Recently, my dog was making efforts to keep one of his paws off of the ground on-and-off.
I carefully examined his paw but couldn’t see anything obvious. I looked between each of his toes, and also checked his nails for any cracks or potential painful niggles. Still couldn’t see anything.
I raised his toes slightly to look around his metacarpal pad (this is the biggest pad on your dog’s paw) and could see a small cut in between the metacarpal pad and his toes. I’m canine first aid trained which is really helpful for preventing vets visits for things like this, so was able to clean the area for him and will continue to do this over the next few days. This is an area that gets infected easily due to dirt on the floor and moisture, so it’s important to keep an eye on it and ring the vet if needed.
This process probably took me 5 – 10 minutes to do, during which he received lots of reassurance, praise and some treats.
I’m sure you can imagine, this would be impossible if he was not comfortable with me handling his paws to such an extent. For dogs that do not let people handle their paws, this sort of thing would be very difficult to do without causing distress. Some dogs may even require sedatives to minimise trauma and also so that the area could be examined and treated properly.
So, why can dogs develop sensitivity to areas being touched?
Past trauma e.g. injury or illness. If a dog has required treatment for this that they have struggled with then this could feed in to negative associations (see below).
Negative associations that have been built e.g. if a dog has had an unpleasant experience involving their ears, they might not tolerate ears being handled. For example, ear drops being put in. We know that this is for the benefit of the dog but if they have not liked it, they may dislike their ears being touched over time.
Ongoing pain or illness (may be undiagnosed)
Other things that can feed in to this include distrust of the person doing the handling, or stress relating to the wider environment.
Being aware of sensitivities, reasons that your dog has become sensitive to areas being handled, and ensuring that we are taking the right steps to help our dogs be comfortable with this (in whatever form that takes) is really important so that we can provide ongoing care.
It is important to get dogs used to having parts of their body handled from puppyhood, although that isn’t to say that they may not develop sensitivity to part of their body being handled later on. Even if you do not have to do things like daily grooming, you may have to tend to an area due to a minor injury like I did today. Being comfortable being handled and examined is very important for veterinary care and grooming needs.
Sally Lewis 2024
Know Your Dog 