Pain and High drive dogs

If I had a dollar for every time someone told me their dog can’t be in pain because it still does ‘insert wild exciting activity’, I’d have a very tidy nest egg by now.

In the sport dog world, the term ‘drive’ is thrown around a lot to describe dogs; often dog’s are classified as high drive or low drive. There are lots of different and more often than not, very vague definitions thrown around but the one that fits best from my perspective is the one from Denise Fenzi, a renowned dog trainer. She defines high drive as “a dog who stays in the game even under adversity”.

Some of you might be starting to see where I’m going here. Many of our dog breeds were bred for specific purposes to assist humanity. As a result, over hundreds of years, we have selected breeds that are the very best at what they do and for many we have selectively bred them to the point that they are able to and are more than willing to push through adversity to perform a behaviour or complete a task.

We see this in many scenarios in high drive dogs. Herding dogs that completely wear off all their paw pads through working but continue to get up, run and work. Gun dogs that throw themselves into thick undergrowth causing lacerations and other injuries, all in the name of retrieving an item for their owner. Even our typically soft and sensitive sighthound breeds are able to perform great feats through adversity and injury in the pursuit of prey.

There are plenty of high drive dogs in pet homes too, a classic example are dogs that continue to chase the ball across the oval over and over despite muscle or ligament tears.

It is our responsibility as their guardians to step in and make decisions/take precautions to prevent our dogs from injuring themselves or causing further damage because in many case they are not able to themselves.

So next time you suspect your dog might be a bit off or lame, do not think just because he continues to chase the ball that he isn’t in pain.