How to Build a Puppy

Into a Healthy Adult Dog

Julia Robertson

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781032215211
• eBook ISBN: 9781000590890
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Veterinary Medicine
• Index: Biological Sciences

Dogs do not demonstrate discomfort or pain in a way that can be easily translated by us humans, so we often miss that they are physically struggling. Understanding that making some very simple changes to our homes, activities, exercise regimes and how we train our puppies will have a massive positive impact on our dogs' lives.

Using her world-renowned Galen Myotherapy knowledge and approach, Robertson suggests and explains in detail how small, profoundly important but easy to implement changes can improve the way we not only look after and develop our puppies but also how maintenance of this easy programme continues your puppy's journey through into healthy adolescence and maturity.

Environment, exercise and activity habits have deep, ongoing effects and How to Build a Puppy... into a healthy adult dog explores ways in which positive change can be integrated easily into our normal lives. The book culminates into a full programme called the Galen Myotherapy Puppy Physical Development Programme ©.

Including:

• A dedicated section on anatomy, explaining in a functional way how everything in the body interrelates to form a functional moving structure
• Practical advice that is made logical and easy to interpret by the use of clear comparative descriptions as well as clear diagrams and pictures showing the movement and biomechanics of dogs
• Exercises and activities in a practical programme, for all situations, that can be followed to help build good foundations
• A full pictorial explanation of why so many 'traditional' exercise routines and activities are in fact incredibly damaging for our dogs

This book will help canine professionals better advise their clients, but also empower all readers to make their own changes, as well as having a better all-round understanding to enable more pertinent questions from their vet, breeder or puppy trainer.

1 Why is giving correct exercise and activity to your puppy so important?

DOI: 10.1201/9781003268789-1

The canine’s anatomical history: Functional anatomy and ethology

‘Of course he can do it, he’s a dog’. I often hear this or similar statements when people are describing their dog’s physical capabilities, suggesting that dogs can adapt to whatever challenge we present them with. But how do we know that a dog is coping physically or mentally?

One of the major problems we have is interpreting our dog’s levels of comfort or discomfort or even pain. We do not appear to have the ability to observe early signs of physical or mental discomfort; we miss the early signs (Morton, 2005), often only noticing when their behavioural changes are so dramatic that they affect our lives. Their stoicism is so great that we often miss problems, such as stress and pain, for weeks, months, and sometimes years.

Another statement I often hear is ‘they are lame, but they are not in pain’. This statement could not be further from the truth. Lameness = pain. How worrying is it that our understanding of dogs is based on the belief that being lame or limping is not a result of being uncomfortable at best, and at worst in constant pain.

Human lives, environment, and routine have dramatically changed in just the last 50–60 years. Our lifestyles have altered beyond recognition. Our environment, surroundings, and homes have changed so much and so quickly, that whilst we are happy and able to adapt, we have not given a thought to how these changes have or will impact on our dog’s physical and mental health.

In my opinion, these changes in our environment and lifestyle are having radical and negative effects on our dogs’ physical and mental condition. In this context, the word ‘environment’ refers to our houses, our daily routines, work, exercise, and nutrition as well as our life expectations and perceptions.

Why are our environmental changes having an impact on our dogs?

A dog’s anatomical form has fundamentally changed very little from the present day to how it looked thousands and thousands of years ago. Throughout history we believe that dogs were living as part of our community; they were living with us, but outside our homesteads. Generally, they were not ‘owned’ or claimed by an individual, but they lived in their canine community within a human community, a truly symbiotic relationship (Figures 1.1 and 1.2).

Figure 1.1 The Basenji – thought to be the oldest breed still in existence.

Figure 1.2 This picture was drawn 8,000 years ago, depicting dogs of that era. Their basic form and therefore anatomy is akin to many types of breeds now.

Their physical structure appears essentially the same now as it was then. A physical form that has the intrinsic natural ability to traverse substrates that was conducive to the design of their feet and claws, aiding maximum traction.

They lived with other canines, hunted, slept, and played when there was a requirement, and protected the humans of the community, being rewarded with food or the ability to safely scavenge. This functional interrelationship can still be seen in some areas and countries today, like the street dogs we see in various countries of the world (Figure 1.3).

In many urban situations, even up to the post-war era in the UK, dogs lived within households, but were let out in the morning, where they met up with other local dogs and scavenged and played together, forming functioning ‘family’ groups (Figure 1.4) (Bradshaw, 2011).

For 14,000 years, dogs’ lives have had relative environmental and social constants, but in the last 70 years these have changed radically – and we unfairly expect them to adapt, to live in our environment and lifestyles, without us making appropriate adaptations to help them!

Figure 1.3 Street dogs in India, relaxing together in the centre of the city.

(The author understands that these are broad statements and often dogs were tied up outside or had different existences to those that are being discussed. The rationale behind the narrative is to put into perspective how we have expected dogs to radically change within a very small time frame, and not as a global factual statement.)

Dogs’ current lifestyles

Historically, dogs have been selectively bred for specific different functions. Their legs have been bred longer or shorter, their bodies longer, heads bigger, noses flatter, tails taken off (now left on), dew claws removed and, in some breeds, even the arrangement of the limb placement has been positively bred to be altered.

Perhaps we should now breed dogs that can accommodate the new most common role, which is housemate, companion, member of a human family group, living within the modern environment and lifestyle.

Recommended reading: What can ‘streeties’ teach us about companion dogs? | The IAABC Journal has a great peer-reviewed article.

Sadly, it appears that within breed selection development, the predominance has not been to breed for the new human environment and lifestyle that dogs now share with us. Motivated by celebrity and fashion (Packer et al., 2017, 2019).

Therefore, many of these ‘human’ refinements or breed developments have in fact created a dog that is even less able to manage human lifestyle and environmental changes.

The rapidly evolving world of the domestic dog

Within living memory, dogs’ lives and habits have changed radically, from so many perspectives. One of the biggest changes is how dogs interact and cohabit with us. The domestic environment can prove stressful for companion animals who may respond in different ways depending upon individual differences (Mills et al., 2013). Not just the conditions within our homes, but also how we exercise them, feed them, activities we participate in, the equipment we use, and the restrictions we enforce upon them.

Less than 100 years ago domestic dogs were generally allowed out of their homes in the morning and were let back in at night. Many town and country dogs living in a household were left to roam on their own. They met up with other dogs, scavenged for food, slept, and explored their territory and almost had a ‘secret life’, but then went home in the evening and ate scraps from the table.

I am most certainly not advocating that we should be resorting back to this type of management. It is now of course, illegal in many countries for dogs to roam. It was also much safer in the days before vehicles dominated our roads in Europe.

What is difficult to reconcile is that we are seeing an epidemic of physical problems¹ with our domesticated dogs, such as osteoarthritis, disc problems, cruciate problems, premature ‘ageing’, persistent lameness, and also behavioural issues.

1 Galen Myotherapy empirical evidence from 20 years of treatment.

Could this be predominantly because dogs are living within an environment that they are not anatomically designed to cope with?

To understand why this statement could be affecting our dogs, we need to have a working knowledge of how a dog is structured and what this structure needs to maintain the dog’s physical integrity. For this it is helpful to understand how their anatomy works functionally; how the body is organised for efficiency and balance.

Figure 1.4 A typical scene reminiscent of post-war England, with dogs roaming freely to mix, then returning to their homes in the evening.

Figure 1.5 (a, b) 18,000-year-old Russian puppy ‘Dogor’ found preserved in a layer of permafrost in Siberia. It was found by Russian scientists in 2019. Copyright Dr Sergey Fedorov, North-Eastern Federal University, reprinted with permission.

Timeline

We are expecting dogs to adapt from a life...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• About the author
• Glossary
• Introduction
• 1 WHY IS GIVING CORRECT EXERCISE AND ACTIVITY TO YOUR PUPPY SO IMPORTANT?
• 2 CANINE ANATOMY: A WORKING KNOWLEDGE OF HOW A DOG IS STRUCTURED
• 3 THE PHYSICAL CONSTITUENTS OF A ‘JOINED-UP PUPPY’
• 4 BUILDING YOUR PUPPY USING THE GALEN PUPPY PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME
• 5 CATEGORIES INVOLVED WITH THE PUPPY’S DEVELOPMENT
• 6 YOUR NEW PUPPY: UNDERSTANDING THE IMPORTANCE OF A GOOD START AND PREPARING FOR THEIR NEW HOME
• 7 WHAT NOT TO DO! UNSUITABLE ACTIVITIES AND WHY
• 8 EQUIPMENT
• 9 PUPPY MASSAGE
• 10 ADDITIONAL USEFUL INFORMATION
• Recommended reading
• Bibliography
• Resources
• Index