My Dog Is Limping: Causes and What to Check

A limp means pain somewhere between the paw and the spine. Most limps are minor and settle on their own. A few are serious and time-sensitive.

The useful skill is being able to check your dog over safely and knowing which of the two you are looking at. Both are more straightforward than they sound.

Check the paw first

Most limps originate at the paw, and it is the only place you can reasonably examine and sometimes fix yourself.

Have someone hold the dog, or muzzle it if there is any doubt. A dog in pain may bite its own owner without meaning anything by it.

1. Between every toe, for grass seeds, thorns, gravel or matted debris
2. The pads, for cuts, cracks, burns or embedded objects
3. The nails, for one broken or torn at the base, which is painful and bleeds
4. The webbing, for swelling, redness or a discharging point that suggests an abscess
5. Between the pads, where a foreign body can sit almost invisibly

Then work upward gently: ankle, knee, hip, and along the spine, watching the dog's face rather than the leg for the flinch.

Common causes by age

Young dogs

• Soft tissue strain from over-exercise or awkward landing, the commonest cause overall
• Growing pains in large breeds, often shifting between legs
• Developmental joint disease, hip and elbow, which appears in the first year in big breeds
• Fractures, usually with an obvious event behind them

Adult dogs

• Cruciate ligament injury, particularly a sudden hindlimb lameness after a turn or a jump. Common and usually needs surgery
• Muscle and tendon injury
• Bite wounds and abscesses, which can present as limping before the swelling is obvious
• Tick-borne disease, which can cause shifting lameness with lethargy

Older dogs

• Arthritis, by a wide margin the most common, worse after rest and better after moving about
• Bone tumours, particularly in large breeds, often a persistent limp in one leg with swelling
• Spinal disease, which can cause weakness and dragging rather than a clean limp

Go immediately

• The leg is dangling, held at an odd angle, or the dog will not bear any weight at all
• Obvious swelling, deformity or an open wound
• A road accident or fall, even if the dog gets up and walks
• Crying out, or continuous distress
• Multiple legs affected, or weakness rather than pain
• Sudden hindlimb weakness or dragging, particularly in a long-backed breed, which can be a spinal emergency
• Pale gums, collapse, or a swollen abdomen alongside the limp
• Fever, or the dog is otherwise unwell

What you can do at home

For a mild limp in a dog that is otherwise bright, bearing some weight, with nothing found in the paw:

• Rest properly. Lead walks only, short, for toileting. No running, jumping, stairs or play. This is the treatment, and it is the part owners abandon
• Restrict the space. A dog left with the run of the house will run
• Reassess after 24 to 48 hours. No improvement, or any worsening, means a vet

Never give human painkillers. Paracetamol, ibuprofen and aspirin all cause serious harm in dogs, and ibuprofen damages the stomach and kidneys badly. This is one of the most common poisonings vets treat, and it usually happens while trying to help.

Pain relief also removes the dog's own protective limp, so it uses the leg it should be resting. That is another reason it should be prescribed rather than improvised.

The intermittent limp

The pattern that gets ignored longest: a limp that appears after exercise, disappears with rest, and returns a week later. Owners read the disappearance as recovery.

It is usually a joint problem the dog is managing, and it will progress. Investigating it while the dog is still comfortable most of the time gives far better options than waiting until it does not resolve at all.

What helps the vet

Film it. Dogs frequently mask a limp in a clinic, and thirty seconds of video of the dog walking and rising at home is often more useful than the examination. Note which leg, when it started, what preceded it, whether it is worse after rest or after exercise, and whether it comes and goes.

Limping is where waiting is most tempting, because so many limps genuinely do resolve. The ones that do not, cruciate injuries, bone tumours, spinal disease, look identical in the first two days, and each of them has a considerably better outcome when caught early.

Consultations, imaging and surgery within your plan's sub-limit are covered on Skeepy Pet HMO plans at any vet clinic in Nigeria, so the X-ray that settles it is a decision about your dog rather than about the month.