What Top 10 Budget Friendly Things Can You Do to Help Your Dog?
With the rising cost of life in general I thought it may be helpful for me to talk about my top 10 ways to help keep your dog moving freely while keeping the cost manageable. Most people are aware that having a dog can be expensive, but there are free and cheaper ways to help to keep them healthy.
Exercise restriction
When it comes to exercise less is more, it much more important to do shorter walks little and offen than do one large walk a day. Just because they are appearing to wanting to exercise doesn’t mean that the movement is good quality. For example are they swinging their hips more, is one leg taking a longer step than the other or are they putting their paws down quicker. By allowing them to do more lower quality movement exercise it will promote their body muscle and movement compensate, that may be leading to soreness. Obviously it’s important to still ensure they are still getting mentally stimulated, but some “naughty” behaviour could due to being over or under stimulated or even pain related. Like children dogs aren’t always great at self regulation and will often still want to do something even if they are sore.
Keeping the hair/fur short underneath their paws
When the hair/fur is longer it covers their paw pad that helps them to grip the floor making it more difficult to walk on slippery surfaces. The equivalent for us would be us walking in fluffy socks with no grip that are too large on laminate flooring. Ensuring the fur/hair under their paws are kept as short as possible allows dogs to grip the floor better, gives them more confidence and reduced the risk of muscle strains.
Regular nail trimming
There is reason why horses get their hooves regularly shod every 4-6 weeks and it’s due it it impacting their way of going. The longer the nail the more force that is required to pivot the paws, which as a result applies more stress to the back of their legs including their tendons. As well as making it harder for your dogs to walk, by impacting their weight bearing and encouraging muscle compensations, over time this can potentially lead to tendon and muscle strain.
Using mats or boots with slippery floors/grounds
Dogs can really struggle to stabilise themselves on flooring where they can’t get much grip/traction. As they get older this can get worse as they may have reduced strength and confidence in their own body’s abilities, like in us humans. Similar to keeping the hair/fur shorter mats and possibly boots can be a really good way to reduce them sliding and possibly having strains or struggling to get up from the floor. Mats do not have to be expensive, I have had clients buy mats from places like Facebook marketplace place, used carpet off cuts or even used yoga mats. Boots can be helpful if mats aren’t option. However, it’s important to check for rubs and sweating, as they could make their paws sore if they’re paws are not able to breathe.
Limiting free range of the house
It’s surprising how much exercise dogs do around the house, especially if you have stairs or they like to follow you. Jumping up and down from sofas and cars can also put quite a lot of strain and stress through their muscles, joints and tendons, especially as dogs will do it with no official warm up. Training them to use steps and ramps from an early age can not only save your back from picking them up and help preserve their body for longer and make life easier when they get older.
Avoiding throwing balls
I know that many dogs love playing with balls. However, many dogs become over excited, when this happens they will jump and twist into awkward positions. This can potentially increase their risk of cruciate ligament strain, tearing or a complete rupture. The cruciate ligament, are two ligaments look like an X inside the knee (stifle) connecting the upper and lower back leg joints to form the knee joint. The cranial cruciate ligament the most prone to injury is what stabilises a dog’s knee and prevents the lower bone (tibia) sliding too far forward. Whereas the cadual cruciate ligament prevents the tibia sliding too far forward. On impact for a jump when the dog lands the lower limb takes the brunt of the force when landing. However, due to the impact or the dog’s next planned move twisting at the joint or other joints can occur, putting increased pressure on the tendon, but particularly the ligaments to stabilise their bones. It’s the jumping up and twisting that is most likely to cause an injury. Some dogs can continue to play with balls and not have a increased risk of injury, however it’s still important to watch out for twisting and signs of fatigue. For those at are really ball focused find it games can be a good alternative due to their lower impact.
Raising food bowls
By raising food bowls it reduced dogs bracing through their front end, as they tend to shift some of their weight more evenly into their back legs. I often see dogs with tight shoulders from compensating for back and back leg issue. Little things like this can help to gently encourage and make them more aware to weight bear more evenly, so they are less likely to be tight through those shoulders. Can you see in the photo below how the the nails toes curve inwards slightly on the front paw? That’s because the dog is not weight bearing evenly and is bracing through their front end and weight bearing more on the outside of their paws.
Keeping them within the ideal weight/body condition score
This may be obvious, but it will cost you more to feed an over weight dog. One reason being that you will have to by more food and the other reason being that they are more likely to have other health and or orthopaedic health issues. I generally prefer using body condition scoring rather than the scale, as it takes into consideration the whole animal not just comparisons within the breed. Almost people know there can be a lot of variation with breeds whether that is the height of the dog or broadness. For example working and show labs and spaniels, plus its even harder to know ideal crossbreed weights. I find Royal Canin linked below the most owner friendly chart.
Ensuring they can switch off and get good quality sleep
Like in humans it's really important dogs are able to switch off and recharge each day. Without good quality sleep, they are more likely to be irritable/grumpy or even appear over exited/aroused. Ensuring that they can have quiet place and not be disturbed is really important. This is why I recommend keeping toys outside of their “bedroom” as it’s one less thing for them to get distracted by rather than sleep.
This might be controversial, but not leaving it until last minute before going the vet if you suspect there may be a problem.
Some people may delay seeing the vet for a minor concern due to the worry over cost. However, the longer the concern goes on for the greater the risk that the concern has time to deteriorate. Often if something is diagnosed sooner rather than later the concern is less likely to be an emergency and hopefully will be cheaper to help/resolve and fingers crossed a better outcome. It is well known that out of hours particularly on a weekend is more expensive, so by trying to get them seen before then can obviously help with the overall bill. Treatment out of hours may also have additional costs when they are done out of hours compared to within the clinic hours, not just including the consultation cost. Obviously it is not always possible to avoid out of hours and emergencies happen, but as a rule vets would much rather see something minor than see an emergency than could have been avoided if treatment or a consultation had occurred sooner.
Is there anything that I have missed or you do with your dogs?
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