hi guys im after some advice i selected my puppy at 9 weeks for her nice movment she moved straight and smoothly she is now 14 weeks and has suddenly started throwing her hind right leg outwards and consequently now looks like a crab when she moves away!
when stacked she is square and her rear angulations are reasonably good  although she is a im worried this is a permanant fault does anyone else have any experiance with this.
I was advised by a more experianced breeder to give her longer walks (she currently has twenty minutes off lead twice a day) to tone her muscles but i dont want to put undue strain on her developing skeleton and muscles what do you think?
cheers kate :)
PS
she is a vizsla and is going through the im all legs stage!

Do you use an extending type lead on her?

No I never use extending leads only gundog slips or show slips she is exersised 99% offf the lead at present.

Why would an extending lead make a difference..?

My pups all run out on extending leads...because their recalls aren't brilliant, and there are ewes and lambs next door.  Is this wrong?  Will it affect their movement?

Confused?

Had just noticed in the past that pups exercised on an extender tend to swing their rear end away from the side the lead has fallen, well mine did anyway, don't think it would cause a permant problem if the dog is also walked at heel and free run.

at the breeder assesment i sat a few weeks back they had a skeleton of a dog, it was shown that if the rear quaters have more angulation than the forquaters-hence the front moving restricted, that the rear has to then crab so as not to trip over his/hers front,-as the two angles have to comnpensate for each other----the speaker said its not true a dog crabs from habit or any other reason than it cant move as it should because of straight shoulders.

Hi Dizzy, yes I always understood that too.  Doesn't explain why Junior sometimes does it - his front and back end are both OK (not great) but his middle bit is so much too long it really wouldnt make any differnce if he had the worst front and the best rear in the world - too much space in between to allow for interference. :)   However, I am not sure quite what the poster means about the crabbing in the post, seems to suggest some sort of 'hitching' with 1 hind leg, rather than the usual understanding of crabbing (sort of moving on two tracks)  Some more explanation, please, so we can make more suggestions?
bye
Gwen

It causes over striding so the dog has to crab to avoid kicking his heels.

My guess is the puppy is just crabbing to see the handler although puppies are often a bit loose in the joints at that age, throwing a knee or an elbow. This improves as they muscle up although I would not advise upping the exercise yet. I figure this could cause damage and personally i'd rather wait for the puppy to muscle up naturally.

In the mean time I would turn away when it happens to take him slightly off balance.

Best wishes, John

Is not 20 mins exwercise (at 1 time?) too much for a 14 week old puppy?

I would have thought so, but will bow to superiour knowledge ;)

Margot

If you go by the 5 minute rule Margot, 14 weeks is 3.5 months= 17.5 minutes. Maybe a little long but not a million miles away :)

Best wishes, John

I've seen you mention the five minutes rule before John, but I've not heard of it elsewhere. Could you please tell me what exactly it is? By that I mean is this the only exercise the pup gets, what type of exercise should it be, is it adjusted according to the size of the breed / breed problems etc, until what age it applies ... etc, etc. :) Also the origins of the rule and the evidence for it's benefits if possible. My breed listserv group is having a very interesting discussion on puppies and exercise at present, and the 5 minute rule might produce some more good comment.

Hi Jas
The five minute rule was not my "invention" although I think it was me who brought it to this board and me who gave it the name. I saw it a long time ago on an American working gundog board and it fitted so well with what I was doing without even thinking about it.

As we all know, a puppies bones are quite soft at birth and gradually harden and thicken as the puppy grows. Finally attaining full size at something like a year old.

The second point is that although you cannot give a dog HD or ED almost all dogs are displastic to a greater or lesser extent. Anything over 0/0 has a degree of displastisity however minor. Over exercise can indeed make this worse that it would otherwise be.

The third point, and a balancing point is the need for socialising a puppy. One of the greatest risks is in not tending to this facet of a puppy's education.

Looking at the wild, a Lion or Tiger cub would not venture far from the den in the early days. Although this is for safety, the added bonus is that the bones have time to strengthen before the cub undertakes too much work. A case of nature doing the job which we need to do. In our case. A puppy can get all the exercise it needs running in the garden. What we can't do in the garden is get our puppy use to meeting people and objects, or for that matter train our dog in possibly the most important thing it needs for our comfort, to walk to heel. The other thing about the garden is that although the puppy can play it can also sleep whenever it feels tired, it would never over exercise it's self because it can just crash out whenever it likes! Taken to the extreme, no dog could spend its first year wandering around the garden then be expected to go out and spend all day in the field working. Like an athlete it needs to build up both muscle and stamina.

So what we need is a gradual scaling up of the exercise as the puppy grows and this is where the 5 minutes comes in. 5 minutes per month of age is a simple, easy to remember sliding amount of exercise. It may be an arbitrary figure but it has the advantage of being easy to remember and will not over strain a young puppy. It allows muscle to be built up gradually, gives time for training and for socialising.

It could sound restrictive but think about it. A 12 week old puppy for example = 15 minutes of exercise. That could be 7 or 8 minutes heel training to the seat outside the shops, half an hour spent sitting quietly watching the traffic and meeting people followed by 7 or 8 minutes heel training back home! My Anna went to an exemption show at 14 weeks old, a short walk from the car to the ring then a sleep on a blanket beside the ring with the occasional wander to see some horses, terrier racing, hawks and a fairground roundabout. Provided the actual walking time is not exceeded your imagination is the limit! The puppy arrives home mentally tired but not physically over tired! Socialising and training time is taken advantage of whilst reducing the possibility damage to the joints.

Best wishes, John

Thanks very much John :) Just to make sure I've got it right, you are saying that the pup can have as much free running as it likes because it will 'self-crash' when it is tired, but lead work for training & socialisation is limited to 5 minutes/month age? If that's correct it sounds very sensible to me.

I mentioned the Listserv discussion and the attitude most people are taking there is that pups should get plenty of free running exercise with no restrictions except the ones they impose on themselves, but that any form of 'forced' exercise should be strictly limited until ~15 months or older for a large male.

One concern is arising about new owners coming to think that puppy should get very little forced OR free exercise, leading to boredom (and so misbehavior) and poor muscle - and perhaps bone & joint - development. I posted this to the list the other day and would be interested in what you think :-

I suspect that breeders worry so much about pups and youngsters being hauled for miles of lead walking that we tend to over-emphasis the importance of not over-exercising. One of my puppy people rang up recently and asked if it was OK to take 17 week old Puppy to gallop in the field. My puppy owner notes say  free galloping good; free play with siblings or other similarly sized dogs good; long lead walks bad; running behind bikes or horses for any distance very bad; free play with adults and other large adult dogs risky. But what had obviously stuck was the headline of my verbal lecture - be careful about over-exercising.

I AM very wary of is allowing my pups and youngsters to exercise freely with adults. A 4 month pup I knew accidentally collided with an adult at relatively slow speed but the damage to the pup's hock was horrific. If I had hadn't known what had happened I'd have thought the puppy had been hit by a car when I saw the X-ray.

As for stairs, I want the pups to be able to tackle them easily and confidently and so encourage them to walk up and down all sorts of stairs and steps. But I don't let them chase each other and the cats up and down the stairs the way they'd all (cats included) like to. I don't really believe that racing up and down stairs will do the pups any harm, but I don't allow it on the 'better safer than sorry' premise."

You have pretty much hit the nail on the head Jas. Free play in the garden is self limiting which is good. But it is of no use for socialising which is bad. Running with an adult can cause trouble. I remember a lovely Golden Retriever running with two adults. They ran through a gateway side by side with the puppy nearest to the gate, the adults cut the corner and pushed the puppy straight into the post. The puppy ended up with a broken collar bone and its lovely movement was lost forever!

A puppy must have socialising and it must have training. An adult who has never been trained to walk reasonably to heel on the lead would be a pain to live with. Starting from a baby and never allowing it to pull and over half the job is done! I also class free running in the park as part of the 5 minutes because of the added excitement of being somewhere other than the garden means they will keep going for so much longer than in the garden. But then, I also consider that free running in the park is also training for the future. Indeed, it is something I start as early as possible. I want to be the only thing my puppy knows when I let the lead off, that way the pup will stay close to me and I am building the habit for the future.

Any rule on exercise is going to be a bit arbitrary. Why 5 minutes? Why not 4 or 6? Basically a 12 week old puppy could do with a little less. But then, so many puppies dig there heels in the first few times they go out that most would not get the full 15 minutes anyway! Again, by a year a puppy could possibly take more than an hour. The trouble is, the more complicated you make things the less likely you make it that they will follow the guide.

Boredom is possibly the biggest reason for dogs being handed into rescue! The devil makes work for idle paws! Training tires the brain so much better than just exercise. Stairs worry me. Going up and all the weight of the dog is carried on the hips and going down it is all on the shoulders. I firmly believe that damage is a cumulative thing and one lapse is not going to do much harm. It is consistent over exercise where the damage is done.

So very simply, the 5 minute rule is an over simplification I know, but it is so easy to quote and so simple to follow that it is possibly more likely to be followed than that other suggestions.

Best wishes, John

Hi John, glad I'm not alone in seeing nasty X-rays when youngsters play with adults. I've had it argued that few adults are rougher with 8 - 10 week old pups than mum, but mum's rough play is very controlled. Anyway it's the 4+ month pup that worries me more with adults.

We go straight out onto the fields and have one that is puppy proof fenced (as far as anything is ever puppy proofed :) ). That makes life very easy but in ways I envy you going to the park because of the training opportunities you mention. My pups go on the lead for socialisation visits to the village and local pub, but they probably miss out on a lot of novel things that the more urban pup gets. Though I have to say it doesn't seem to matter and so far all have taken their first show and visit to a city with aplomb.

I think you're right about boredom being a big reason for dogs going into rescue. I'd only add a proviso that there are breed and probably individual differences what pups and dogs need to avoid boredom. No matter how much exercise she gets my sheltie becomes a pest without regular training. She seems to enjoy learning for itself and certainly likes the praise, special toys & tid-bits. Although they are easy to teach the basics, more formal training is the definition of boredom for my main breed. They dislike repetition, and the standard motivators don't have much appeal. But they become bored without exercise and attention.

Now I've got the '5 minute rule' clear, I like it, and will add it to my new owner notes - thanks!

I would agree to a certain extent that free-running is good for a puppy/youngster - but only in certain places. In your own garden, fine. The fields that you have walked 10 minutes to get to, and have to walk back from, then no, I would restrict the running.
:)

I agree Jan. Usually with a young dog I would use it as an exercise period on its own and put the puppy in the car and take it to the park so that there is no walking home afterwards. This in its self is training, training to associate car journeys with happy events. What I do believe is that free running in the park, fields or whatever is a training opportunity which should be started as early as possible. It is so much easier to start the correct habits earlier than later.

Best wishes, John

"suddenly started throwing her hind right leg outwards and consequently now looks like a crab"

If it's only the right hind, it began suddenly and she is throwing it outwards, are you sure it is true crabbing? Unless I'm misunderstanding your description (very likely :) !), I think I'd want a vet to have a good look at the movement soon if it was my pup.

If it is just one leg that is being thrown out of line that is not what I think of a crabbing and agree a vet should take a look. The movement I think of as crabbing is when the dog moves forward at an angle, with one back foot in between the front feet and the other outside the front feet, like a dressage (sp) horse. Have found that the use of the extending type leads can encourage this sort of movement.

write clarify things a little! the puppy has a nicely laid back shoulder and good rear angulations so hopefully no major confirmation defect!! she has had her right hind checked by the vet and he says no problem its just typical loose puppy joints.
when moving she is moving incorrectly on the hind right (joint seems to twist outwards as the foot hits the floor) she is also moving crab style! i.e if i send her away she goes off at angle when loose,when on the lead she is moving slightly crabby but not so extreme.
I have seen this type of movment befor but as so someone quite rightly said only in a dog with a upright shoulder, and again minus the twist on the hock when putting the foot down

Thanks for the clarification Kate. I'm glad the vet has seen her, but I'd still be worried about one hind twisting out. The fact that she is moving unsoundly one one hind will throw off her whole movement.

I'm probably being over-sensitive about this, because I have a 8yo bitch who has movement like this. She rotates her left leg out at the hip when the foot is close to the ground. When it began it was quite subtle. It isn't now though the faster she moves the less obvious it is, and it can't be seen at full gallop.

The vet (a locum because one of my own vets was ill) who first saw her said it was a muscle strain and to bring her back in a month. When I did, the senior partner sent her straight off to an orthopaedic specialist. He found a really alarming looking lesion in her lumbar spine - an arthrosed and slightly displaced facet in her lumbar spine, almost certainly related to an old injury. Amazingly she has no pain and the lesion is stable, but because of it she has lost proprioception (the ability to know where her leg is) in that leg. She is going to have an injection of steroids into the affected disc space next week and hopefully that will improve things.

I'm not suggesting for a moment that you pup has anything similar, but I'm wary of unilateral odd movements.

Hi jas
thanks for your imput if it doesnt improve i think i will need to find a better vet! our vet is lovelly but no expert on that type of thing shes fine if youve got a general problem.
It is a worry as she is at the moment it doesnt effect her,, just me!! but i would like to rule out a big problem ultimatley she was bred to be a working gundog and im hoping to trial her later in life and i will devestated if this is going to cause her pain or discomfort as she grows. especially if we good have rectified it now!
thanks again kate :)

Just to put another slant on this. As pups all develop at different stages could it just be that that particular leg is growing at a different pace to the rest of her? I would think that if that leg is bigger (or smaller) then it could cause a difference in movement (?)

good point :)