Conditions
Every joint, ligament and mobility condition we cover, from CCL tears to hip dysplasia. Start here if your dog has a diagnosis.
Sprained Leg in Dogs: The Complete Guide | K9-REPAIRThe most common mistake owners make with a limping dog isn't ignoring the injury. It's the opposite. Three comfortable days on anti-inflammatories get read as recovery, the dog goes back to stairs and fetch, and a mild ligament injury becomes a recurring one. Ligaments do not repair on the timeline…Read the guide →
Stomach Ulcers in Dogs: Signs, Causes and Care | PawGenA dog with a slowly bleeding gastric ulcer can look almost normal until the day it collapses. The earliest reliable sign is not vomiting at all. It is melena: black, tarry, tar-smelling stool caused by blood that has already been digested in the stomach, and most owners read it as…Read the guide →
Stress Fracture in Dogs — Signs, Healing & RecoveryThe limp that vanishes after ten minutes of movement is the one that should worry you most. A displaced fracture hurts constantly and obviously. A stress fracture behaves differently: the dog warms out of the lameness, trots normally at the park, then stiffens up hours later on the kitchen floor.…Read the guide →
Surgical Incision Healing in Dogs — What Owners Must KnowMost post-operative incision failures do not begin with a surgical error or a hospital-acquired infection. They begin with a tongue. Veterinary surgical guidance is consistent that an Elizabethan collar should stay on until sutures or staples are removed, and yet the cone is usually the first thing to come off…Read the guide →
Tendon Injury in Dogs — What Owners Need to Know | PawgenThe most common mistake owners make with a canine tendon injury isn't missing the limp. It's what they do in week three, when the limp fades and the dog starts asking for the ball again. Tendon tissue regains the appearance of function long before it regains tensile strength, and the…Read the guide →
Tendonitis in Dogs: Signs, Causes and Treatment OptionsThe most common mistake owners make with tendonitis in dogs is not picking the wrong supplement. It is ending the rest period the week the limp disappears. Tendon pain settles long before tendon tissue regains its tensile strength, and that gap between comfort and structural repair is where most recurrences…Read the guide →
Toe Injury in Dogs — Signs, Healing and Care | PawGenEach canine paw carries four weight-bearing digits, and every one of them is a stack of three small bones (P1, P2 and P3), two hinged joints, a deep digital flexor tendon, a nail bed and a pad. That whole assembly absorbs ground impact on every stride. This toe injury dogs…Read the guide →
Torn ACL in Dogs: What Owners Need to Know | PawgenMost dogs diagnosed with a torn ACL never tore anything in a single dramatic moment. Veterinary orthopaedic sources describe canine cranial cruciate ligament rupture far more often as a degenerative failure than a clean traumatic one: the ligament frays across months, and the injury the owner witnesses is simply the…Read the guide →
TPLO Surgery Recovery in Dogs — Owner Hub | PawgenMost TPLO setbacks happen around week three, not on the operating table. By then the incision looks tidy, the dog is trotting to the door, and the osteotomy (the surgical cut through the top of the tibia) is still weeks away from radiographic union. That gap between how a dog…Read the guide →
Vestibular Disease in Dogs: Signs, Causes & Care | PawgenA dog that wakes up unable to stand, head cocked hard to one shoulder, eyes flicking rhythmically side to side, looks exactly like a stroke victim. In most cases it is not a stroke. Strokes (cerebrovascular accidents) are comparatively uncommon in dogs, while acute peripheral vestibular dysfunction is one of…Read the guide →
What Do I Need to Know About Amputation Recovery in Dogs?Most dogs take their first three-legged steps before they even leave the hospital. The surgery is rarely the hard part. The difficult stretch is the fortnight after discharge, when incision management, pain control and a sudden redistribution of body weight across three limbs decide whether recovery stays uneventful or turns…Read the guide →
What Do I Need to Know About Cauda Equina Syndrome in Dogs?The most common mistake owners make with cauda equina syndrome isn't missing the diagnosis. It's assuming the first sign, a dog who hesitates for half a second before jumping into the car, is just age. By the time an actual limp appears, those nerve roots have usually been compressed for…Read the guide →
What Do I Need to Know About Elbow Arthritis in Dogs?The limp is the last sign, not the first. Canine elbow osteoarthritis usually begins as elbow dysplasia, a developmental mismatch between the humerus, radius and ulna, and the cartilage erodes quietly for months or years before an owner ever sees a head-bob at the trot. Any honest elbow arthritis dogs…Read the guide →
What Do I Need to Know About Hind End Weakness in Dogs?A dog that drags a back paw rarely has a weak leg. The muscle is usually fine and the signal reaching it is not, because weakness at the back end normally starts in the spinal cord, the hip, or the stifle rather than in the limb you are watching wobble.…Read the guide →
What Do I Need to Know About Hip Arthritis in Dogs?The most reliable early sign of hip arthritis in dogs is not a limp. When both hip joints degenerate at a similar pace, and they usually do, the dog has no sound leg to shift weight onto, so the lameness cancels itself out. What you see instead is a dog…Read the guide →
What Do I Need to Know About Hip Dysplasia in Dogs?Hip dysplasia is not an old-dog disease. The joint laxity that drives it forms while a puppy is still growing, long before the first limp appears. By the time most owners notice stiffness on a cold morning, secondary arthritis has usually already reshaped the joint.Read the guide →
What Do I Need to Know About Hip Weakness in Dogs?A 14-year lifetime feeding study of 48 Labrador Retrievers, published by Kealy and colleagues in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association in 2002, found that littermates fed 25% less food lived a median of 13.0 years compared with 11.2 years, and carried far less radiographic evidence of hip…Read the guide →
What Do I Need to Know About IBD in Dogs? | PawGenThe most expensive mistake owners make with IBD in dogs isn't choosing the wrong food. It's accepting the word 'IBD' over the phone without a tissue diagnosis, then spending months and considerable money treating a label rather than a defined disease process.Read the guide →
What do I need to know about lick granuloma in dogs?The raw, hairless plaque on your dog's wrist is rarely a behaviour problem that became a skin problem. Far more often it is a skin, pain or allergy problem that became a licking habit. Veterinary dermatologists call it acral lick dermatitis, and by the time the lesion is thick enough…Read the guide →
What Do I Need to Know About Lumbosacral Stenosis in Dogs?Most dogs who end up with a lumbosacral stenosis diagnosis were first assumed to have hip dysplasia. The clinical picture overlaps almost perfectly: a middle-aged large breed who struggles to rise, refuses the car jump, and bunny-hops up stairs. The hips get radiographed. The spine, where the actual compression sits,…Read the guide →
What Do I Need to Know About Meniscus Tear in Dogs?A torn meniscus in a dog is almost never a standalone injury. In most cases it is the second thing to fail inside the stifle joint (the canine knee), arriving after a cranial cruciate ligament rupture has already destabilised the joint. The cartilage does not tear because your dog jumped…Read the guide →
What do I need to know about post-surgical recovery in dogs?The riskiest moment in your dog's recovery is almost never the surgery itself. It is day five or six at home, when the anaesthetic fog has lifted, the incision has stopped stinging, and a dog who suddenly feels excellent launches off the sofa. The setbacks that send owners back to…Read the guide →
What Do I Need to Know About Sarcopenia in Dogs? | PawGenA dog can lose a meaningful share of his lean muscle without the scale moving a single pound. That is why the World Small Animal Veterinary Association (WSAVA) publishes a Muscle Condition Score chart separately from the familiar 9-point Body Condition Score. Fat occupies the space muscle vacates, body weight…Read the guide →
What Do I Need to Know About Shoulder Instability in Dogs?A front-leg lameness that fades with rest, returns within days of normal activity, and looks unremarkable on radiographs is rarely a pulled muscle. In active dogs, that pattern points toward medial shoulder instability (MSI), a stretching or tearing of the medial glenohumeral ligament and subscapularis tendon that hold the humeral…Read the guide →