Osteoarthritis in Dogs: How to Spot the Signs and What Actually Helps

In brief

There are five things you should know about osteoarthritis. First, and this clears up the biggest misconception: osteoarthritis is not just a disease of old age. In a study of dogs between eight months and four years old, around 40 percent already showed osteoarthritis in at least one joint on X-rays—and in 16 to 24 percent, actual joint pain came on top of that. The two are not the same thing, and the smaller number is the one that matters in practice. Second: many affected dogs don’t limp. They become slower, more irritable or more withdrawn—and that gets blamed on age or personality. Third: in the same study, only about 30 percent of owners of affected dogs noticed any impairment at all, and of all the affected dogs, only two were receiving pain treatment. Fourth: osteoarthritis can’t be cured, but it can be influenced a great deal—and the strongest lever is not a drug but body weight. Fifth: changes in behavior, up to and including aggression, can be a pain signal before anyone thinks of the joints.

Osteoarthritis is one of the most common causes of chronic pain in dogs—and one of the most frequently overlooked. This article explains what happens inside the joint, how to recognize the quiet signs, why they are so often mistaken for a behavior problem, and what actually works in everyday life.

Note: This article is general information and does not replace a veterinary examination. Pain medication belongs exclusively in your veterinarian’s hands—common human painkillers are dangerous for dogs.

👉 Everything about prevention and health: dog health basics at a glance

1. What happens inside the joint

A healthy joint is a remarkably good piece of engineering: two bone ends covered in smooth cartilage, surrounded by a capsule and filled with joint fluid. Cartilage has no nerves and no blood supply of its own—it is nourished through movement, soaking up fluid like a sponge and releasing it again under load.

In osteoarthritis, this system falls out of balance. The cartilage becomes rougher and thinner, and the body responds with remodeling: the joint capsule thickens, bony outgrowths form at the edges, the joint fluid changes, and a persistent, low-grade inflammation develops.

The key to understanding it: the pain does not come from the cartilage, but from the capsule, the bone and the inflamed tissue around it. That is why X-ray findings and pain often match poorly—a dog with obvious changes on the image may have few problems, while another with minor changes may be clearly suffering.

The disease progresses, and cartilage does not grow back. That sounds discouraging, but it isn’t: the course and the symptoms can be influenced considerably—they just can’t be reversed.

1.1 Why the image and the symptoms don’t match

This point deserves a closer look, because it regularly causes confusion in conversations with the vet—in both directions.

A lot on the image, few symptoms. Bony outgrowths are what X-rays show well, and on their own they are not painful. A joint that has remodeled and stabilized over years can look dramatic on the image and bother the dog very little. If you only look at the image, you may end up treating something that isn’t currently a problem.

Little on the image, a lot of symptoms. The reverse, and more common, case. Inflammation of the joint lining, irritation of the capsule and remodeling in the bone just beneath the cartilage are barely visible, or not visible at all, on a standard X-ray—and that is exactly where the pain sits. An unremarkable image is therefore no all-clear.

For you, this means two things. An X-ray finding alone does not answer the question “Is my dog in pain?”—for that you need a hands-on examination and the observations from section 4. And when the examination and the image disagree, that is not a contradiction; it is the normal situation with this disease.

2. Osteoarthritis is not just a disease of old age

This is the finding that changes how you see the whole topic. For a long time, the figure quoted everywhere—“about 20 percent of dogs”—rested on a publication from 1997, which in turn referred to survey data from general veterinary practices.

In 2024, a research group specifically examined young dogs. The study included 123 dogs aged eight months to four years that had not been brought in for lameness but had been randomly invited from the patient population of a single practice. Every dog had an orthopedic examination, every joint was assessed for pain responses, and then all joints were X-rayed under sedation.

The result: 39.8 percent of these young dogs had osteoarthritis on X-rays in at least one joint. In 16 to 24 percent—depending on how strictly the pain response is scored—X-ray findings and joint pain coincided, so these dogs counted as having clinically relevant osteoarthritis (Enomoto et al. 2024).

The joints most often affected were, in this order: elbow, hip, hock and knee.

So the sentence “But my dog is only three” is no longer a reason to rule it out—at most, it is a sign that nobody has looked.

3. Why owners miss it

The second part of the same study is even more uncomfortable. Among the dogs with painful osteoarthritis, owners noticed any signs of impairment in only about 30 percent of cases. Seven out of ten saw nothing.

And the consequence: of the affected dogs, exactly two were receiving pain treatment.

This is not down to carelessness but to a structural problem of perception. Chronic pain in dogs does not look like acute pain. It doesn’t arrive suddenly but over months, and the change on any single day is too small to notice. If you see your dog every day, you are in the worst position to spot a gradual decline.

On top of that, excitement can mask signs of pain. The walk, the visitor, the ball—when aroused enough, a dog can run through considerable discomfort. The bill comes afterward, often hours later, as stiffness or withdrawal, and by then nobody links it to the exertion.

And finally, osteoarthritis fits a convenient explanation: “He’s just getting older.” That very explanation is the reason a treatable pain goes untreated for years.

👉 Learning to read the quiet signs: recognizing pain in dogs

4. The quiet signs—and how to make them measurable

If seven out of ten owners notice nothing, it isn’t for lack of attention; it’s because nobody knows what to look for. So here is the list that actually holds up—and a method that beats your everyday impression.

4.1 What you can see

Getting up. The first steps after lying down for a while are stiff, then the dog warms out of it. This is one of the earliest and most reliable signs—and one of the most often explained away.

Lying down. A dog that no longer lies down in one smooth movement, but lowers the front end and lets the hindquarters drop, is usually not doing it out of laziness.

Sitting. A crooked sit with one hind leg stuck out to the side instead of both legs neatly folded under the body.

Jumping. Hesitating in front of the car, the sofa, the curb. A dog that gathers itself to jump and then breaks off is often showing that the movement hurts.

Stairs. Slower than before, especially going down—this puts more load on the front legs and is therefore often the first thing you notice.

The day after. The long walk on Sunday, the stiffness on Monday. Because there are hours in between, the connection is almost never made.

The gait. Shorter steps, a bobbing head at a walk, pacing instead of the normal alternation of the diagonal leg pairs.

The muscles. One leg gets thinner than the other. This is often the most honest sign, because it shows what the dog has actually been using less over weeks—and it is easy to compare from above while the dog is standing.

4.2 Why your everyday impression fails

The reason is in section 3, and it bears repeating: if you see your dog every day, you are in the worst position to spot a gradual change. Each day differs too little from the one before.

On top of that, an explanation is always ready to hand. He’s tired. It’s warm. He’s getting older. Any of these may be true—and each one stops anyone from taking a closer look.

4.3 What helps

Videos at fixed intervals. Once a quarter, film the same things: getting up after sleeping, twenty steps at a walk from the side, twenty at a trot. Always in the same place, from the same angle. Comparing them over a year shows what everyday life hides.

A fixed benchmark. Does he jump into the car, yes or no? Does he manage the stairs without a break? Does he keep up on the usual route or fall behind? These are yes-or-no questions, and they can be compared over months—unlike “he’s doing fine.”

A questionnaire. For chronic joint pain, there are validated owner questionnaires that you fill out at home and that produce a score—the most widely used are the Canine Brief Pain Inventory (CBPI) and the Liverpool Osteoarthritis in Dogs questionnaire (LOAD). According to the 2022 AAHA Pain Management Guidelines, they remain subject to bias but provide useful information (Gruen et al., 2022). They don’t replace an examination, but they turn an impression into a value you can track over time—ask your vet about them.

And the most important point: record these measures while your dog is doing well. Without a baseline, there is nothing to compare with later.

5. When osteoarthritis shows up as a behavior problem

We see this connection regularly in our behavior consultations, and it is the reason the body should always be checked first whenever behavior changes.

Chronic pain can lower the threshold for reacting. A dog for whom every touch in the wrong place hurts may react sooner, more intensely and less predictably. Typical pictures from practice:

Growing irritability toward other dogs, especially in encounters in tight spaces or on leash—possibly because moving out of the way and turning aside have become physically harder.

Growling when being lifted, touched or brushed, often in places that used to be no problem.

Withdrawal and less social contact, avoiding rough-and-tumble and play with other dogs.

Restlessness at night, frequent repositioning, poor sleep.

Declining reliability on familiar cues—a dog that suddenly performs “sit” less well is not necessarily refusing; it may hurt.

If you start with training here, you are working on the wrong end. As long as the cause is pain, training often stays ineffective and, in the worse case, can add to the burden.

👉 The connection in detail: chronic pain and behavior—the neurobiological link between osteoarthritis and aggression in dogs

👉 When things escalate on leash: leash reactivity in dogs and why your dog loses it

5.1 How we handle it in consultations

This connection is why every behavior consultation with us starts with a question that surprises many people: When did your dog last have an orthopedic examination?

We pay particular attention in three situations. When something has changed without anything having changed—no move, no new family member, no incident, and still the dog has been different for months. When the reaction depends on the situation, but not in a way that follows training logic: close encounters yes, distant ones no; worse in the morning than in the evening; worse after rest than in the middle of activity. And when training doesn’t take hold, even though it is properly built up.

What we do then is not diagnosis from a distance but triage: we look at how the dog gets up, lies down and sits, ask about the day after long walks—and refer the dog for a workup before we set up a training plan.

The reason is simple: a training plan built on top of pain often asks the dog for exactly what hurts. It will then frequently either not work or work at the dog’s expense—and both are worse than four weeks of waiting for an appointment.

Conversely: once the pain is treated, the behavior often doesn’t disappear on its own. It has been shown and practiced and can remain available. That’s when training begins—just with a dog that is physically able to cope with it.

6. Which dogs are particularly affected

Osteoarthritis in dogs is mostly secondary, meaning it develops as a consequence of something else. The main routes:

Developmental joint diseases such as hip or elbow dysplasia. They explain why osteoarthritis already appears in young dogs, and they have a clear hereditary component.

Injuries, above all cruciate ligament rupture. After a cruciate ligament rupture, osteoarthritic changes very often develop in the affected knee—even when it has been operated on.

Excess weight, which works in two ways: mechanically through load, and biochemically, because fat tissue releases pro-inflammatory messenger substances.

Uneven loading, for example when a dog spares one leg for months and overloads the others.

Large and heavy breeds are affected more often, but small dogs are by no means spared—in them it is probably just recognized less often, because limitations are less noticeable in everyday life with a small dog.

6.1 What can be influenced in a young dog

Because a considerable share of osteoarthritis is already set up in the first years of life, it is worth looking at the time before—even though this article is otherwise about affected dogs.

Weight, from the very beginning. The finding from section 8 is the decisive one here: the dogs kept lean were not put on a diet once they were ill—they never got fat in the first place. A roly-poly puppy is not a well-fed puppy.

Load during growth. While a dog is still growing, repeated jumping, long monotonous stretches running next to a bike and climbing lots of stairs are considered unfavorable. Free play on good ground, on the other hand, is fine—this is not about protecting the dog from movement but about avoiding repetition under load.

Where the dog comes from. Hip and elbow dysplasia have a clear hereditary component. In the breeds concerned, screened parents are an important selection criterion—and a measure that takes effect before you even bring the puppy home.

What cannot be influenced is part of the picture too: predisposition, conformation and plain bad luck. A dog with early osteoarthritis is not proof that someone did something wrong.

7. Diagnosis: what happens at the vet

It starts with a conversation, and that conversation is often worth more than any image. Concrete observations from everyday life are more useful than general impressions: Does he jump into the car? How does he get up after sleeping? What does the day after a long walk look like? Does he slip on smooth floors? A short phone video of the dog getting up and of its gait is extremely helpful.

Next comes the orthopedic examination: range of motion in every joint, pain responses, and muscle mass compared side to side. Muscle loss on one leg is often the most honest sign, because it shows what the dog has actually been using less over weeks.

X-rays show bony changes and rule out other causes. As described above, the findings correlate only moderately with the degree of discomfort—the image complements the examination; it doesn’t replace it. Meaningful images usually require sedation, because the dog has to be positioned precisely.

Depending on the case, ultrasound, CT or arthroscopy may be added.

8. Weight: the most effective single measure

If you put only one thing from this article into practice, make it this one—it is among the best-supported statements about osteoarthritis in dogs.

In a study that ran over the dogs’ entire lives, 48 Labrador Retrievers from seven litters were assigned in pairs: one littermate was given unlimited food from eight weeks of age, the other was fed 25 percent less of the same food for life. The hip joints were X-rayed at regular intervals.

The differences were massive. At two years of age, 25 percent of the normally fed dogs had hip osteoarthritis, compared with 4 percent of the lean ones. At five years, it was 39 percent versus 13 percent (Smith et al. 2006). The study also showed that hip osteoarthritis does not appear in bursts but progresses continuously throughout life.

The same group of dogs also produced the best-known finding on life expectancy: the lean dogs had a clearly longer median lifespan than their littermates (Kealy et al. 2002).

What is remarkable is that the lean dogs were not put on a diet once they were ill—they never got fat in the first place. Here, prevention beats any treatment. And in a dog that already has osteoarthritis, weight loss is the measure with the greatest benefit for the effort, often with visible results after just a few kilograms.

👉 How to judge it correctly: finding your dog’s ideal weight

9. Exercise: not less, but different

A common mistake after the diagnosis is rest. It feels caring and can make things worse: cartilage is nourished through movement, and muscle is what actively stabilizes the joint. Lose both, and you reinforce the very problem.

What needs to change is not the amount but the pattern. Several shorter, even-paced walks instead of one long outing make sense, as does a steady pace on soft, level ground and a real warm-up before you set off.

What has to go are load peaks: abrupt stops, turns at full speed, repeated jumping. That is exactly what happens when you throw a ball—the dog accelerates flat out, brakes hard and turns under load. For an arthritic joint, that is a particularly unfavorable combination, and the excitement can mask the fact that it hurts.

Anything that tires a dog out without jarring the joints makes a good substitute: nose work, search games, calm shaping, controlled balance and coordination exercises. Mental work often tires a dog out just as well as the ball—only without the bill the next day.

👉 Why ball games deserve a critical look: ball games with dogs—myths and facts

9.1 What a day can look like in practice

“Several shorter walks instead of one long one” is correct, but it stays abstract. Here is a structure that has proven itself and can be adapted to any dog.

Mornings start slowly. The first five to ten minutes at a walk, without sniffing stops that involve abruptly dropping the head, and without encounters if they can be avoided. An arthritic joint needs this time to get going—if you set off straight away, you pay for it later.

Spread over the day. Three to four sessions of twenty to thirty minutes each are better for many affected dogs than an hour in one go. The exact length depends on what happens the next day—not on what the dog would still like to do in the moment.

The ground matters more than the distance. Forest floor, meadows and dirt tracks are gentler on the joints than asphalt, and they work the deep stabilizing muscles along the way. Deep sand and steep terrain, on the other hand, are more strenuous than they look.

Wind down calmly in the evening. No excitement shortly before bedtime—a dog that gets wound up in the evening settles less well afterward.

And the rule that holds it all together: you judge the next morning. If your dog gets up stiffer than usual on the day after a walk, the walk was too long or too intense—even if he was thrilled while it lasted. Enthusiasm is not the yardstick; getting up the next day is.

Also worthwhile: on bad days, go for shorter walks rather than skipping them altogether. Complete rest days can worsen mobility; short, calm walks generally don’t.

10. Physiotherapy and changes around the house

In osteoarthritis, physiotherapy is more than a wellness extra. It can maintain mobility, build muscle in a targeted way, reduce uneven loading and give you exercises to do at home. Underwater treadmills and targeted exercise therapy are commonly used methods. The 2022 AAHA Pain Management Guidelines count encouraging activity and adapting the environment among the first-line measures and describe therapeutic exercise and physical modalities as useful adjuncts (Gruen et al., 2022).

Just as important, and much cheaper, are the changes in your home:

Non-slip floors. Laminate and tiles are a constant strain for an arthritic dog, because every movement has to be secured by muscle power. Runners along the main routes are among the most effective single measures in the house.

Avoid jumps. A ramp into the car; sofa and bed only with help or a step.

A warm, well-padded bed, big enough to stretch out on, out of drafts.

Keep the nails short, because nails that are too long change the way the foot rolls over and shift the load.

One often overlooked point is sleep. Arthritic dogs reposition more often at night, presumably because every position becomes uncomfortable after a while. That can disrupt continuous sleep—and a chronically sleep-deprived dog can be more irritable and learn less well. A big, soft, warm bed is therefore not a comfort but part of the treatment. If your dog is noticeably restless at night, that is a finding, not a quirk.

👉 What changes with age and what helps: caring for a senior dog

11. Medication: what it can do

The foundation of drug treatment is anti-inflammatory painkillers approved for dogs. They act on pain and inflammation at the same time and, used correctly with regular monitoring, can be managed well. As with any effective drug, there are side effects, mainly affecting the gastrointestinal tract, the kidneys and the liver—which is why follow-up checks are part of the treatment.

The current guideline basis is the 2022 AAHA Pain Management Guidelines for dogs and cats (Gruen et al., 2022). For osteoarthritis pain in dogs, they place these anti-inflammatory painkillers (NSAIDs) in the first tier, together with non-drug measures: weight management, encouraging activity, adapting the environment and omega-3 fatty acids. Their core principle is a multimodal approach—effective painkillers combined with non-drug measures rather than a single remedy. Measures from different tiers can be started at the same time, for example a painkiller together with therapeutic exercise.

For some years now, a monoclonal antibody has also been available. It targets a messenger substance involved in pain signaling and is given as an injection every few weeks. It considerably widens the options, especially for dogs that don’t tolerate classic painkillers. The AAHA guidelines report good pain relief with these antibodies in studies and expect them to provide an additional first-line choice (Gruen et al., 2022). Evaluations of their benefits and side effects are ongoing.

If the effect is insufficient, other classes of drugs and injections into the joint may be considered. The AAHA guidelines rate the evidence for these adjunctive drugs as limited or mixed, and studies on joint injections are mostly small with mixed results (Gruen et al., 2022).

Two points are non-negotiable. First, all of these drugs belong in your veterinarian’s hands—we deliberately don’t give doses here, because they depend on weight, kidney and liver values and other medications. Second, painkillers from your own medicine cabinet can be life-threatening: ibuprofen and diclofenac are highly toxic to dogs, even in amounts that would be unremarkable for a human; acetaminophen (paracetamol) can also cause severe poisoning in dogs.

11.1 What pain treatment should achieve

Two misunderstandings regularly come up here, and both lead to treatments being stopped too early.

The goal is not to be pain-free. With a progressive joint disease, the goal is a dog that moves well, enjoys walking and sleeps peacefully—not a dog without any discomfort at all. If you apply the second standard, you will always be dissatisfied.

It is not open-ended medication on a hunch. For some dogs, long-term treatment is right; for others, phases are enough—for example in winter, after exertion or during flare-ups. This is decided together and adjusted over time.

In both cases, follow-up checks are part of it. Anti-inflammatory painkillers work well in many dogs and, used correctly, can be managed well—with kidney, liver and gastrointestinal tolerance kept under observation. A dog that has been on the same drug for years without ever being checked is not well cared for.

This also determines when to start. Pain treatment is not an end-stage measure to be saved for later. Chronic pain works continuously—on mobility, muscle, sleep, reactivity threshold and the ability to learn—and every month it goes untreated can worsen exactly the factors that help shape the further course. If you wait until the dog is clearly impaired, you haven’t saved a reserve; you’ve lost time.

And one point that takes some weight off owners: the worry that a painkiller could let the dog “overdo it” and thereby cause harm is widespread and, in this form, mostly unfounded. Pain is not a useful brake; it leads to guarding postures, muscle loss and uneven loading—in other words, exactly what makes the course worse. Exercise is regulated by the plan in section 9.1, not by pain.

12. Supplements: what the evidence supports

The market for joint supplements is huge; the body of evidence is not.

The best studied are long-chain omega-3 fatty acids from fish oil. There is evidence of an anti-inflammatory effect and a slight improvement in mobility; they are currently the supplement with the most plausible basis. The AAHA guidelines count omega-3 fatty acids—as a supplement or in a therapeutic diet—among the first-tier measures for osteoarthritis pain, whereas they see no evidence of an analgesic effect for other supplements (Gruen et al., 2022).

For glucosamine and chondroitin sulfate, the classic joint supplements, the evidence is contradictory. Some studies find small effects, others none. They are harmless in the usual amounts, but they replace neither pain treatment nor weight loss.

The most problematic point is not the weak effect but the delay: if you spend months trying supplements while your dog is in pain, you lose time in which effective treatment would have been possible. Supplements are an add-on to the plan, not its starting point.

13. The analgesic trial as a diagnostic tool

One approach deserves a mention of its own, because it closes exactly the gap this article describes—and because it rarely appears in information for owners.

The problem is familiar: X-ray findings and symptoms match poorly, and in a dog that isn’t limping but has merely slowed down, it is hard to say how much of that is pain. There is a way to find out—you treat the pain on a trial basis and see what happens.

In practice, that means a painkiller approved for dogs, at an adequate dose, over a period set by your vet, usually two to four weeks. And then the question: has anything changed?

The value lies in the fact that the answer is often clearer than expected. Owners then report things they had never classified as symptoms—the dog plays again, takes the stairs faster, lies more quietly at night, greets visitors differently. Looking back, much of that was probably pain.

For the trial to be worth anything, it needs two things. Observation measures set in advance—the yes-or-no questions from section 4.3 and a video. Without them, you end up judging your own expectations. And no simultaneous changes: don’t switch food, start a supplement and walk more at the same time, because otherwise nothing can be attributed.

For context: This is a common clinical approach, not a formally validated test. If there is no improvement, that doesn’t necessarily mean there was no pain—the dose or the drug may simply not have been the right fit. The trial is therefore evaluated, not just ended.

And it belongs exclusively in your veterinarian’s hands. That is exactly why it requires a prior examination with kidney and liver values, and exactly why your own medicine cabinet is not an option here.

14. Limits of the evidence

The key prevalence study included 123 dogs from a single practice. It is a groundbreaking study, because young dogs had hardly been examined systematically before—but it is a limited, local sample, and the figure of 40 percent should not be read as an exact population value.

The weight study has a different limitation: it included 48 dogs of a single breed under controlled laboratory conditions. It is also revealing that an analysis of the same dogs for the elbow joint found no statistically demonstrable difference in the frequency of osteoarthritis between the feeding groups—only severity was higher in the normally fed dogs at six years. The effect of leanness was clear for the hip but not for the elbow—a sign that joints respond differently to load.

And for many of the everyday recommendations in this article—ground surface, ramps, movement patterns—there are no controlled studies, but rather biomechanical plausibility and clinical experience. That doesn’t make them wrong, but it is a weaker level of evidence than the figures above.

On the structure of the evidence: the lifetime study of littermate Labradors assigned in pairs is methodologically exceptionally strong—controlled, spanning the dogs’ entire lives, with closely related comparison animals. Its limit lies in how far it transfers: 48 Labradors under standardized conditions are not every breed and not every household. The frequency figures in young dogs come from a single study of 123 animals from one practice’s patient population; the order of magnitude is striking, but confirmation in other populations is still pending.

15. Conclusion

Osteoarthritis is more common, starts earlier and is quieter than many people assume: in one study, around 40 percent of dogs that were still young showed changes on X-rays, and most owners of affected dogs noticed nothing. It rarely shows up as limping and often shows up as a change in behavior—as “lazy,” “stubborn” or “grumpy.” It can’t be cured, but its course can be influenced considerably, and the strongest single lever is not in the pharmacy but in the food bowl. If you notice a gradual change in your dog, don’t wait for a limp—have the joints actively checked, ideally before pain has turned into a behavior problem.

👉 What matters when choosing: what makes a good veterinarian

If you take only one thing from this article: watch how your dog gets up after sleeping—today, and again in three months, ideally on video. It is one of the earliest reliable signs, it costs nothing, and it is an observation that holds up against your everyday impression.

Key takeaways on osteoarthritis in dogs

Osteoarthritis is not just a disease of old age. Of 123 dogs between eight months and four years old that had not been brought in for lameness, 39.8 percent showed osteoarthritis on X-rays; in 16 to 24 percent, joint pain came on top (Enomoto et al., 2024). X-ray findings and symptoms are two different numbers.

Seven out of ten owners noticed nothing. In the same study, only about 30 percent saw any impairment—and exactly two dogs were being treated.

The pain does not come from the cartilage. It comes from the capsule, the bone and inflamed tissue. That is why X-ray findings and symptoms often match poorly—in both directions.

Many affected dogs don’t limp. They become slower, more irritable or more withdrawn. One of the earliest reliable signs is stiffness after getting up that wears off as the dog warms up.

Behavior changes can be pain signals. Chronic pain can lower the threshold for reacting—irritability on leash, growling when touched and declining reliability on familiar cues are part of the picture.

Weight is the strongest lever, and the evidence is unusually good. Among littermates assigned in pairs, 39 percent of the normally fed Labradors had hip osteoarthritis at five years, compared with 13 percent of the lean ones (Smith et al., 2006)—and the lean dogs had a longer median lifespan (Kealy et al., 2002).

Rest is a common mistake after the diagnosis. Cartilage is nourished through movement, and muscle stabilizes the joint. What needs to change is the pattern, not the amount.

Non-slip floors are among the most effective measures in the house—and a well-padded, warm bed is part of the treatment, not a comfort.

Human painkillers can be life-threatening. Ibuprofen and diclofenac are toxic to dogs, even in amounts that would be unremarkable in humans; acetaminophen (paracetamol) can also cause severe poisoning.

References

• Enomoto, M., de Castro, N., Hash, J., Thomson, A., Nakanishi-Hester, A., Perry, E., Aker, S., Haupt, E., Opperman, L., Roe, S., Cole, T., Archer Thompson, N., Innes, J. F. & Lascelles, B. D. X. (2024): Prevalence of radiographic appendicular osteoarthritis and associated clinical signs in young dogs. Scientific Reports 14(1): 2827. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-52324-9 (123 dogs aged 8 months to 4 years; 39.8% with radiographic osteoarthritis in at least one joint; 16.3% and 23.6% with clinical osteoarthritis; owners noticed impairment in only about 30% of cases; only 2 affected dogs were receiving pain management; most commonly affected joints: elbow, hip, hock, knee)

• Smith, G. K., Paster, E. R., Powers, M. Y., Lawler, D. F., Biery, D. N., Shofer, F. S., McKelvie, P. J. & Kealy, R. D. (2006): Lifelong diet restriction and radiographic evidence of osteoarthritis of the hip joint in dogs. Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association 229(5): 690–693. https://doi.org/10.2460/javma.229.5.690 (48 Labrador Retrievers, assigned in pairs, 25% lifelong food restriction; hip osteoarthritis at 2 years 25% vs. 4%, at 5 years 39% vs. 13%; continuous rather than episodic progression)

• Kealy, R. D., Lawler, D. F., Ballam, J. M., Mantz, S. L., Biery, D. N., Greeley, E. H., Lust, G., Segre, M., Smith, G. K. & Stowe, H. D. (2002): Effects of diet restriction on life span and age-related changes in dogs. Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association 220(9): 1315–1320. https://doi.org/10.2460/javma.2002.220.1315 (same group of dogs; clearly longer median lifespan with 25% food restriction)

• Huck, J. L., Biery, D. N., Lawler, D. F., Gregor, T. P., Runge, J. J., Evans, R. H., Kealy, R. D. & Smith, G. K. (2009): A longitudinal study of the influence of lifetime food restriction on development of osteoarthritis in the canine elbow. Veterinary Surgery 38(2): 192–198. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1532-950X.2008.00487.x (no statistically demonstrable difference in the frequency of elbow osteoarthritis between the feeding groups, greater severity in normally fed dogs only at 6 years—a counterpoint to the hip analysis)

• Gruen, M. E., Lascelles, B. D. X., et al. (2022): 2022 AAHA Pain Management Guidelines for Dogs and Cats. Journal of the American Animal Hospital Association 58(2): 55–76. https://doi.org/10.5326/JAAHA-MS-7292 (current clinical guideline; multimodal approach; for canine osteoarthritis, NSAIDs plus non-drug measures such as weight management, encouraging activity, environmental modification and omega-3 fatty acids in the first tier; little or mixed evidence for adjunctive drugs; no evidence of an analgesic effect for non-omega-3 supplements)

Frequently asked questions about osteoarthritis in dogs

The questions we hear most often in consultations