like, oh well, yeah, that makes sense. Obviously a giant breed, they grow very fast. There's a lot of growing. It's pretty rapid. So yeah, I can see it quite easily go off kilter. And then you've got a dog that's not aligned anymore.

[00:16:17] So I knew about it. Never thought about it until I had a Bulldog puppy that just started going lame on the front. I just thought, yep, it's puppy limps, gave a load of supplements, didn't seem to make any difference. So then I thought, oh, actually, yeah. Let's try a canine chiropractor. And what I realised cross his shoulders. It just seemed quite set, like it seemed quite firm. He hadn't knowingly shown any signs of being uncomfortable, like he hadn't tried to rub or nibbling out or wincing or anything like that. He just every now and then was going lame on his front, and he just seemed, for me, just like a bit compact all around his shoulders. So I found a local company that was a canine chiropractor that actually did Horses Equine booked in with them. I think it was about £55 or something for initial consultation. And then actually it might have been a bit more say it was £70 for initial consultation, then any follow up sessions were like 45, £50. So I booked in, met the lady, she said oh what's, what's wrong, what do you see is wrong with the dog? And she said, oh walk up and down, walk around in a circle. Then she had a feel and obviously chiropractor. They're going to check the spine. She said, yeah, he's totally knotted across the shoulders.

[00:17:30] And and obviously the thing with chiropractic it didn't doesn't always look like they've done much, but obviously that's the skill that they have. That's what you're paying for. So she felt various points of his spine and then she said actually he's so tight across the shoulders. She had to get this little tool to sort of puncture it into him. And she said, what? You'll see. She said, Once I've done this, just hold your hand over the area. And she said, you'll feel the heat. And she said, it's the tension. It's like the energy of the tension has been released because she's like uncompressed it and it comes out as energy. And it was unbelievable. So she treated him, put my hand over and I was like, yeah, hit that area is red hot compared to the rest of his body. And I tell you what, that dog never limped again, so I was sold on yet. Chiropractor. This is a thing. Why didn't I know about this? So I'm passing that on to you now. I think I did need a vet referral, if I remember correctly, but I just basically went to my vet and said, look, dog's doing it. Actually, I don't think I took him in. I think I phoned him up and said, dog's doing this, I've tried this. It's not made it, which is supplements have rested him. I've given him a supplement.

[00:18:40] It's not making any difference. Can I have a referral to the chiropractor? And he said yeah that's fine. So yeah, it was pretty straightforward process in the scheme of things, a bit like hydrotherapy. I think you can sort of be that needs a referral, and I'm probably sure we'll cover that on another day. That again, that might help. To be fair, I haven't I haven't got that in my notes. But yeah, hydrotherapy might be a good thing. Not necessarily for puppies. But I imagine older dogs may be recovering from injury. The thing to bear in mind with Bulldog is that the preference would be a water treadmill rather than a hydropool, because, again, the front heavy swimming isn't natural to them compared to some breeds of dog, and they've got short necks compared to some breed of dog. They're just not. It's just a they're just not naturally favoured for water. So a water treadmill is way better because they haven't got go anywhere. They're just in the treadmill because the floor moves and the water level can be adjusted to give them the buoyancy that's needed to know whether they're working the area, rehabilitating the area that needs working on, or strengthening the area that needs working on or not. So my preference is always a water treadmill, but obviously they're probably way more expensive than a hydro pole, and so not all places have them.

[00:19:54] I would strongly recommend if you needed any treatments like that, make sure it's a water treadmill. Ultimately, the canine chiropractor she was spot on. The benefits of chiropractors is that it can give instant and long term pain relief. Due to realignment of the spine and any accompanying joints. It can improve motility, reduce inflammation and pain, allowing the dogs to move more freely and comfortably, which ultimately happened in my case. And it's good for the wellbeing of managing the growth correctly. So yeah, maybe is something going forward people should be doing just to make sure that any breeds that have a significant amount of growth or a weird conformation, which I guess to a degree a Bulldog could be considered because like I said, they've got smaller pelvises, heavier fronts and all that kind of stuff to make sure that they grow balanced. That chiropractor would be a good place to go for the money, to me, is more than worth it. So that's it. Once again, I've talked way too long or long enough. Not way too long. Just long enough. But that's my little download on limps. Puppy limps how they happen. Why you should avoid avoid causing the problems and possible treatments. So that's it. I'm going to sign off for now. I'll speak to you next week. Before you leave, make sure to visit BulldogBroadcast.com for immediate access to the show notes, community forum recommendations and episode extras.