One night about 10 days ago, my young Italian Spinone male jumped out of his basket yelping with pain, lasted about a minute.  I felt him over, he was a bit tender and whined when I stroked his left flank, plus held a paw up (never usually does) but otherwise seemed OK apart from being clearly very agitated - I checked for bloat/torsion signs as this can be a mega problem with the breed, but no bloating or unproductive vomiting.  20 mins later happened again, so I rang the vet to say I was on my way (30 minute drive).  He couldn't wait to get out of the door & into the Landie, had a couple of similar episodes on the way with 15 mins inbetween.  Got to vets, he was positively clawing at the door to get in (locked at night, so had to wait a min) - is normally a real airhead but seemed to understand where to get help!

Vet checked him over, couldn't find anything wrong except temperature up 1 degree.  Explained to her that he'd had particularly vigorous lunchtime walkies on rough grass/reedy moorland with lotsa twisting/turning bunny chases, tho he was walking perfectly soundly, not lame. She gave anti-inflamm & antibiotic jabs, he seemed to visibly relax after those.  Next a.m held up OTHER paw! but again no lameness.  Back to vets for check, all fine + pills to continue anti-inflamm/antibiotics course at home.

Maybe it was a sprain or strain - but in that case wouldn't he have been lame?  He's normally an incredibly stoic dog (never complained when he had a massive infected abscess as a 4 month old pup) so for him to be yelping and yapping in such obvious pain was horrendous.  In retrospect,  I think it must have been cramp??  the whole thing presented as just like humans jumping out of bed yelling and cursing with cramp; walk around and it eases off, go back to bed and the muscles knot up again.  I believe greyhounds can get cramp in mid-race, but have only heard of one instance where it came hours later (also affected the abdominal muscles).

He's almost never a flatulent dog, so I didn't think it was likely to be wind.  Continued eating, pooing and weeing normally.  Anyone had any similar experience/s with theirs?

You've not mentioned his age but I'll assume he's still under a year?  My boy(large breed) has lameness on his legs.  He alternates it(just to confuse me!) and after getting checked out by my vet, he was diagnosed with Pano.  It's a lameness that affects growing dogs and mine will grow out of it but I take it easy with the exercise.  Aside from the pano, he is only 11 months and very large breed so loads of walking or running is not good for him at all. I think if your dog is within the age for still growing, it does sound like the same sort of thing.

No, thanks for the info for next one! but he's almost 2 1/2, and not lame at all.

The only thing I can think of at the moment is an azoteria (sp?) type of issue - used to call it 'monday morning' illness in horses that worked mon-fri pulling carts... it's a muscle spasm type problem.  The only dog I know who suffered similarly they didn't get to the route cause, but solved by vit K supplements.  They found he was in pain doing agility although he wasn't lame - owner spent a fortune trying to find out the cause.  He's been fine on vit K though.

oh that's interesting Penny, thanks - will mention it to vet if happens again.  I do think anything that can cause that amount of pain and then disappear so rapidly is likely to be muscular.  There's so much that I'd never heard of till I came on to this forum :-))

I have had a young dog with muscle spasms (cramp?), he would stop when out for a walk & I'd find him on three legs with the offending limb fully extended - always a rear leg. He didn't yelp with pain but wouldn't put weight on it either & was told it was cramp.  My solution was to help him roll over and massage the main leg muscles (which were initially hard) long enough to get him to wight bear again 5-10 Min's and tentatively we'd walk away.

a few years ago we had just arrived back from manchester champ when our old gsd went down on the kitchen floor whimpering with pain it was a muscle spasm, where we live we have a canine chiropracter(known as graham the greyhound man) we rang him that night he came out the next day to her and gave her a check over then ultasound and heat treatment and told us to add a halfteaspoon of salt to her food daily to prevent more spasms, i can not remember the techincal name for it but basicaly the muscles were either producing to much or not producing enough of a substance and the salt sorted it out its about eight years ago now this happened but the salt did the trick

Oh, that's quite interesting about the salt.  Are cramps not caused by mineral deficency?  My gran used to say if you got cramps to take a pinch of salt and a banana.  It did work too.

A couple of years ago my cocker came in so lame we thought she had broken something.  We took her to the vets who thought the same.  She was shaking and seemed to be going into shock.  As she'd eaten, they couldn't do much more than give her a pain killer and ask to bring her back the next day.

She improved as the afternoon went on, I called my friend who is a canine masseur (and who I now work for).  After going over her, we concluded that she had no breaks and this was in fact cramp.  It seems to be a particular problem if cold and damp.  I now use a Back on Track therapeutic coat on her if I think we've had a situation where she could cramp up and she has regular massage,

Very interesting replies, thanks all - the whimpering in pain and shaking is on a par with what my boy had, I'd not seen dogs react in such a manner to such obviously acute pain out of the blue like that before, and actually it's pretty scary for the human too!

Had been doing a lot of searching online since last replies, and eventually came across a set of 5-year old posts on an Australian forum! where a couple of people mentioned magnesium supplements to keep cramp at bay in their dogs, so that could be the mineral in bananas.  Interestingly, they also said that the episodes came when their dogs had had diarrhoea, so it looks like there could be a connection there.  My Spin also has a sensitive tum, tho that's been pretty much fine since he's been on Simpson's Chicken and Spud.  However, will go back to adding Keeper's Mix on the mornings when he has his raw meat meals - had been leaving it out to try and establish what was causing his diarrhoea, so maybe he's been missing the mins. Will try a pinch of salt too if problem arises again.

Many thanks all - really informative posts.

Humans get Quinine Sulphate 200-300mgs at bedtime for cramp, don't know if this is available for dogs or not.

> Will try a pinch of salt too if problem arises again.

I would ask your vets advice before you add salt to your dogs food as I believe it is already present in many commercial foods.

I agree.  Dogs have a very different physiology to us & in particular don't tolerate salt well.

Thanks - I did wonder - it isn't present in any of his other foods though