Episode 12: How exercise, activities and injuries can affect your dog’s lifespan

If you have a dog, you’ll know that playing, fetching, swimming and walks are the highlights of their day.  But did you know that some forms of exercise can cause injuries, shorten your dog’s lifespan, and even cause organ damage or cancer?

In this episode, Dr. Dobias outlines safe exercise for your dog, how much exercise is OK, and what activities to avoid. He also describes how to examine your dog’s spine for injury, pain and discomfort, and discusses the top 6 commonly missed causes of disease in canines. 

Resources you shouldn’t miss: 

One of the most common mistakes people make when exercising their dogs: https://peterdobias.com/blogs/blog/76674565-one-of-the-most-common-mistakes-people-make-when-exercising-their-dogs

How much swimming is good for your dog: https://peterdobias.com/blogs/blog/17383868-how-much-swimming-is-good-for-your-dog

How to know if your dog is hurting or has suffered an undetected injury: https://peterdobias.com/blogs/blog/how-to-know-if-your-dog-is-hurting-or-has-suffered-an-undetected-injury

Why Frisbee fetching may be risky for dogs: https://peterdobias.com/blogs/blog/113473797-why-frisbee-fetching-may-be-risky-for-dogs 

Are dog collars dangerous for dogs? https://peterdobias.com/blogs/blog/why-i-continue-to-fight-for-your-dogs-safety

One thing will make the most difference fo your dog’s health: https://peterdobias.com/blogs/blog/one-thing-will-make-the-most-difference-to-your-dogs-health 

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GreenMin - Essential Minerals for Dogs: www.greenmin.com

Gentle Leash: https://peterdobias.com/products/gentle-leash

Perfect Fit Harness: https://peterdobias.com/products/perfect-fit-harness-builder 

FeelGood Omega - Omega 3 for dogs: https://peterdobias.com/products/feelgood-omega 

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Visit Pax and I on our website: www.peterdobias.com 

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Transcript

This podcast is brought to you by GreenMin, the all-natural mineral-rich superfood. If you have never heard of GreenMin, I consider it to be the most important essential supplement for dogs and people. It is a great source of plant-based minerals, which are much more bioavailable and effective than supplements made from chemicals or ground up rock.

Minerals cannot be made in our body and have to come in the form of food. Unfortunately intensive agriculture and food transportation have interrupted the natural nutrient cycle and soils and food are becoming increasingly depleted. Mineral deficiencies are one of the primary causes of disease.

Let me give you another explanation: most people understand that plants in the garden would not grow if some of the minerals were depleted or missing. For example if phosphorus is deficient, strawberries and tomatoes would not blossom and fruit. 

Ironically healthcare has not fully addressed the fact that food deficiencies are greatly predisposing factors when it comes to cell and organ dysfunction and disease. Malnourished and depleted plants in the garden are relatively easy to spot, but a mineral deficient body is harder to detect until it's too late. 

The key to supplementing minerals is to provide them in the most digestible and bioavailable form. This is why I chose Alga Calcaria for GreenMin. The certified organic algae originates from Brazil and has evolved to absorb minerals from the ocean water and deposit them in the roots to anchor itself on the ocean floor. 

Alga Calcaria was first discovered by Brazilian farmers who fed it to horses cows and other farm animals, and witnessed an amazing transformation. The animals were stronger, grew better and rarely fell ill, which makes sense because there are 37 000 billion billion chemical reactions taking place in the body every second and they cannot proceed smoothly without necessary minerals. 

Since then, Alga Calcaria has been used in treatment of osteoporosis in people and I made it part of GreenMin in 2012, the essential plant-based mineral and amino acid supplement for dogs, and for people in 2021. 

If you would like to learn and read more what other people say it is simple: all you need to do is to go to greenmin.com, or for the human supplement greenminhplus.com.

Hello my dog lovers, this is Dr. Peter Dobias, and you're listening to Not Just About Dogs. 

Today we are going to be talking about a topic that is really close to the heart for me, and that is exercise and activity, and how it can actually affect your dog's lifespan. 

Now in previous podcasts I often talk about spinal energy flow and the health of the spine and how important it is for your dog's health. I also compare the spinal channel to a watering system in the garden, where the branches go to the different organs and skin and extremities and joints and muscles. 

Now in the garden, if any of the watering system branches are impinged or broken, obviously the garden beds do not do well and the produce (the carrots, the strawberries, the tomatoes) do not grow very well in the body. It actually affects the organs if the spine is congested or if any of the branches and segments of the spine are congested or injured. It does affect the skin, how it functions, whether it's healthy or not, the coat, the joints, the muscles and also the internal organs. 

Now if the spine is not healthy, obviously that leads to disease and also decreased lifespan. Today I would like to talk about injuries and exercise and how you can make a huge difference in the life of your dog and also his or her health and longevity. 

Every single day I see dog lovers in parks, and on trails, and in the city, and it happens quite often that I strike a conversation with people, and when I see that they're doing something that may not benefit their dog, I try to strike a gentle conversation with a lot of empathy because I know that most people do not know what they're doing wrong, the same way I don't know if Ii'm handling my plumbing right, or some sort of car repair, or if I'm painting. I don't really know whether I'm exactly doing the right thing. 

So I'm lucky to have an insight and 30 years’ of experience in veterinary medicine, but it comes with a lot of challenges and on some level, suffering, because I see what's happening with dogs out there. Sometimes I try not to see it because I can't work 100% of the time, all the time, but often I go, “man, like if I say just a word or two it can make a huge difference in the life of this dog.” 

So the first thing that I would like to talk about today is early age misalignment, or problems that actually happened during birth or maybe even a neuter. 

Every single puppy obviously has to go through the whole process of of development in the uterus, and then birth, and those times can already start a certain tendency to a disease or problem, misalignment of the spine, the energy channel. 

It can happen before birth, especially if the mother has a lot of puppies, or during the birth, during the passage in the birth canal. You know, sometimes birth may be difficult. There can be a little twist or misalignment of the spine that may be undetected for many, many years to come. That is why it's so important to actually have your dog examined, or puppy examined, very early. 

Puppies are also carried by the mother from place to place. Sometimes they're dropped, or the mother may accidentally lay on them. Now the puppy bones, joints and other connective tissue are very flexible and resilient, however it does not mean that they align back to the ideal state. When they are misaligned, when they are out of alignment, when their spine and their body twists in nature, this is the part of the process that is called natural selection. 

But dogs are lucky to have us, because we can help them and we can prevent this natural selection factor. Also breeding may have made them a little more sensitive, and that is something that we have to take into consideration. So if you have a puppy that is eight weeks or 12 weeks old, I strongly suggest to take it to a physical therapist, or chiropractor, or a veterinarian, that has a knowledge in spinal alignment. Most of us veterinarians have not been trained in spinal alignment, however there are sufficient numbers of practitioners who do know the techniques. 

And do you know and understand how to recognize these misalignments? The second possible cause of spinal misalignments and problems may be injuries, accidental injuries. Dogs are adventurous and fun loving creatures, and if they don't want to play, there's usually something wrong, and if they play and tumble and fall and flip and slip it can also cause undetected injuries. 

It is quite common that even dogs that go through a very severe trauma, such as being hit by a car, are rarely assessed for spinal injuries and issues. Tightness, inflammation, injuries usually lead to various degrees of muscle spasm, which results in decreased energy in the spine, nerve and blood flow. 

So the spine is the energy channel, but it also directs and affects very deeply blood flow and obviously nerve flow. This can lead to serious organ disease or even cancer, and I mentioned at the beginning of this podcast, and I want to emphasize it, spinal health is the key for preventing cancer and organ disease. 

There's this very interesting connection between the organs and glands and the spine. If the spine gets affected as I said at the beginning of this podcast, the organs may suffer, but also the affected organs can signal up to the spine and they can make the muscles along the spine tight. 

You're probably very curious how to examine a dog's spine. It's actually relatively simple. It can be learned very easily. You can take your thumbs and you can kind of slide them along the spine on each side of the spine and press as hard as if you're trying to pit an orange. And if you press, your dog may actually look back, or there can be a skin flinching. The muscles may be tight or sore, there can be heat, there can be obvious signs of inflammation. 

If you see that any of the segments are a problem, then it may mean that the muscles got injured during exercise or some sort of injury or accident, or that the organ that is adjacent to the particular spinal segment is affected. 

I'll give you an example: if dogs have inflammatory bowel disease, quite often they may have tight lumbar spine, but lumbar spine can also affect the function of the intestinal tract. So you always have to treat the local organ. Let's say the gut and the spine, the lumbar spine in case of intestinal disease, in humans this is very common. 

If you see, let's say men having prostate issues, usually they have a history of severe lumbar sacral pain and back issues before the prostate inflammation or even cancer happens. So it's super important for us to have strong core and address all the injuries, and the same applies to dogs. 

Many dog lovers are surprised when I say that exercise and repeated obsessive activity is actually one of the greatest causes of immobility and injuries. Over the last several decades, many dog lovers have promoted their dogs to very important family members: that means that they take their dog's well-being very seriously, and they take them on walks and they make sure that they get enough exercise to make sure that their dog's quality of life is good. 

And I know that we just care so much about our dogs and their happiness, but the problem is that as a result of this change, dogs get over exercised, we sometimes overdo it. In the past it wasn't a problem, because most dogs were just in the backyard and they weren't walked as much, but in the past few decades that has changed, and some of the most problematic exercises are ball throwing, road or downhill biking, excessive swimming, repeated leaping or jumping on the ground or in the water, leaping and running in deep snow, and frisbee playing. 

Now I would like to talk a little bit more in detail about some of these activities to make sure that you understand that in no way my interest is to make your dog miserable and less happy. What I'm trying to do here is to increase your awareness of what you can do and what you shouldn't do as much, in order to prevent these injuries. 

So let's look at ball throwing. Dogs love to retrieve balls and I don't blame them, because it's the closest thing they can do to chase bunnies and wildlife. However, in nature they wouldn't be chasing 50 bunnies in half an hour or 15 minutes, and I see some dog lovers, well-meaning dog lovers, standing in the park and chucking the ball and their dog runs, and slips, and slides, and breaks, and unfortunately this is too much. This is not a natural movement. 

Dogs that are young can be fine for years, but then when they turn five, six or ten, then you start seeing the differences between those dogs that retrieve a lot and and are obsessed with balls. Border Collies are good examples because they're really high strung and they're very active and they're fast and all that, but when they reach later age and older age, they're really decrepit, and often they cannot move. 

So if you like to throw a ball for your dog, do it a few times on a walk, do it in a certain place, make sure that you do not succumb to your dog's request to throw it over and over and over ,and do something else. I'll talk about the right exercise and what I do with my dog at the end of this list. 

Now road or downhill biking. I have seen many dogs injured by biking because I used to live in Whistler, BC, which is a ski resort, but also in the summer people bike a lot and they think that their dogs love biking. But what they're trying to do, they're trying not to lose their owners and as a result they often overdo it, and you know when you're excited about bike rides, it's hard to notice that your dog is exhausted. 

Often I see serious problems and injuries, back injuries, cruciate ligament and tendon injuries, and other issues, so biking is ideally not for dogs. If you want to bike with your dog, go jogging speed and not any faster. I think that it's okay to take a dog for an uphill ride when you're pedalling hard, but if you're going downhill you have to go jogging speed otherwise it's too much. 

Excessive swimming. This is an interesting one because I've noticed that dogs that swim a lot, like Labs and Golden Retrievers, they can have two different areas that they injure: one of them is the shoulders and the armpits. They often scratch in the armpit area because their muscles, their front leg muscles, are quite tight, especially if they do nothing else in the summer than they swim, and and they can swim sometimes for hours. 

The other area that I've seen dogs injure if they swim too much is the tail and sacral area. You know when they make the tail and they're kind of trying to steer with the tail, it actually leads to so-called rudder tail. It's actually a symptom that signifies that there is an injury and inflammation in the sacral area and coccygeal area, the area of the tail. So again excessive swimming can cause injuries and I would recommend letting your dog swim for half an hour, maybe 45 minutes or even an hour, but not longer than that, and vary it with other exercises. 

It's super important to make sure that your dog's exercise plan is varied, that they don't do just one thing. Repeated leaping or jumping on the ground or in the water, again if your dog loves to leap in the water or leap in the snow, again make sure that they don't do it for too long. 

Examine the spine and observe your dog: is he or she sore after the exercise or the next day? Sometimes dogs slow down, they don't want to sit down or they suddenly stop jumping on the couch. All those are signs that there is a problem. If your dog loves these exercises and these activities, make sure that you examine them and make sure that you take them to a chiropractor, physical therapist, acupuncturist, veterinarian who has a knowledge of spinal alignment and muscle function. 

Now frisbee play is a Border Collie sport, but other dogs love it too: Jack Russells and Aussies, and there are so many dogs who love frisbees. They love it because it's hunting for them. Unfortunately I've seen two things happening when dogs are obsessive about any retrieving and chasing of toys. 

Number one, they sometimes start chasing skateboards, and bikes, and runners, and cars, and it can be very dangerous. So again if you see that your dog is obsessed with frisbee or ball, make sure that you do other activities and do this as a special treat. 

But they jump up and leap up! You know sometimes I watch YouTube videos that are really fun to watch, but you see what these dogs are doing and it's definitely not a natural activity. Ideally your dog's exercise should be as close to their natural patterns as possible, and no wolf, coyote, or dingo chases a hundred rabbits or balls in the span of 40 minutes on a daily basis. They do not leap up in the air after 50 ducks taking off in the air, and they do not swim for hours on end. They may swim across the river, they can wade in the streams and rivers, but they will not swim in the lakes back and forth back and forth. That's unfortunately a result of our breeding, but the body has not adjusted. 

I can hear some of you saying, “but, but, but my dog loves ball retrieving or the frisbee!”, and I understand that, but if you look at their lifespan and their health and their quality of life, what is better, a few ball chase sessions that lead to injuries, or healthy and longer life? I'm sure that you would choose the latter, and it's all a matter of deciding how to go about it and be nice to yourself. 

If you made some mistakes in the past, even with your previous dogs, it's learning, it's life. I made them too. My first dog Skai was ball-obsessed during the first six months of his life. I actually threw the ball the same way many dog lovers do, and he ended up with chronic diarrhea that was related to some misalignments in the lumbar spine. That's how we've learned why these injuries affect the internal organs, and in this case the digestive tract. But as soon as I stopped and I redirected his attention to hide and seek in the park, taking him for long jogs and and hikes in the forest, interacting with him in a gentle way, teaching him tricks and doing all sorts of different activities together, he couldn't care less about ball throwing. It was just in my hand, so whenever you're unsure what to do with your dog, please follow nature. You don't need to even follow me, but look at what canines do in nature and follow that. 

The next one on my list are collar injuries and neck injuries. This is the kind of trauma that actually happens to many dogs, because most dogs wear collars. People are unaware when the collar is too tight or tightens up when a dog pulls, that it decreases the energy flow to the rest of the body. 

The next is actually very central to the energy flow to the head, and also to the rest of the torso. If there is any restriction, and collars obviously are very restrictive on the level of nerve blood and energy flow, it can actually affect many different areas of the body. 

There is a vagal nerve that actually originates in the cervical area, and it governs the lungs and the heart and the kidneys and the stomach and the intestinal tract. I also have seen many dogs that pull on the leash and have this restrictive tension and tightness around the neck suffering from ear problems, suffering from paw licking, because the nerves get injured. So it is super important to consider using a harness as opposed to a collar. 

Some people use these face harnesses and there's one problem they put the head in a very unnatural state and position. Dogs that are on these facial harnesses, they usually have their head tilted down and it does subluxate or misalign the first cervical vertebra. It took me about two years to actually find the right harness. I went through dozens of different harnesses and testing them, and usually they're not designed ideally because they pinch the armpit area or they don't fit well, and they slide and dogs are different sizes. They have different chests and different waists and different body types, which leads to really difficult fitting. 

When I found the Perfect Fit Harness, which is made in the UK, I was thrilled because it's beautifully padded, it's made of three separate pieces that can be put together based on your dog's body type. It is not uncommon to see that a dog has a big large girth piece and then small chest piece and the back piece can be medium. The most important part about this harness is that it frees the neck and it prevents any restrictions and tightness around the neck. There are two clips, one in the front, one in the back. The harness manufacturer recommends to use both of them at the same time on y-shaped leash, but you can also use it in one or the other area and it works well.

Now I know that many of you say that your dog will not learn how to walk on the leash properly. From my perspective it only takes time. Pax, my dog, is now two years old and he's learned to heel on the leash, but it took a lot of convincing and training. 

There are different ways of training dogs. Some people say that it can be done without treats when they walk on the leash. Personally I'm not skilled enough to do it without treats, so I just carry treats and I make sure that I use them when my dog is on the leash, and eventually they just kind of get into the habit of walking beside you.

You have to be persistent, you have to be kind and patient, make sure that you don't jerk on your dog's body and your neck because it's like chiropractic adjustments without going to a chiropractic school. 

I'm going to go back to the excessive exercise portion of this podcast because I forgot to mention one important part: when some of the muscles get overworked and tight and inflamed, usually the other muscles around that area get weak, and the weakness breeds more tightness of the muscles that become tight. 

Some people have a tendency to believe that when they have a tight muscle they actually just have to stretch that particular muscle, but often you have to exercise the opposing muscles, the muscles that became weak and the problem disappears. 

There is a good example of this in core exercise and back issues: if we have a weaker core and the muscles are not toned enough, then the back muscles take over and they get strained and inflamed. 

The last part that I'd like to talk about is nutrition. The muscle is an amazing mega power that converts chemical energy and nutrients into the physical force, however this can't really happen without the right nutrients, the building blocks. 

There's 37 000 billion billion chemical reactions happening in the body every second. The muscles are a place where very busy exchange of electrolytes happens all the time, whether you're resting or not. We know that calcium is really important for contraction of muscles and also magnesium, because if there is lack of magnesium we have a tendency to cramps. The environment of the muscle is highly dependent on what we eat, and if our diet is not optimal, or our dog's diet is not optimal, then the muscles cannot function and as a result they get tight or spastic and the back and the spine and the energy flowing along the spine will get affected. 

I've been saying this for a long time that food is no longer what it used to be, because we've used our soils and overused and abused our soils for more than a century now without replenishing the nutrients in a traditional way. 

If you look at the African Savannah, the animals graze grass, and then the herbivores get eaten by the carnivores, and then they all eventually go in the soil, including the manure, including the animals the bones, all that. However in the modern agriculture, food is transported at long distances and this results in unfortunate depletion of the soils. The farmers cannot afford to renew the nutrients exactly the same way nature would, and transporting the compost back to the location is unreasonable and not feasible. 

Therefore we really have to supplement the essential nutrients that the body cannot make, and this is why I strongly recommend the Fabulous Four, the essential minerals, fermented vitamins, probiotics and omega oils. 

I know that some of you may think that good food is enough, but my experience has been that it is not. I've been fortunate to see this in thousands of patients, and see the differences between the animals that get the essential nutrients and those who don’t. 

For most people it is logical to fertilize the garden and they know what it looks like when tomatoes don't get the nutrients: they don't grow, there is no fruit, but somehow we keep forgetting that our body is even more complex and it does need the essentials. 

I've had the opportunity to also see two of my dogs, Skai and Pax ,and Skai was not as lucky as Pax, because he didn't get the essential nutrients until he was about seven or eight years old. He was doing okay but his health was definitely not as robust as Pax’s. 

I've been working as a vet for 30 years, so I'm definitely used to people not always following my advice, but it doesn't mean that I won't keep trying to explain why the methods that I use are actually effective, and why you can create healthier and longer life for your animal friend. 

And if you have any questions you can always go to peterdobais.com, my website, and search in the search window there. If you don't find the answer, which is actually quite rare, you can always email us and for those of you who are new to our community, I encourage you to subscribe to our newsletter because I publish a lot of the information on how to keep your dogs healthy and happy for many years to come. 

Have a wonderful day and give your dog a hug for me. Take care!