New Research Suggests That Many Dog Owners Are Not Skilled in Recognising Pain in Their Pets, As They Might Like to Think

If you live with a pet, you might feel like you can almost read each other’s minds. You might even have experienced your pet responding to your emotional state. Animals seem to have impressive skills at detecting our state of health too.

This could have significant consequences for the behaviour, health and welfare of our pets. As a migraineur, I am amazed at how my dogs cope with me when a migraine hits. They seem to recognise the pain, distress and incapacity that comes along with a migraine and respond with more gentle interactions than usual.

I hope that when the situation is reversed and they are unwell or in pain, that I too can recognise it. So, how can you recognise if your pet is in pain and what should you do if you think they are? It is easy to assume that an animal in pain will make some noise about it and show obvious physical signs.

This might be the case if they are in acute pain as the result of severe injury for example. However, animals often disguise pain as a survival mechanism, and many signs of pain show only as subtle changes in behaviour. Humans do seem to be able to recognise basic animal emotional states such as anger, fear or joy, through facial and body expressions.

But we are less good at linking these cues to more complex emotional states including pain, anxiety and frustration. The recently published study assessed how good people are at recognising signs of pain in dogs. This was carried out via an online questionnaire completed by 530 dog-owners and 117 non-owners.

Participants were given a list of 17 types of dog behaviour. The study participants were asked to rank how likely they thought these behaviour types were to indicate pain, based on their prior knowledge and experience. In reality, all 17 types of behaviour listed suggest a dog is in pain.

The signs of pain provided included obvious behavioural changes such as hesitant paw lifting, reduced play behaviour and changes in personality. Participants were good at recognising these prominent behaviour changes were linked with pain. However, they didn’t realise more subtle indicators such as yawning, lip and nose licking and changes in facial expressions including looking away and increased blinking.

These are all warnings that a dog may be suffering. Notably, participants without dogs were actually more likely to recognise that freezing or turning the head or body away are associated with pain than dog owners. This suggests that dog owners may become complacent in their observations of their dog’s behaviour.

The study participants were also asked to assess the potential relevance of pain in three written canine behaviour cases. The participants were not told this, but two were suffering from painful conditions, one outwardly obvious, and one more subtle. The third case was not linked to a painful condition.