It seems a simple enough task, to be able to tell when your pet is in pain but actually it can be a lot harder than you think. Animals have been programmed over millions of years of evolution to hide when they are sore or in discomfort, otherwise predators and competitors would pick up on the signs and target them. So, as owners, we need to be vigilant to quite subtle changes in our pet’s behaviour that could indicate they are in pain, and ensure they don’t suffer in silence.

Most of us assume that if an animal is in pain they will cry out or whine but actually the opposite is true. Chronic (low grade and continual) pain is very depressing and often animals learn to cope with it and show few outward signs of a problem, other than maybe being quieter than normal or sleeping more. The problem with is that this sort of pain is common in older pets, for example with arthritis, and this is what we expect them to do anyway. However, even in excruciating pain our pets can be very quiet and withdrawn. I once saw a cat with a very badly broken leg who had managed to drag himself home, curl up in his basket and was so calm his owner didn’t think he was in any discomfort, until she saw the x-rays! Often with this type of pain, it is not until you give your pet some pain killers, and see the difference in their behaviour, that you realise how sore they were in the first place.

I’ve been thinking about teeth this week – horses’ teeth in particular. That’s partly because my own horses are due for a dental check up, but also because there’s been a report in one of my journals that really made me think how much dental work has moved on in the last ten or fifteen years!

When I was training as a vet, an equine “tooth check” mainly involved grabbing the tongue, having a quick feel round, then rasping away at anything that felt sharp. If you were properly equipped, you’d use a gag (aka a dental speculum); if not, many vets were happy to work around the horse’s tongue and teeth.

Nowadays, that sort of cursory examination really isn’t good enough in many cases. There are a lot of very well trained and experienced vets, as well as good equine dental technicians (EDTs) who would probably need a sit down if they saw some of the things that were commonplace not that long ago!…

I’ve been seeing a number of bald dogs in the consulting room recently, and it made me wonder how common a problem it is – and how many conditions there are that can lead to a dog losing his hair!

Baldness (or alopecia, to give it its technical name) isn’t generally a disease in its own right – it is almost invariably a symptom of an underlying disease condition. So, when I’m faced with a poor, balding dog in the consult room, my first task is to try and define what the underlying cause is. With a symptom with so many possible causes, what we do to narrow down the possibilities is to work out a differential list – a list of all the possible conditions that can cause baldness – and then eliminate them until we come to the actual cause in this specific case.

So, in no particular order, here are the more common causes of hair loss in dogs, along with their other major signs or symptoms…..