Stoic breed specific veterinary care...

[MotherJack]

I have left the title open to interpretation so as to get the most responses.

This question is to those who know the breeds I mean and to vets with experience of the breeds...

If stoic breeds in particular were to be examined in a specific area which was causing them pain, what pain response would you anticipate?

I shall say no more now but explain later.

Thanks

IME a low level growl is about the most I'd anticipate in a stoic, if that.

But, as you know, I'm not a vet. I'm interested in their opinions too.

PS common sense suggests things such as increased heart rate, changes in pupil size and so on too.

Hmmm... now intrugued.

On a different topic, Val, filling the wee hours when the vets are in bed, can you tell me about Dogs Trust please? I give them money as I thought them different to the RSPCA as they claim to never put a healthy dog to sleep. Following some links, do I take it a minor, treatable illness counts as unhealthiness??

Common sense confounds this, Val! I will spill the beans, but am hoping for a few non-biased responses first!

(I should add that yours constitutes the first non-biased response)

Hmmm... I would rather the DT over the RSPCA any day (no parading about in police style uniforms insinuating that they have a power that no law has ever conferred upon them and shooting dogs with captive bolt guns being my main reasons). But, as with so many rescues, it is very easy to translate the expression "no kill" to suit an organisation's own purposes and I have little doubt that the DT will do that when they see fit. I don't however hear of caring employees turning to independent rescue about dogs they have had to get out of DT rescues or vet surgeries "through the back door" because those healthy but socially undesirable dogs are about to be PTS - I do know independent rescues which frequently have to get such dogs out of the other lot's clutches before they are PTS.

My biggest issue with the DT is their tendency to cherry pick. Smaller rescues all too often pick up the less easy to home dogs and the vet bills on legs which the DT won't take. Needless to say, this is something which pisses me off.

I look at it this way - either the DT cherry pick so well that they NEVER encounter an aggressive dog or they do, and when this happens they PTS on the grounds of health... ie using his mental health to justify the decision to kill. I'm less convinced that they would PTS for, say, kennel cough, but I know bloody well that the majority of council pounds would - kennel cough is easy to cure but spreads like wildfire, so cheaper to PTS one dog than to give antibiotics to 50 dogs.

And it's our taxes which pay the feckers to do that... :(

Some years ago, I used to give the RSPCA money. But after being aware that their employees were rather well paid than most on such publicly given money and then informed of their ethics; and almost within the same week they rang me up and said in so many words that they knew that people who already gave were more likely to give more if they asked.... I cancelled my direct debit that very day. That was a while ago. Anyhoo.....

Yeah, I'm not a fan of cherry picking. I'll start looking elsewhere I think. Thanks.

Increased heart rate, increased respiratory rate, change in pupil size, tensing of muscles, increased resistance in extending limbs in painful limb, splinting in abdomen if pain is there. If there is pain there always subtle signs of it.
Any breed can be stoic and every breed has it's wimps.

Oh yeah I'm a vet.

My pleasure. It's hard, whatever you do, whoever you donate to and depends on your moral perspective I guess. I tend to get a bit ticked off when people aren't armed with the facts about organisations like the RSPCA and fall for the begging appeals on television, little knowing that they kill such a huge number of dogs annually or of the methods they use to achieve that in certain circumstances.

I also get to hear of a lot of abuse of power, the RSPCA insisting that they have a right of entry or insinuating they have legal powers when of course they act only using civil law, which is available equally to you and I and they have no more legal powers than I do.

Then there was the storming into Rosedene pound, one of the rare ones where staff fight so hard to rehome their dogs and cooperate with independent rescue. The RSPCA decided within an hour or so of being there that several dogs which were being handled by Rosedene's staff without a problem and for which photographic evidence was available, were "unhomeable" and "aggressive" and so they killed them there and then in their kennels whilst Rosedene's staff could only watch, beg and sob. Over 50 dogs were removed from Rosedene that day. IF they all survived in RSPCA kennels and wren't PTS when they got there it would have been at the expense of over 50 existing dogs there as the RSPCA had, at their own admittance, no room in the centres to which these dogs were taken.

My own donations go to the rescue I'm a hands-on volunteer for, who are committed to a GENUINE, 100% no kill policy and are not a registered charity so unlike the RSPCA receive no support from the public purse. They take the ones the DT, RSPCA and even many smaller rescues wouldn't touch - the old, the Bull Breeds etc and they have a particular reputation for their expertise in canine epilepsy, having several epi dogs there. I've just also committed to donate to a city-based rescue which takes in and rehabilitates abused dogs, aggressive dogs and dogs which have been used for fighting or as bait. Amazingly many of the abuse cases and former fighting dogs are not aggressive but even where they are the rescue owner rehabilitates and offers a home for life on the rare occasion where rehoming is not possible. Killing a healthy dog is not on his moral radar.

So, if you fancy sponsoring a nutter who is soon to be shot at with paintballs while wearing nothing but his drawers in order to raise funds for those dogs, you know who to speak to...! :o

Val, just for clarification. There are many registered charities involved in dog rescue work which do not receive money from the public purse ie. grants, lottery money etc. The one I volunteer for, like many others, has to fund raise by a variety of methods including via members and supporters, meet and greets, stalls at events, a couple of charity shops and a variety of other methods.

Your post could be taken to imply that registered charities receive public funding - finding grant funding for animal charities is generally the holy grail and it's almost unheard of to get public sector funds for animal welfare work.

well my 'breed' is very stoic and even when he has been at his poorliest he didnt growl, moan or even squeak. He was more lethargic than normal and lost his sparkle in his eye.

But then, it depends doesnt it? He has a sore paw now again and all I have to say is 'feet' and touch it and he squeaks!

What Lizcat said, and depending on the source, chronicity and severity of the pain there are often behavioural changes too, varying from avoidance of pain-inducing activities (eg choosing the floor rather than climbing onto the sofa to sleep) to overt aggression. Very important to assess the individual and not make assumptions based on breed.

I have 2 dogs of different breeds, one is a complete baby and one is stoic, when I took the wimpy one to the vet with suspected ear mites she confirmed it but said she was surprised she was making so much fuss, I also got her to look in my other dogs ears and she took one look at him and said, "well I bet he's not making a fuss, and his ears are much worse". So that breed obviously is considered stoic!
He will whimper if something really hurts but usually just tries to lick you away!

Sorry Scuttlebutter, and yes you're completely right of course. My comments were a sarky ham-fisted attempt to point out the tax relief which the big rescues enjoy. Very many of the small, independent rescues don't have charitable status because it's unworkable for them to do so and thus they don't benefit from tax relief.

I have three dogs of the same breed and each one is different in their response to pain.

The responses range from stoic with no obvious indication of pain - regardless of manipulation or investigation in an injured area to utterly pitiful crying at the slightest touch of an injury.

As with many generalisations, response to pain in my experience does not depend on breed. It's down to the individual dog.

In the stoic dog indication of pain is subtle - she becomes more attached and a light goes out in her eyes. Those are the only signs.

I'd say my old girl was a stoic breed- never a fuss until she was in agony and even then it was low level whinging and not full throated growls. She let the vet do anything to her without a murmur, even when she had never met them.

My husband the vet says when you hit the spot the dog will stop panting and tense up a bit

my dog used to show she'd taken a jump badly by insisting on doing it again.....

her signs are - tensing, pulling the hurt bit away from you, low growl - she will also get stress diahorreah from any prolonged pain. not getting up when you come in in the morning - walking to get the ball, etc..

my Mums dog is a total wuss but will sit still nicely if someone examins his hurt bits, and yelp but not pull away, bless him.

Thanks all for your responses.

I'm wavering on my use of the term "stoic breed" then, as I fully appreciate what many of you say about stoic being used to define certain dogs rather than certain breeds, but I have come across more than one vet who has used the phrase "stoic breed". And I think my favourite breed are stoic as a whole (generally speaking )

Anyhoo....

I may be biased by my old (same breed dog) was taken, lame, to the vet. She squeezed and squeezed his paw. He huffed. She squeezed harder. He huffed. She said there is NO WAY there is anything in his paw as he couldn't tolerate this level of squeezing. I said he is huffing. She say, no way. She condescends to get the magnifying lamp from the operating theatre and says "Oh my god, he has glass in there - I can just see it - do you think he'll let me take it out without anaesthetic???" You've just been really, really hurting him and he huffed to tell you, I say. She pulled out a 1cm shard of glass stuck upright in his pad with her surgical tweezer things, whilst he stood gazing at her.

My rescue dog had to go emergency stylee to Vets for Pets (what else would they be for???!!) on Boxing day. She was in pain and I could see it. Her behaviour was bizarre. The emergency vet on Boxing day could see it, but my own vet couldn't 3 days later, but whilst he was palpating her abdomen she was huffing. Her eyes have lost her glint too, which is interesting. She seems to be starting to get back on her feet today so maybe whatever it was has passed [hoping].

My vet was baffled - he started to think by my description that it was neurological, and yet I could see her in pain. He could't. It took me straight back to the glass in paw incident.

MotherJack With the greatest respect to all vets there are some who just don't get what you're saying.

One of my girls was very off colour at the end of May so we visited the vet. He took her temp (104 which he said was normal ) poked her about and said she was fine.

We went back again 2 weeks later because she still wasn't right. She was crying when she pooed, she was suddenly terrified of my DH, wouldn't leave my side, wouldn't go on walks and had developed a strong, sweet doggy smell. It was so, so wrong.

The vet still said she was fine, and actually made me feel a bit of a fool for going. We kept on going back.

By the time August came round, I was really fed up with the vet and desperately worried about my dog so we stomped off to a different vet who immediately diagnosed a massive infection which needed 2 courses of heavy duty anti-biotics and then an operation to manually clean and disinfect the problem (anal glands).

My girlie is fine now, but I've posted all of that to say stick with your instincts. You know your dogs and if you think something's wrong, there probably is. And don't do what I did which was let a vet make you feel stupid for worrying.

I'm glad your dog is picking up - it's awful to see them suffer.