Is It Pain? Understanding The Effects Of Pain On Behavior And Performance

Added: 2026-05-04

[00:00:00]to talk back to us.

[00:00:03]We have a lot of people coming it up.

[00:00:05]Setting it up.

[00:00:07]Yeah. Thank you all for joining us on a beautiful Wednesday.

[00:00:12]Well, it depends on where you are in the world. That's true. Our Aussie and New Zealand friends are joining us.

[00:00:18]Um I'll just ask that you guys turn off your cameras, please, and mute your mics.

[00:00:23]Yeah. Thank you all for joining us. All right. YouTube is there cuz I just got really confused that I heard myself twice.

[00:00:31]Yeah. I I'm just going to say real quick, as you enter, guys, your mics off um and your cameras off.

[00:00:43]Awesome.

[00:00:45]And hopefully, yeah, the YouTube.

[00:00:48]If you like it, tell us where you're Where in the world you're tuning in Important. Where in the world you're tuning in from uh in the chat.

[00:00:58]Awesome.

[00:01:00]I'm in Scotland, and we do not need air conditioning here.

[00:01:04]>> [laughter] >> My face is red. It's hot in here.

[00:01:08]The um Oh. Normally, these podcast type things are pre-recorded, all right?

[00:01:14]They're pre-recorded, then we edit out all of our accidental F bombs or I mean, not that I would ever drop an F bomb.

[00:01:22]Um but one of the reasons I really like Dr. Knapp from the first get-go is like within seconds of meeting him um like I told him that, you know, there were some other opinions on what was going on with the dog, and he immediately dispelled them with an F bomb, and I'm like, "You know what? I like this guy."

[00:01:38]>> [laughter] >> So, so we decided to just go live, um which would be really fun. And Anything can happen. Right. And so before we jump in, I'll just um let you all know cuz we're streaming on two platforms.

[00:01:54]Um feel free to ask questions in the chat, or if you're watching on YouTube, hello. Um ask questions in the comments.

[00:02:00]It's a 99% chance we're not going to be able to answer questions right now, but we'll answer them after, right? Cuz we'll get a transcript of the chat, and we'll be able to go into the YouTube comments.

[00:02:11]Um the reason we can't answer questions right now is it will legit be an 8-hour thing if we did it.

[00:02:17]Know ourselves too well. So, with that in mind, I'm going to give us a little drum roll and get us rolling. Um welcome. Uh this is the first collaboration of The Athletic Dog and Brain Camp, and we are very excited um about all of it, and I figured we'll start with um quick introductions, so you know who these various faces are.

[00:02:36]So, I'm going to show it. It's kind of like this Brady Bunch format here. I'm going to go below me to Dr. Kathy to real quick first. Hi. So, I am a veterinarian, and uh I am also a neuroscientist.

[00:02:55]And I have spent part of my career in research and part of my career in the clinic. Uh my clinical interest is uh and my my um internship and residency are in anesthesia and analgesia. So, I've always been very interested in pain and its mechanisms and how we can control it with pharmacology and non-pharmacological interventions.

[00:03:19]And I more recently see behavior cases.

[00:03:23]So, my interest here with these guys is in the bit that veterinary medicine likes to ignore, which is the animals that might be in chronic pain but don't show obvious signs of chronic pain um because often they end up in my behavior clinic. Um so, yeah, that's me.

[00:03:42]Awesome. We'll go over to Dr. Sherman Canapp next.

[00:03:46]>> Sherman um Canapp, and I promise Tracy not to drop any of those F bombs live.

[00:03:50]Um but yeah, so boarded surgeon ACVS, small animal surgeon, also um boarded sports med specialist. I'm somehow past president of the college as well, and we're one of the first groups to start sports med rehab orthopedics back in 2006, and uh created an affiliation where we went throughout the US, and then we're in Finland, Japan, and Australia, and um have a translational uh regenerative medicine type um company called Orthobiologics and Innovations. So, we take products and engineering development through human into vet and vet into human, which is a lot of fun. Um clinically, through Canapp Sports Medicine, I see patients uh by coastal.

[00:04:25]So, I'm in Maryland um at Heart for Animals, but also in California um northern California, the SAM'S Clinic, and uh really excited about two of the projects. One is Kennel Longevity, which we've been working on since 2020, about 3 years now. Um that launched, and that's all about, you know, health span, not just lifespan uh for dogs. And the important thing that I'm most passionate about is injury prevention. You know, how can we prevent these incredible athletes or canine companions from having an issue in the first place? And I think a lot of it is awareness, a lot of it is just things that we can do from a standpoint of body health and awareness, whether it be medical management, supplements, you know, exercise, nutrition. We're going to be talking about a lot of those things. Um and if there is an injury or a condition, um how can we conservatively go about approaching it? You know, we can always do surgery, we can't undo surgery. So, um the issue here that I'm really excited to talk to these brilliant individuals about and and team members is when we don't really think we're recognizing pain. And that's one of the number one things I see as they come into the clinic, and they say, "I'm not sure if my dog's in pain," or others don't think my dog's in pain, or some do. And so, really trying to do a deep dive into understanding how much of this is behavior versus how much of this could be a soft tissue I hate that word, but soft tissue injury um and trying to, you know, discern which is which. So, yeah, so I'm going to I'm a I'm a student here cuz I'm learning from these guys. There's so much I don't understand about pain management and and behavior. So, I'm really excited to hear what, you know, everyone has to say.

[00:05:56]Awesome. I will toss it over to Bobby now.

[00:05:59]Hi, everybody.

[00:06:00]Um but I am a certified dog behavior consultant and professional dog trainer.

[00:06:05]I've been in the industry for 25 years.

[00:06:09]In the last say 8 years, I've been focusing on behavior Bobby, we've got your echo again. We've got your echo again. What did you do last time to un-echo? While she's un-echoing, I'll introduce myself.

[00:06:22]Sorry, Bobby.

[00:06:24]Cuz it's really good information, but we're like we're hearing it three times.

[00:06:27]So, while she's un-echoing, I'm Tracy.

[00:06:29]Hello, Tracy Spanner. Um I do dog sports.

[00:06:33]And so, um I've done agility for we're coming up on 30 years, and more recently, since like 2019, 2020, flyball. So, I've got both ends of things happening, which is really um interesting, all these really different sports. And part of what I'm seeing is how can we help these dogs be great sports partners so that um we can all have a great time in the ring, human and canine. Um and in recent years, thanks to the Brain Camp project we're doing, I've become super interested in the neuroscience. And so, being able to work both ends of it gives us a really unique insight into how we can help these dogs. It goes way beyond just training. Um and so, it's been a really exciting set of projects, and so I'm super excited for this one. So, I'll come back to Bobby now. Um You probably have to unmute. There you go. Wait, no.

[00:07:30]She said no, not yet. Oh, she's putting in new ear.

[00:07:33]Very exciting.

[00:07:35]We'll let her camera pick up the ears.

[00:07:39]Do do do. This is where Zoom needs like music we can play in the interval.

[00:07:43][laughter] Like elevator music.

[00:07:45]>> Exactly. Exactly.

[00:07:47]So, awesome. Well, we'll let her finish working out her sound. Um and we'll keep running forward, or I can do Bobby's introduction while she's sorting out her sound. I've known her for many of those 30 years. We got our start working together at the ASPCA Behavior Department in New York City. Um and you might even seen us on oh, animal animal cops. What was the name of that show? Um back in the day where we weren't so good at not getting trying to be bitten. And so, she now works not only with um dog sport dog, but like a high-level professional cases, and she is also an agility competitor. So, a really good balance of the best of both worlds.

[00:08:28]So, um we are here to invite you to look at dog sports and behavior through a very different lens, especially when there are training challenges, because it might not be behavior. And that's from these, you know, four relatively different walks of life, that's what's brought us together into this. So, I figure a kind of a fun way, a little crowd sourcing amongst four of us would be, "What have you heard or been told when there's been a training problem um that might not be a training problem?"

[00:08:59]Like, what crazy things have you heard?

[00:09:03]Um I'll start just to throw one off in.

[00:09:05]Um I've heard, "Oh, she's not even trying," about the dog.

[00:09:10]Right? Oh, the dog's She's not even trying. She didn't even try.

[00:09:13]Right? What else have you heard either about your own dogs or um in your practices?

[00:09:20]I guess one that I hear relatively frequently is that my dog doesn't enjoy the sport. Um whilst that's a really important consideration and thought process, in the cases I'm thinking of, it wasn't actually that the dog wasn't enjoying it per se. It was more that the dog was finding it challenging because of a physical health um problem that was happening.

[00:09:43]Great. When When cases come to you, Dr. Canapp, what do you what do you hear? It is it is everything from "There's nothing wrong with your dog," because they've been to their veterinarian or even other specialists, and uh we have to remember that most of these sporting dogs are super high drive. Everything's to out of 10. They're not going to show anything. A leg could fall off and they're still eating weaves or going over a wall. And so many times they say, "Oh, it is a training issue that your dog's at the line and won't go. At the line, takes a sit." And clearly that's a training issue. The dog's popping out of weaves, it's got to be a training issue.

[00:10:18]Um you know, less drive, it's got to be a training issue. And so we unfortunately a lot of the time they come in with their laundry list of what they've been told elsewhere, um all falling back to the dog's a training issue. Rarely do I hear the "Oh, I think my dog's in pain" coming from that referral source.

[00:10:34]But the owner trusts their gut. You know, these handlers, these owners, they trust their gut and they're like, "I don't think this is a training issue. My dog's been competing at the world team level for years and now it's doing this." You know, and so I it's it's a trust it's a gut check, right? And so unfortunately though, I see the laundry list of issues that come in and many of the times they're saying it's it's on the handler or it's on the dog. And on the dog meaning training, not meaning physical.

[00:11:01]Yeah, absolutely. Bobby, what have you heard um when you're working with your clients?

[00:11:07]A lot of what I'm dealing with is um veterinarians still go to the their general practitioner and they're not seeing the issue that I'm clearly seeing in the way that the dog is moving. Um and unfortunately sometimes the clients are saying, "You know what? That's as good as it's going to get. I trust my vet.

[00:11:29]I'm going to stop there." And then sometimes they say, "Well, once in a while I'll get a client that's like willing to push through." I actually have one that I just sent to you uh Dr. Knapp because um her regular vet isn't finding anything in x-rays or just looking at the dog in the way that the dog moves. And you know, the dog's doing agility. The dog is jumping. The dog is playing with his brother. Right? Uh eating in a like often optimistic for the most part.

[00:11:57]Um personality hasn't changed.

[00:11:59]Enthusiasm, interest to train hasn't changed. And yet the dog is moving in such a way and then there is a couple things happening in the ring that I'm like, "We've got to push further.

[00:12:08]There's something else happening."

[00:12:11]Yeah. Or eight all those are are amazing. Um I've certainly with my own dogs that have had, you know, issues or an illness, I've certainly been told, "Oh, it's a motivation issue" or "It's a training issue." Which as a dog trainer I find particularly offensive.

[00:12:26]>> [laughter] >> You know, it's not good for the ego. And the other thing that's I think heartbreaking is um people have been told that it's a relationship issue with the dog. Um which just kind of crushes you in the heart. Um before we leave this topic though, uh I want to ask our doctors you've both mentioned that like a high-drive, high-arousal dog will continue to work through this. Like under the hood medically, what might be going on that a dog that is in pain that they would still be willing to go into the ring and do the sport?

[00:13:03]Uh Shall I start from a first opinion point of view? Um Yeah, I guess the thing that people forget is that athletes often perform when they're injured. In fact, if you speak to athletes, they're very rarely not injured in some way or other. They have tweaks and, you know, little uh gripes, etc. So it's completely illogical for us to assume that just because the dog does the sport that it must therefore be perfectly comfortable.

[00:13:29]The question is whether it's comfortable enough to do the sport. And of course, it's always in a balance physiologically with how much adrenaline there is in the body, which is a natural painkiller. And um you know, Dr. Knapp has already said these are often very high-drive dogs, so they're often, you know, flooded physiologically with all of the natural painkillers, endorphins, cortisol, uh even dopamine will increase the motivation and push through some of those barriers to motivation like low-level pain signals.

[00:14:00]The other thing is that chronic pain is a different beast to acute pain. So a lot of these dogs will have had the niggle going on for some time and building up over time. And the physiology of chronic pain is very different in that it's much easier for the brain to downregulate those signals temporarily. Basically just shut them off so that the body doesn't process them. And if you think about it, you know, the whole point of pain is to flag up, "Hey, there's something wrong that needs to be fixed." You don't want that flagging up if you're a human caveperson going to war or you're struggling with some other really important like, you know, securing food resource. And for our dogs, they don't need that niggle if they're going into the ring because it's not going to benefit them there and then. It doesn't make any sense for their brain to process those signals at that time. So it could absolutely be the case that when your dog is competing that they are not in pain even though they are other times. And we'll get into this a little bit later, but that's where it gets super complicated in terms of the biopsychosocial model of pain.

[00:15:09]Did you say biosocial?

[00:15:12]Biopsychosocial model of pain. Well, that's a lot to unpack. And I have to go after her with my findings. If you line up 10, 20, 30, 40, 100 performance dogs, they're all going to have some issues.

[00:15:26]You know, if you take a skier, they're going to have maybe some knee issues.

[00:15:28]You take someone that runs, plantar fasciitis.

[00:15:32]You know, basketball, jumper's knee. I think every sport comes with its thing, right? So you're always going to be managing body health, right? And so a lot of these dogs that are high-level athletes whether it's field trial, agility, IGP, whatever it is, they're going to have stuff, right? And so just because there's some stuff, doesn't mean they're broken, doesn't mean they should retire. It just means that we have to be aware and body map. I think body mapping and having a a baseline is so so critical, left to right, front to back.

[00:15:59]Um and so that way you just stay on top of those things. But Kathy nailed it on the head, there's acute pain and then there's chronic pain. And so you may have a tight soas that you've been working with forever. You're almost a cyclist and you have a tight soas. Yeah, you just learn how to manage it. But you can have an acute on chronic. You can have that dog that fell off the dog walk, you know, which seems to be this hot topic right now. Um and all of a sudden that chronic became acute. Okay, now the dog isn't it is uncomfortable, but it's still going to run. It's still going to run. But all of a sudden now we're knocking a bar with the left rear and you're like, "Huh.

[00:16:30]What's up with that? The dog just doesn't want to run. The handler was off cueing the dog off or is there really something going on? Cuz he's always had that chronic soas and so we just kind of ignore it. Um so Kathy nailed it on the head how to kind of dive deep into that acute on chronic. And but they're going to run. They're going to run. And so that's why it gets back to gut check and video, video, video, video. I can't emphasize enough. Video your dogs and have your friends video your dogs from all different angles cuz data's king and we need to see, "Whoa, you never took that line like that." And now you are.

[00:17:04]And so um that's so important. But Kathy nailed it with the acute on chronic is something we have to work through.

[00:17:10]And I guess Oh, sorry, Bobby. Yeah.

[00:17:12]Bobby's on.

[00:17:15]Jump it.

[00:17:18]I was waiting for you to unmute me. It's your uh the hostess with the mostest.

[00:17:21]That's okay. Um I I was telling you about this case right before we came on that I wanted to share this video with you guys. And I think exactly what you just said, Dr. Knapp, is exactly what I believe has been happening with this dog. It's the There was some kind of chronic situation going on. And then he actually did fall off an obstacle and crashed into a jump a week later. So he had like two major crashes, so to speak. And now there's this avoidance behavior that happens here and there in the ring. The dog's like, "Go and go and go and I don't want to do the weave poles. Don't make me do the weave poles." Or we'll sit, stay, line up at the start line. And then when handler releases, "I don't want to go." This all started in the last couple months. But wow, when you just said chronic to acute, man, it's just like a light bulb.

[00:18:12]And it can be a bit of a chicken or the egg thing is what came first, the the pain or the crashes.

[00:18:21]Um and it may not even be relevant once it's going on because you've got both now. And then it becomes our responsibility to really help the dog.

[00:18:30]Um because that's, you know, dogs communicate. And sadly it's not English or whatever language. It is um their behavior. And so we do have actually a really cool video to get to soon. But right before we hop into that, I wanted to kind of talk about like what behavior we might see when there's pain. Like pain but not limping. Right?

[00:18:50]I'm not I'm not thinking of like a dog that's just blown a cruciate. That's kind of obvious. I'm thinking like some type of underlying pain that's affecting behave behavior and performance. What types of behavioral output are we seeing? So when you guys are saying, "All right, this might be pain." What behavior might be a tip-off for you?

[00:19:13]Throw it over to Bobby first.

[00:19:19]Okay. There we go. Um There's I am always looking at by the time the client comes to me, they're usually there's already the issue, right? So I'm not seeing what the client's like the dog is like at baseline.

[00:19:34]So I'm often I often ask for videos of what how the dog moved in a variety of contexts before they came to me if I'm suspecting there's a pain issue involved. And that's kind of where I'm at with this one case that I just mentioned.

[00:19:48]Uh I said this looks We looked at some videos together of he is today. We looked at some video of of class from last week and I said, you know, just can you get me some video from like 3 months ago and 6 months ago. I just want to see what he looked like when he was moving.

[00:20:04]Sometimes I'd even ask for video a year ago, a year prior cuz I want to see what is the change in the way that the dog moves. Is there a change? Sometimes it's a structural issue like they just move the way they move because of how they're built, right? Some dogs are not bred for agility. They're adopted and then they just started agility, right? And so they move differently.

[00:20:25]But it's often there's some kind of problem in the ring.

[00:20:30]Uh it usually feels not sudden necessarily but it wasn't there before.

[00:20:37]Um and they're they've tried to train it, right? We've trained it and trained it and trained it and nothing's changing. And that's typically where I'm like, okay, let's let's look back at some old performances and some old video. The changes in movement um and when the training's not sticking.

[00:20:56]Like when it's good training we and all the dog sports nowadays there's such good training technology out there and we were training, we're training and things are not getting better, things are maybe getting worse.

[00:21:08]Right? Those are really two top things.

[00:21:10]What else have you guys seen? What else?

[00:21:13]I guess uh it's worth mentioning that increased arousal or arousal at times when you don't expect arousal is very very common.

[00:21:23]Um and there's an argument for saying that that could be a physiological coping strategy because of course with pain comes an increased activation of the HPA axis which is the biology that releases the adrenaline and cortisol and they are natural painkillers. So it's entirely physiologically uh logical that if you have pain one way of dealing with it and making sure that it doesn't interfere with your performance is that increased arousal because that's going to make sure that it dampens down those pain signals.

[00:21:57]Um That might be on that point that for dog sports that might be the most um like thing that blows people's minds because we think, okay, the dog might be in pain, they'll slow down, they'll get sad, maybe they'll get sniffy. Yes, to all of those but they can also get more active. They can zoom. They can get bitey. Right? It can appear like frustration behavior or it can appear as lack of response. Like I'm not listening um but it's it could indeed be pain because it just could be the nervous system and the neuroendocrine system kind of hijacking itself to produce ways to cope with what's going on in the moment to handle it.

[00:22:40]I want to add one more thing about what the behaviors that you described, Trappy. Sometimes it can look like the dog seems even more like they're working harder to focus if that makes sense.

[00:22:53]Like they look more intense about doing the thing that they have to do or they get stuck in a loop of like just the same handling sequence where you said they can't really process and pay attention to you and that might be calling the dog in the moment. It can manifest in the in ways that feel so unexpected and not make any sense to the handler. Right, like they're going faster, it can't be pain. They're going faster. Oh, no, it it can be pain for sure.

[00:23:22]>> and I see video after video that people send in and the dog all of a sudden it's offline in the ring and it'll start just doing zoomies. You know, all of a sudden starts spinning and speaking back to the handler or the trainer and in my mind we can't understand what they're saying but it's I'm not going to go through that next jump sequence because I'm feeling it and I'm done. You know, so it's it's we don't know what they're saying but for me it's it's it's about the data and if we look at different sports or even working dogs, the number one thing I hear from dogs that do say search and rescue, IGP, any of those working line breeds is when they go open the, you know, the back door to the SUV or the cruiser or the hatchback, they hesitate. So that one little bit of hesitation, it's amazing.

[00:24:07]We're talking like a micro millisecond, you know, all of a sudden that hatchback's up and usually that Mal or that shepherd or that lab, they're in.

[00:24:15]They're in before they even turn. All of a sudden they look at them and they're just sitting there. Why? Cuz they have lower lumbar stuff, you know, that's going on or maybe tight piriformis or these subtle little things. So but they're not talking to you. It's just a hesitation um in the ring. All of a sudden we change our leads, we change our weave entry, all of a sudden we're just, you know, the wraps are different and you're like, what's up with that?

[00:24:37]Oh, it must be something I'm doing wrong. Um so it's such little subtle subtle things and even their time zone course, they've always run this at this course in this ring and all of a sudden now it's this. That means something. You know, so I'm looking at not the lameness, you know, because I well, we'll look on the gait analysis because we know that that's way better than my eyes. Um but it's it's those little subtle cues that they're noticing and when they send in the videos and I'm watching the dog climb the wall or I'm watching the dog go through weaves, I'm like, yeah, that's not consistent with what I typically see in other videos you sent. Um so I have to kind of dig down into that little micro level. Um they're not limping, they're not crying, they're not biting, they're doing all those little crazy things but more so, interestingly, the hyper arousal that you all just mentioned, I see that when they've knocked a bar, they've pulled out of the weaves or something and then they start doing this all around the ring and you're like, what's going on with that? Um so I I don't know but possibly it's the hyper arousal that you're you're mentioning.

[00:25:39]Yeah, the um the the brain does crazy things. Um That's the good news and the bad news for a lot of what we're looking at. So that's a that's a nice segue into like, all right, so we're we're telling you all that it could be um pain underlying some of these issues that are causing trouble in the ring or you're training, you're training, you're training um and it's it's not the dog making a conscious decision to not learn or and they're not making a conscious decision to miss the weave entry or drop the ball in flyball or miss the bite in the ring sports. So why is that happening? Like what is going on in the body where if there is some type of underlying pain, how come the training isn't sticking? How come they are unable to respond to the cues that we give them? And personally in my learning as a dog trainer understanding this perspective has has given me an entirely new approach to my dogs, your dogs, everybody's dogs because that understanding of how their brains process this is really really going to help everyone frame things differently. So I'll turn it over to our resident neuroscientist, Dr. Murphy to give us a little an overview as much as you can, right? Cuz it's it's kind of like a whole doctoral dissertation that I'm asking for.

[00:26:59]>> I'm like, which bit you want? That's a huge [laughter] subject.

[00:27:04]I mean, I guess the one of the things to talk about is the fact that chronic pain, well, pain acute and chronic but particularly chronic pain can lead to changes in the way that the brain areas communicate with each other.

[00:27:17]So one of the classic examples that is particularly impactful for high-level sports and I would say particularly impactful for agility just because of the way that the brain has to function to be successful at that sport is that it changes the functional connectivity. So those brain areas that light up together, the brain the the connectivity within the brain is a bit like an orchestra symphony. So when it's working well, you know, the right instruments come in at the right time and they play at the right level um so that the sound is beautiful, etc. But if the different brain areas that are not necessarily structurally connected are not lighting up and being active at the right time, then very quickly the orchestra's um playing starts to sound a bit off um and you start to get the wrong instrument coming in at the wrong time, etc. What that means if we use attention as uh an example of that, attentional processing, if you imagine the attentional processing that the dog's brain has to do for agility, it's having to deal with auditory inputs, visual inputs, tactile inputs, proprioceptive inputs, all of these different things um and pay attention not only to the handler but also to the obstacles and to a certain extent um you know, to the rest of the context that it's working in.

[00:28:39]Um that's a lot of attentional processing. So it has to switch attention to different attentional modalities very quickly and if it doesn't do that efficiently, that's going to bump on to the next attentional shift and to the next attentional shift.

[00:28:54]So just those changes in the functional connectivity of the attentional processing can mean that you're having to try so much harder to be able to concentrate on um all of the different cues, all of the different stimuli and then be able to enact those in terms of the right behavior at the right time, right acceleration, deceleration, the very slight, you know, angle tilt to make sure that you wrap the weave or, you know, um you're in the right position for the next obstacle. Um and attention is only one of those executive functions that is incredibly important for um high-level performance.

[00:29:36]So it's actually surprising that we humans and dogs can function at such a high level when they do have chronic pain and, you know, one of those reasons is because they down regulate the pain signals so that they can get better functional connectivity. But you can only do that for so long with an injury. Um and one of the reasons for that is the gut microbiome. And there I will pause cuz if you get me onto gut microbiome, I will talk forever. Future future podcast. Future podcast. Just just to kind of put um um a side note on that is when Dr. Murphy talks about attentional state and attentional processing, um in the dog training world, we think of attention as in the dog paying attention, consciously choosing to pay attention. Um and that's not what this is. This is the brain being bombarded with all the things all at once, right?

[00:30:37]Internal, external. Um They have to deal with my input, sorry dog. They have to deal with the environmental input. They have to deal with their internal input. So they're not consciously in that moment making what we would call operant decisions.

[00:30:53]All right? The brain is very much on autopilot in a lot of ways, prioritizing different information, and there is a limited amount of bandwidth. And if the brain has to to devote extra energy, like literally extra glucose and oxygen or extra bandwidth to something like that underlying buzz of pain, then things that we would like, back to dog trainer world, things that we would like them to pay attention to and respond to, cannot be prioritized. And I say cannot rather than will not because it's not a choice that they're making, right? Bobby, would you consider that something that you see also?

[00:31:38]Oop, got to get her sound on.

[00:31:40]>> Yeah, I don't know why but it when I press the screen it's delayed in like letting me unmute. So yeah, absolutely.

[00:31:46]And I wanted to even point out to what Kathy was saying. Should I call you Dr. Murphy or Cath?

[00:31:51]Cath Kathy's fine, yeah. Kathy's fine, yeah.

[00:31:54]So what I also see is almost like a delay in response sometimes because they're processing so much. It's almost like, you know, we've talked about latency. We've talked about, you know, like how long does it take for the dog to respond to a cue? Sometimes um what I look for is sometimes it's not necessarily environmental, especially if they know the cue really well, like a hand target. Sometimes it could be that the brain is processing so much information, including the pain that their body might be feeling or that they might be managing. So yeah, absolutely.

[00:32:28]I've um seen where their ability to focus on what I'm asking them to do is challenged, delayed, um something or or or avoidance. So there's something that happened in that moment, and I am very clear that they know that behavior really well. So back to the piece I was talking about, I'm saying this is I only met with her yesterday. So it's and I saw the video of this dog who knows weave poles really well and said, I don't want to do the weave poles. And she said, I think it's because it was angled towards the wall and he doesn't really like to weave into the wall.

[00:33:07]And I said, "Mhm, based on everything that we're seeing and the way that he's moving, in addition to this very clear avoidance behavior in the moment you asked for the weaves, I think there's more going on here, right?" So it's this is where you have to look at the whole picture and not just look at at the skill that you've been working on that the dog might be saying no to.

[00:33:28]Cuz something like the weave poles is such a complex series of behaviors that if there is an underlying issue, doing more weaves can actually get things going entirely the wrong direction physically and psychologically.

[00:33:45]No, take it back to what Kathy was saying. There is it's interesting. She said gut bio, right? We know the gut's the largest organ in the body and most important. We're not going to go down there. That'll be in the next podcast.

[00:33:55]But we also have to think about these are athletes and they are traveling from time zone to time zone. So just like it's one of our sports going from the East Coast to the West Coast, that time change, the stress of a new environment, the stress of the other dogs, um it's a huge thing that we don't take into consideration as well. Um sleep, not only for the dog but for the handler.

[00:34:14]And And I And I hate to always bring it back to one health and translational medicine. But if the handler or the owner or the trainer is off, guess what's going to happen? They work as a team, okay? I might be racing my little car and if I had a bad day or bad night's sleep on track, that's on me.

[00:34:28]But if the handler or the owner is off in that ring with the dog, it may not even be the dog. So we have to take it all the way back to that level of is that person running with an injury? Did that person get sleep? Is that person's gut health in check? Um it's a team. Right? So no matter what sport you're talking about with your dog, it's a team. And so sometimes, and I've seen this in videos where I'm watching and I'm like, the dog's running beautifully. Mary, what's up with you?

[00:34:56]You know, and so and not to be rude, but I mean I these are clients that I know well enough. I'm like, and she's like, "Oh yeah, I sprained my ankle." And I'm like, "Okay, well that's the dog is used to you being in certain places as well.

[00:35:07]It might not be a long game." And and so just to, you know, back table that for future discussions. But man, there's other things, you know, Kathy brought this up with the gut biome, but that's huge. And you know, we're we're not even I'm here I am a sports medicine orthopedic specialist, but man, I I'd spend more time talking about these other things because I think they play a huge role in human athletes and for canine athletes.

[00:35:30]Absolutely.

[00:35:32]Tracy, one Oh, sorry, Tracy. That was very rude.

[00:35:36]One thing we haven't mentioned is noise sensitivity, but it fits here perfectly.

[00:35:40]>> Yes, we've got that in the case study.

[00:35:42]Okay, well we'll leave it till then cuz it also slides into gut microbiome and you want to keep pulling me back from that. So [laughter] Let's move on. I'm taking notes is what I'm doing.

[00:35:53]But yes, that's there's so many behavioral outputs.

[00:35:56]And so like what Dr. Murphy and Dr. Canat were talking about in terms of the this holistic stress response in the body, it's all driven by our our frenemy, the HPA axis. All right? It's all driven by that. It's not like we have separate systems for, "Okay, I'm going to a big agility event." versus um "I'm stressed out about paying the bills at home." Or you know, it's all driven by the same system in the body, and the body at some point is going to have to figure out how to deal with that.

[00:36:28]Um and I I I like to look at what the brain does, and I think there's a big shift in the brain when it's trying to handle stress, and pain is stress on the body. It goes into um those F responses that we like to talk about so much, which is the amygdala, like the little primitive lizard bottom of the brain, uh which keeps us alive, all right? And the the brain is smart, but it doesn't always realize that like fly ball is not life or death, right? Or obedience. Um but we still get defaulted behaviors that are linked to these F responses, like fight. If a dog has um an underlying pain issue, you might see more reactivity, right? One of the little dogs that we're using um for a case study had one of her symptoms was a big dog bumped her. Just bumped into her, and she had a hugely overblown response. Like went completely nuts.

[00:37:21]Everyone was like, "Dude, what's your problem?" All right? But that was a pain system. Uh and we already talked about flight, like the zoomies and the avoidance, freezing, right? Like when they freeze on the start line or they don't want to go and they're like, "No, thanks. Can't." Um sometimes we'll see fawning, which is when they go visit and get all licky licky with the ring crew. They're not blowing you off, right? There's something else going on, right? Or fidgeting when they can't stand still.

[00:37:50]Um all of that is linked in.

[00:37:52]Um and like you were saying earlier, intrinsic and extrinsic motivators can help mask the pain um and the arousal of competing, but it's still there. So I figure that's a really good segue into looking at um some case studies. We have some really cool videos so you don't have to just look at our smiling faces the whole time. And this one this first one is an audience participation video where we're going to show you video. There's going to be a little narration, and uh tell us what you see.

[00:38:23]All right? So I'm going to share it. I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Canat.

[00:38:26]>> Wait, tell us what you see in the chat.

[00:38:28]Oh yes, thank you.

[00:38:30]Thank you, Bobby. Yeah, write it in the chat or in the YouTube comments.

[00:38:35]Good call. So let's go to this.

[00:38:38]Let's see if the share is going to cooperate.

[00:38:41]You should be able to see the athletic dog.

[00:38:45]You're good.

[00:38:46]So this will loop a few times.

[00:38:51]What are you seeing?

[00:38:58]It is a an exam bicep stretch.

[00:39:02]I've taken the sound out so you're not going to get any hints.

[00:39:10]So I can start telling you what they're seeing. People are seeing Do you want me to just start to say what people are seeing? Yes. Licking, eye blinking, a lot of lip licking people are seeing. What else you guys seeing?

[00:39:26]Uh frozen, more blinking, eyeball blink shifting away, lip licking. Someone said lip licking.

[00:39:34]>> [laughter] >> Avoidance, pulling away, ears are dropping. Yeah.

[00:39:39]Side eye.

[00:39:44]>> What else? What else you got there?

[00:39:49]Violated people's But what are you What are you asking them in terms of what are they seeing? Is it just behavior that you're asking? Are you just asking for um body language, Tracy?

[00:40:00]All of the above. Okay. Anything you say. Ear twitches, ear movement, licking.

[00:40:08]Yeah, so I'll give a little hints as well, just so there's some context here.

[00:40:11]So, this is during a a sports eval. This dog uh does sports as well. And um this was just a health evaluation. A lot of the dogs I see, the majority of dogs I see many times is um just evaluations. You know, it's all about wellness and prevention. So, we were just doing an evaluation. They weren't sure if they were seeing anything, you know, during sports. This dog does multiple different sports. And uh so, as I'm evaluating, now this is a a shoulder stretch. We bring the shoulder up into flexion, and that tests the supraspinatus as a rotator cuff muscle tendon. And then when you bring that leg back that you see there, that's the bicep stretch, okay? And this is what we call a passive stretch. Uh you should be doing this after you've run, at the end of the day, at the end of a trial. You don't do these before you go out in the ring. Um those are active stretches. So, a passive stretch is what you're seeing here. We weren't expecting this. And I again, I video a lot of my evaluations.

[00:41:01]I let the owners video them so they can learn and see baselines.

[00:41:05]Um and the things that we're seeing, a lot of you have absolutely nailed it on the head. You know, you can only see a video. You can't feel what I'm feeling.

[00:41:12]So, I'll give away a little bit also on things that you necessarily can't feel.

[00:41:17]Um but when you bring that leg back, it should be a nice tight rubber band, almost like a TheraBand, and it comes to a nice end stretch. This one was not.

[00:41:25]You could feel it was not going to the normal end range. When you would go to that location, we were starting to show the signs that you're all seeing if we look at awareness in the front end. Um and then the leg went into spasm, okay?

[00:41:36]So, and you always compare to the opposite sides. When you would bring that leg back to end range, you could feel some shaking, okay? And that wasn't the dog being nervous. That was an involuntary, you know, response um to we can say pain um or to the stretch reflex. And so, the other thing we see, we're actually we're not falling away, we're jumping away. We're trying to get away from that sensation um in that stretch. You guys nailed it on the head with the things that we're seeing up front. We are looking. We're paying attention. Initially, we were looking straight. Pupils dilated. We licked our lips. We took a deep breath. We held our breath. Ears changed. We looked just slightly. So, all of those things within What was that? Half a second? You know, all happened at the same time. So, these are things that you guys should be doing at home, of course, as part of your cool down routine is stretching and body mapping, getting that baseline. So, if you feel when you're doing that stretch, "Whoa, this feels different than the other side." All of a sudden we're seeing any of these changes that you can see here, you know, holding our breath, looking, ears, licking, mark that down. You know, put keep a journal and uh keep your files, you know, in a in a folder, all your videos so you can track that over time. But um you you guys nailed a lot of it. Some of what you couldn't see, you can feel. You know, you couldn't feel that I'm getting a a not a normal end range. You can't feel that I'm getting some spasm. Um this one's being a little choppy. If you look on the YouTube video um online, it's it's not as choppy, and you will see up around the area of the biceps uh point of origin that there is some spasm going on in there as well. Um yeah, comments from from the rest of you, Bobby, Kathy, Tracy.

[00:43:13]Yeah. Do you want me to put up the uh the seven signs? The next >> Yeah. Yeah, let's go to it.

[00:43:18]There we go.

[00:43:19]>> So, yeah. So, leg goes away, you know, leg goes into spasm. That's Anyone out there that has any area of your body that may have some stuff. A lot of us are soas, right? You go into that warrior pose, and you just go deep enough into it, and you feel that little "Oh my god, it's always tighter on one side than the other." Um in this case, they were actually, you know, this little dog was trying to pull the leg away, like, "I'm done. You're not doing any more stretches." Absolutely holding their breath. And usually at the same time you're going to see those pupils dilate. At the same time, the facial expression changes. They kind of look at you a little bit. They're not going to try to bite. They don't cry.

[00:43:52]Um that's not these breeds or or these, you know, dogs that are well trained and supporting athlete companions. The licking the lips, that is a very Now, sometimes that's nervous. Sometimes some of these things happen cuz you're you're this vet, and you're coming at them, and they're in a new place, and there's smells, and it's environmental. But when they've been fine the whole time, and they were fine during the rest of the body exam, and they weren't licking and seeming nervous and pupils dilating and holding their breath, and you get around to that one last final stretch, and then those things occur, go back to the other shoulder, check it. Okay, we didn't see these seven things. Come back to that one one more time, okay? And and it's about getting that baseline and mapping.

[00:44:30]Um but you can imagine at home, I'd like everyone watching this to make sure as you're mapping out your dog's, you know, body, and you're doing your active stretching as part of your warm-ups, and your passive stretching as part of your cool down, get those things on video so you can see if there was a change over time.

[00:44:44]Yeah.

[00:44:44]>> I want to add something, and this goes back to like everything that Kathy and I've been talking about and all that we do lately is uh in that baseline, you also want to do that work in a variety of contexts, like not just at home if you're doing it, not just cuz the dog needs the passive and active stretching for class or seminars, but you want also want to do it so that you can see what might change when their arousal state changes, when they're in those other contexts. So, like when I do it with my youngest dog, Draven, when he's more aroused, he actually makes really funny faces that looks like he might be in pain, but he's not. He's just like resisting the stretching and not loving what I'm doing in the moment.

[00:45:20]Um but because I know that that's his face, when we do go to PT for just a wellness check, when he makes that face, I'm, you know, I know what his baseline is, and the baseline has like a few different baselines depending on the context of the environment.

[00:45:36]Right, really getting to know the individual dog. Um and what what they look like in each different moment makes a massive difference for all of this, for sure.

[00:45:45]And Bobby, I think that will also hold true because lots of times you're competing at different locations. So, that same stretch, whether it be at home in your training facility, in your backyard, or at this location in, you know, Southern California, they should see they should see kind of a similar pattern. And if all of a sudden they're seeing a different pattern, just just aware, you know, be aware.

[00:46:07]That's the big thing.

[00:46:08]Yeah, absolutely. All right, really really like watching and learning from the different dogs is just amazing.

[00:46:16]Um and so, we can segue then into um we're going to kind of over the course of these podcasts look at not only different dogs, but we're going to follow a specific case study. Um and sometimes the presenter is lucky enough that their own dog gets to be the case study. Yay. Lucky unlucky.

[00:46:34]>> [laughter] >> But you know what? It's a great case study because everything we talk about for all these years, yeah, that happens with my dog. Um and people are always like, "Well, how did she get hurt?" And who even knows? My best guess is it was jumping off the bed in the motor home when the rug on the slippery floor wasn't there, probably got pushed away, and she probably had an incident, and none of us realized it, and it just went from there. But it's it's just got so many elements that are worth looking at and learning from. So, I volunteer as tribute to present the case study. So, I'll give you a little bit of history, um and the rest of you guys can come in because you all know the dog, and we've got some video and other stuff for you as well. So, her name is Electra. She is 5 years old. She's six now, but 5 years old when this was all going on. She had been competing in agility and flyball successfully for several years. So, what Bobby was saying earlier about it's all good, and then it's not good, um and the training isn't helping, well, maybe there's underlying pain. Uh and she's she's a relatively small dog. I call her my sports light dog because she she's, you know, one of one of the flyball folks down here calls her like this little hummingbird. She's half papillon, half border whip it. Um she's not She doesn't slam herself into things. She doesn't get trained a million times. And so, we're going to use flyball as part of the case study um because flyball has some things that really eliminate other variables. So, with flyball, she is not dependent on my handling like she would be in agility because, you know what? Nothing personal against me or any of you agility folks, sometimes our handling is not good. All right? And even like, you know, the theoretical Mary who sprained her ankle, sometimes I have no excuse. I'm fine.

[00:48:28]I've slept. I ate well, and I'm still not good. It's still All right? And in flyball, all I have to do is let go at roughly the right time and stay out of the way. So, it takes out that variable. Um and the footing is very consistent in flyball. The flyball box is very consistent. The ball she uses is the same. The jumps are always the same distance.

[00:48:50]Um there's nothing, you know, different about that. She runs with the same dogs.

[00:48:55]So, all a lot of the variables that we might see in other sports are basically removed. The other thing that's great about flyball, and Dr. Kennett mentioned this earlier, is it is timed to the thousandth of a second. So, if the dog is slowing down, you see it very early on. And in fact, that was one of the first signs with a little Electra was she went from consistently running at her personal best to running uh two to three tenths of a second slower, which doesn't seem like a lot until you put it in the context of these are runs that go in 4 seconds.

[00:49:28]All right? So, a three tenths of a second different is significant. Um one of her very first symptoms was in flyball, it's always good when they bring the ball back all the way back.

[00:49:38]She was not. She was spitting the ball.

[00:49:40]Which was a new behavior and I'm like, oh, I guess I just need to train some more.

[00:49:45]Also in flyball, she was getting a little more noise sensitive.

[00:49:49]Right?

[00:49:50]And at home, she was opting out of like when all the dogs would go running around in the yard, she would opt out of that and just sit on the porch. And I'm like, oh, maybe she's, you know, growing up, getting old. All the excuses that we tell ourselves. Right?

[00:50:03]Tracy, can you I just want to interrupt for a second. When you say she was getting a little more noise sensitive, can you describe what that looks like?

[00:50:09]What that looked like? Um startled to noise response. When she would have massage done and they would find a sore point, you know, a lot of the response system lasers will beep.

[00:50:20]Um and she never had an issue with the beep and I remember in this time frame, she'd be she'd lay on the table and as soon as the beep start, she would like leap up in in shock and horror. Um and I was like, that's a sound you've been hearing for years. That's new. Or um I would drop something or one of the dogs would start barking cuz when you have nine dogs, you get some barking. And you know, just that extra you could see like like this cringing. Or in in flyball, when you line them up, I've heard that there's barking in flyball. I can neither confirm nor deny this, but she would be a little bit worried, right? About that noise.

[00:51:00]Um and she would also be a little reactive in the house to the other dogs overblown responses to other things. And at the time, you know, you frame it in all these different ways until you can't frame it in different ways anymore because I'm like, why is she slowing down? Why is she starting to opt out in sports as well? Why is she this noise sensitive?

[00:51:20]What is happening here? So, we have some video um to show you and I'll show you the first video. And this was this first one I would say is right in the throes of when she was hurting. Right? So, um I I have I have to give a shout out to the people who got this video. The fine people of Run Down River, which are um flyball people who make these awesome videos. You can find them on YouTube and Tik Tok and probably Instagram, too.

[00:51:48]Watch their videos. They're really cool.

[00:51:50]So, thank you Run Down River for letting us play these videos. So, let me come back earlier. We'll go here. We'll go here. Oop. You want people to be saying what they see in the chat for this one?

[00:52:03]Or is that I'm like that? I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I This is Misu, one of our teammates, cutie little walker working cocker, followed by Yuzu, fabulous border collie doing the thing. And this is Vision, one of our elder statesman border collies, and this is Electra.

[00:52:30]Tell me if you see the injury.

[00:52:33]Pretty cool video.

[00:52:39]This was June 2025.

[00:52:48]And the context of this video is, let me stop it for a second. The context of this video is she had just been ringside and watched her housemate Larry, Larry the whippet, watched him do a couple of heats and then she's like, I want to go in. So, that was what this run was and I'm going to now bring you to a slightly slowed down version of just her.

[00:53:10]Um we won't make you watch all 2 minutes of it. If only Zoom would play it. There you go. So, this is slow motion going to the box.

[00:53:21]And this is the super slow mo. Thank you to the Run Down River people.

[00:53:30]Now, I will tell you in the moment, I did not think she was injured.

[00:53:35]I thought maybe there was some training stuff going on. But look how well she ran.

[00:53:41]And then this video, which I found they posted this pretty recently. I can look back now, hindsight being 20/20, and be like, oh, I see it.

[00:53:51]I see it now.

[00:53:53]Once you see it, you can't unsee it. Can I just say She's working so hard. What a good little girl. Like she's just like giving it her whole heart.

[00:54:05]Do the best. That's what she tells me every day. Miss Electra Jean.

[00:54:10]>> [snorts] >> Right? Yeah, so those those watching this right now in the chat, go ahead and give us your thoughts. You know, what are you are you seeing anything in the front legs? Are you seeing anything in the rear legs? Is it the spine? You know, is it is it takeoff? Um give us some of your thoughts.

[00:54:24]Here's what people are saying.

[00:54:26]Um Looks like she hit her left elbow on the jump. Not equal takeoff on the rear.

[00:54:34]Push off on one way more than the other one. Back right passenger rear.

[00:54:42]And Tracy, how fast was this run?

[00:54:44]Was this My guess is line to line it was a 4.3, which is slow for her. She can go faster.

[00:54:53]In the moment it didn't feel slow. No.

[00:54:56]4.3 seconds, I should say.

[00:55:00]The fastest we've seen on the clock from her was 3.99.

[00:55:05]Someone said right leg maybe looks shaky.

[00:55:09]Didn't push off the right rear leg.

[00:55:12]She's taking off really early. Power jumping doesn't look like she's loading rear equally. Offloading perhaps to the right when jumping.

[00:55:21]Landing short on those jumps a little bit.

[00:55:24]And I do have video um where of of earlier in her career where the jumping was a lot more balanced, right? So, being able to see this high definition slow motion is really cool to be able to help her out.

[00:55:37]And it was around this time um where she had been regularly getting checked out to see what was going on, but there was no repeatable pain response. Like nothing nothing coming up on the radar um until about a month after this where we started to see um left bicep getting a repeatable pain response. Right? So, gold star to whoever mentioned something with that front left going on. And that is when I found a really great rehab vet um here in the Richmond, Virginia area who worked on her, did a physical exam similar to what you saw Dr. Canapp doing with the corgi, and did an ultrasound, and then she sent me to Dr. Canapp and he, and I'll start turning it over to you now.

[00:56:23]>> Tracy, before you before you play that or show the the data there, play the video one more time. I want anyone to see if they see anything on the box. Let's look at the let's look at the the turn on the box as well.

[00:56:42]Yeah, I think to the box. Just want to make sure people saw that as well.

[00:56:52]Anyone? You have to have a a flyball eye to see that box. Knowing that is not a great box turn for this dog. Yeah.

[00:57:00]Right? Not bad, but not a great box turn. Yeah.

[00:57:03]So, we we ended up going to Maryland in a snowstorm.

[00:57:09]And we got to put her on this magical device. If you want to explain what it is.

[00:57:16]Yeah, so so when it comes to gait analysis, um what we can see with our naked eye is so inferior to what we can see with computerized, you know, kinematics and different types of pressure analyzing, you know, the tools such as this as well as force plate, we call it. So, this is something where I as the dogs are walking down this mat, um this is a pressure mat with millions of sensors and it will pick up things such as how much pressure they place on their legs.

[00:57:43]And so, in most breeds, 60% of the weight's in the front, 40% is in the rear. So, that means if you do the math, it should be 30/30 in the front, 20/20 in the rear um for most breeds. Um and so, that means as they're going down this mat at a walk or a trot, we should be able to see that same we call it TPI, it's basically pressure index.

[00:58:02]Um and this is a temporal spatial mat is what they call it. And so, I should also see equal stride length, step length, and stride length step length ratios as well. So, if you and I are hiking, we take a step this far with one leg, what should we do? Equal step with the other leg. Okay? And so, if our fronts are equal, our rears should be equal as well. So, not only our stride, our left to right our left front to right rear, all those are then basically calculated into our final ratios and analysis. So, it gives us just a ton of data that we can look at over time to see how's your dog moving. And I like baselines. So, I try to get as many sporting dogs in as I can before they start to even compete so we know what is their normal gaiting profile so we can map that out over time. So, that's something where then also if we have someone come in and says, my gut check says something's off.

[00:58:48]I think right rear is off. We're not driving. Am I right? Now, they may not have the baseline, but at least I get that starting point from where we are and we can say, does that correlate to what we're seeing on physical exam?

[00:58:58]Because this isn't a perfect science.

[00:59:00]It's all about the history, the palpation, the gait analysis, any diagnostics, but this is a pretty doggone accurate system. It's what we use for our clinical trials. So, when we have a product that's coming in by a pharmaceutical company and they say, we want a placebo controlled crossover study, this is validated. It's validated to force plate. Actually started in human sports medicine. And um so, pretty doggone accurate and um compared to other systems. So, yeah, so this is what we use. We have one on the East Coast.

[00:59:26]We have one on the West Coast. Um we use it not only for clinical trials, research, um but we use it clinically um especially for our sporting dogs.

[00:59:35]And so Electra got to trot back and forth on that. To the naked eye, to my uneducated naked eye, it looked really good, but this is what the device spit out.

[00:59:45]So this is a summary of one aspect of the device and you can see the footprints at the bottom at the bottom corner. So we can tell basically that we're getting appropriate paw placement.

[00:59:54]We can also see our stride. You know, we want a certain velocity to make sure you can see up here where it says velocity 207. For this size dog, that would be a trot. Okay, so we want to do things at walks and we want to do things at trots.

[01:00:06]There's no asterisk after that 0.9 which means the computer says this was a very very clean walk or run. We have a cameras we have camera set up so they can see. If a dog turns their head and checks in, this is really tricky for the obedience dog, their head is 10% of their body weight. So if all of a sudden they're checking in because they're training obedience, guess what they just did? They just loaded the left front leg or the right front leg depending on you know where the owner is or the handler is in which way they're they're walking or trotting. So you always want walks, you always want trots. We also do it in different directions. Don't just go one direction cuz there's a wall at the other end, maybe that's affecting them.

[01:00:39]Go make a U-turn, come back the other directions multiple times and then we basically put all those into the computer. Um and what you're going to see here, so those colors, left blue is the left run, red is the right front, green is the left rear, gray is the right rear. And so this is then added trot and what I've circled in red is our TPI or our pressure index. So even though this dog to the absolute naked eye looks completely sound, remember we should be 30 30 in the front. Okay, and what we're seeing is 27. You're saying, "Well, that's not that far off." Look what we're doing to load the right with 32.

[01:01:16]So we're not only basically changing our pressure off our left, we're putting more pressure onto our right. And then that will throw off our strides or step length ratios and so forth.

[01:01:26]But this was a very very good example of saying, "Hey man, this dog does not look We don't see a head bob." This is a subtle pressure difference, but it's a statistically significant difference.

[01:01:36]Not only the fact that the left side is hitting the you know, where we should be at the 30, but look how much more loading we have on the the right, which means over time what's that going to do?

[01:01:45]It's going to cause compensation to the right side. And as we do a deeper dive, probably not today, but in the future with this little one, you're going to see why that's a bit of a concern when they're loading the opposite leg and they're continuing to compete.

[01:02:02]Very very insightful bit of information from just trotting across that mat. Um and we had some other imagery to back up those findings which, you know, teaser, you have to come to podcast two to see more about it.

[01:02:18]Um but it's just kind of the tip of the iceberg where this this dog is just a great example of all the things that that we talk about behaviorally, behavioral outputs, um based on an underlying injury and digging as deep as you can to try and find it. And then in future podcasts we're going to talk about like ways to try and find what's going on and then what to do about it both orthopedically, soft tissue, different modalities like this multimodal approach which I really love, um and behaviorally because there is there are all the elements of physical rehab, but there's also an element of emotional rehab. Um if if the dog has been in some type of underlying chronic pain enough, there is a sensitization that has happened and there's been like what Dr. Murphy was saying, the brain structure literally changes. And so we need to to talk about how we can bring the dog back into the emotional response to this to get that happy dog sport behavior that we want as well.

[01:03:21]Right? So that's kind of where we're going to leave you hanging for this first podcast. Do any of you guys have any wrapping up thoughts? I just like to say something that I want to apply I mean Tracy, you're pretty steady person, right? You're you've seen a lot of stuff and you you're very gracious with yourself. So but I want to say that I think it's important for the dog owner or the handler to have that grace with themselves cuz sometimes you need that time to have all that behavioral output to collect before you you can be like, "Oh wait, maybe this is a pain injury."

[01:03:58]And we're hoping with this podcast series we can get you there sooner and be [clears throat] more proactive because you'll have more information and knowledge and be kind to yourself. Like I've had people say like, "Oh, I didn't know." And then they're beating themselves up and you know, I've been there too and I feel bad. But you know, you do the best that you can with the knowledge that you have and then you do better. So yeah, I just want to say uh yeah, good for you Tracy. Good on you.

[01:04:24]No, I just you know, I'm Gen X. We just hide all those emotions of guilt and horror.

[01:04:30]Right?

[01:04:31]That's We're Gen X. We don't talk about that. But like that's it's so valid where um you know, here's your little beloved dog. There's so many of our emotions tied up and we're looking at it from a clinical perspective, but it's completely valid to talk about it from the emotion of the owner and the emotion of the vet who like my rehab vet, I saw her yesterday and I think she's more emotionally invested in this rehab than I am. Right? I'm like, "All right, let's go. Let's do the thing." The dog and I are like, "We're ready." And she's like, "Be very careful." Right? Like like there's this emotional investment across the board and there's a lot of feelings that we humans have to work out especially the watching every foot every footstep these dogs take. Is she off? What was that?

[01:05:19]Right? Or if there's a little setback or maybe there's some soreness cuz they're working out. Rehab is a workout. Um so there's there's a lot of anxiety and neuroses on the human side of things. So yes, thank you for pointing that out. Um it's there, right? If I don't show it, it is definitely there. Any other wrapping up thoughts from you guys? I guess along a similar vein to Bobby, um it's my experience that it's not quite as simple as just finding the right person to determine whether your dog is in pain. It's not like you've done a bad job of spotting it.

[01:05:53]You just needed to reach out to the right person. It actually takes time to build the picture of what's happening in these cases because the signs are really subtle and there are so many variables.

[01:06:04]It's not possible for someone just to look in from the outside. In the classic cases, you know, the first opinion vet has often said there's no pain here.

[01:06:11]There's nothing wrong with the dog.

[01:06:13]Well, their physical exam is only one part of the picture and the fact that it's negative doesn't rule out pain. The same as, you know, the fact that the dog's the dog can still run doesn't rule out pain. It's just one part of the picture. Um and it's really about being patient, writing down what you see, when you see it, keeping track of what's happening and looking for what's different or unexpected and then seeing if that's repeated over time in other contexts because a lot of these cases you spot in hindsight that, you know, "Oh, I think that may have begun 12 months ago." But it's not because you weren't good enough to spot it. It's just because there wasn't enough information at that point in time to be able to know what was going on. So yeah, for me the the message for today or one of the messages for today is, you know, it takes a village. You really have to have those different data streams and the sub subjective and the objective and the living at home daily living measures as well as, you know, the physical exam and the clever bleepy machines etc. It really does take a village.

[01:07:21]A lot of bleepy machines. Bob Bob Bobby, I I think you nailed it on the head. So I I feel so bad for so many of these owners that come in and they say, "Oh my lord, look what I've done to my dog." Or "Oh my lord, are we beating up our dogs doing these sports? Or is this horrible?" And "How could I have missed this?" No, no, no, no, and no. I mean, these dogs love this. They were built for this. We love it. It's not that we're doing anything wrong to our dogs. In fact, we're taking better care of them than a lot of these dogs that are sitting there eating bonbons all day and watching, you know, YouTube channel. And so I think it's not that. It gets back to being proactive.

[01:07:54]It gets back to knowing your dog's body, your gut check, doing those stretches and mapping these things out I think are critical.

[01:08:01]And then and you're not doing things.

[01:08:03]You line up again 10 athletes, they're all going to have their stuff. You line up any of us on this call, we're all going to have our stuff. We just learn how to manage it. Okay, and that's what it's all about here. You said team approach. It's a team approach of your, you know, your physios and your nutritionist and your body work and your general vet and your trainer and all those things work up into this magical little ball and it's still not going to be perfect. Okay? So but that's why we have to have a place to start. And just those frequent check-ins with your physio, your rehab vet, your, you know, sports trainer, your acupuncturist, chiropractic, your trainer, "Are you seeing something different?" cuz I think I am. And your trainer is like, "Yeah, I've been seeing this for about 6 months, but I didn't want to hurt your feelings." So, you know, no, listen to them, but get those videos and and map out your dog's body.

[01:08:49]Just like GI mapping, but we're not going to go there Kathy. I'm not this not this section. I can't [laughter] believe I have to wait until another episode. I've just done a deep dive into inflammations. I am so full of them.

[01:09:02]>> [laughter] >> Oh, all right.

[01:09:05]>> lost it. So we're going to leave you there today. Thank you all for watching.

[01:09:09]Hello YouTubers as well.

[01:09:12]This is going to be recorded and posted and we will be publishing our April date very soon.

[01:09:19]Can't Oh, it is April. Our end of April date. Um and so that's when you'll get your part two and there'll be a part three after that.

[01:09:27]Um and we will uh, if you have questions that you put in the chat or you're putting them in the YouTube comments, we will be popping in to answer those questions as well. And so, I just want to say thank you to everyone who's watching, to my three co-hosts today. I love this topic so much, not just because I have a dog who gets to be the case study, but it's been near and dear to my heart forever and it just makes a huge difference for all of us. So, thank you so much, everyone. Enjoy the rest of your day and we will see you next time.

[01:09:57]Bye, everyone.

[01:09:58]Have a good one.

[01:09:59]>> Thank you.