The hardest patients I treat are not the ones in obvious agony. They are the stoics — the Border Collie who works a full day on a torn muscle, the German Shepherd who limps for thirty seconds after rising and then masks it for the rest of the morning. Herding and working breeds have been selected for centuries to keep going regardless of how they feel. That drive is magnificent in a working dog and a genuine liability when it comes to spotting pain.
A dog that yelps when you touch it is easy. The skill every owner of a working breed needs is reading the quiet signs — the ones the dog is actively trying to suppress. This is that toolkit. None of it requires equipment. It requires you to know your dog’s normal well enough to notice when it shifts.
Why Working Dogs Hide It
Pain that drives most dogs to rest is, in a herding breed, often overridden by an even stronger instinct to work, to please, and to stay with the group. Dogs do not understand that showing weakness in a kitchen is safe; the ancestral wiring treats visible weakness as dangerous, so they conceal it. On top of that, herding-breed owners are conditioned to expect a high-energy, uncomplaining dog, so the early dip gets read as “having a quiet day” rather than “something hurts.”
The consequence is that by the time the pain is undeniable, the underlying problem is usually well advanced. The dog was telling you earlier — just not loudly.
Movement: Gait, Posture, and the Stairs Test
Movement is where pain leaks out first, because a dog can mask its face far more easily than it can mask a sore joint under load.
Watch the gait when the dog doesn’t know it’s being assessed. The classic tell is stiffness in the first few steps after rest that “warms out” within a minute or two. Owners constantly file this under normal ageing. It is not normal — it is the signature of arthritis and chronic joint pain, and it deserves attention regardless of the dog’s age.
Look for subtler asymmetries: a head that bobs upward when a sore front leg hits the ground, a hindquarter that dips, a stride shorter on one side, or a dog that sits with one leg kicked out rather than tucked square. A tail carried lower than usual, or a roached (hunched) back, points to spinal or abdominal discomfort.
Use stairs and jumps as a deliberate test. A dog in early hindlimb or back pain hesitates at the top of the stairs, takes them one at a time, or pauses before jumping into the car when it used to leap without thinking. Reluctance to do something the dog physically can still do is one of the most reliable early signals there is.
The Face and the Body: Grimace, Grooming, and Sleep
Pain shows in the face if you learn to read it. Researchers have developed “grimace scales” for animals, and the features translate well to dogs. A dog in pain often shows tightened, tense facial muscles — a furrowed brow, ears held flatter or more to the side than usual, eyes slightly narrowed or with a hard, fixed quality, and a tense mouth held back at the corners. Compare it to a photo of your dog relaxed and the difference can be striking once you start looking.
Grooming changes are an underrated clue. A dog that suddenly licks one spot persistently is often pointing you straight at the source — a sore joint, a hot spot, an anal gland, a cracked pad. Conversely, a normally tidy dog whose coat becomes unkempt over the hindquarters may be in too much discomfort to twist around and groom there.
Sleep and rest posture matter too. Watch how the dog settles. Difficulty getting comfortable, repeated repositioning, choosing a different spot or surface than usual, sleeping more (withdrawal) or sleeping less and more restlessly — all are common in a dog managing ongoing pain. A dog that has started sleeping in a sphinx position rather than flat out, or that no longer curls tightly, may be guarding a sore area.
The Behaviour Changes Mistaken for “Attitude”
This is where pain does the most damage to a dog, because the signs get misread as a training or temperament problem rather than a medical one.
A previously tolerant dog that becomes grumpy when handled, touched in a particular area, or approached while resting is very often in pain, not “getting stubborn with age.” Sudden irritability, growling when lifted, snapping when a child climbs on, or reluctance to be brushed in a spot that was never a problem — treat these as pain until proven otherwise. The same goes for a working dog that starts refusing or cutting short tasks it used to love, becoming clingy or unusually withdrawn, or losing its appetite and enthusiasm.
I have watched dogs labelled “difficult” and sent for behaviour modification when the real answer was a painful joint or a sore back. Pain changes temperament. Before you conclude your dog’s character has shifted, rule out the physical cause.
What to Do With What You See
You do not need a diagnosis to act — you need to notice and report. The most useful thing you can bring your vet is specific, recent observation: “She’s stiff for the first two minutes after getting up, she’s stopped jumping onto the bed, and she snapped when I touched her left hip last week.” That is worth more than any amount of “he just seems a bit off.”
A couple of practical tools help. Take a thirty-second phone video of your dog walking and trotting toward and away from the camera when something seems wrong — gait changes that are hard to describe are obvious on screen, and they let your vet see the dog moving normally rather than guarded and adrenaline-masked in the consulting room. And learn your dog’s resting respiratory rate when it is asleep and comfortable; a persistently elevated rate at rest can be a sign of pain or distress.
Make this kind of observation a habit and weave it into your dog’s routine wellness checks, so changes get caught while they are small. With a stoic working breed, you are the early-warning system. The dog will not tell you it hurts. It will show you — quietly, briefly, and early — and your job is simply to be paying enough attention to see it.