06/06/2026
It is worth looking at the whole picture when addressing behavior problems with our dogs.
I am going to say something that might ruffle some feathers and I genuinely do not care.
DO THE FU***NG PAIN MED TRIAL.
I have a dog in my program right now. She came to me for biting people in the house when being touched. Which, yes, that is a serious behavior. But before we do anything else, we do the right thing. We rule out pain first. So we sent her to the vet for a full workup. X-rays. The whole thing.
Hip dysplasia confirmed.
And the vet cleared her.
"She is not limping. The hip dysplasia does not seem to be bothering her."
She is biting when touched. She is crying out during normal activity. She cannot settle. She is escalating.
I am not a vet. I want to be really clear about that. But I have been doing this long enough to know that not limping does not mean not hurting. Stoicism is a survival mechanism. Dogs are wired to mask pain. That is not a green light. That is a dog doing exactly what dogs do when their body hurts and nobody is listening.
And here is the thing I keep coming back to. I wrote about this a few months ago when my own back was out and I noticed how much shorter I was with my dogs. How sounds that never bothered me suddenly did. How Rumor's normal snuggling felt impossible. My behavior changed because my capacity changed. Pain does that. To all of us.
Research out of the Autonomous University of Barcelona found a direct link between pain and aggression in dogs. The most common cause? Hip dysplasia. Dogs with no previous history of aggression who developed pain became more impulsive, bit more frequently when handled, and were more likely to assume a defensive posture than dogs who had shown aggression before. And their owners were often completely blindsided because nothing in that dog's history prepared them for it.
Sound familiar?
When a dog is in pain, the brain shifts into survival mode. The pathways that normally handle sensory input, coordination, and emotional regulation get taken over by pain signals. You cannot train your way around that.
You cannot train your way around that. Behavior modification does not fix a body that hurts. The downside of trying is minimal. The downside of not trying is a dog who keeps suffering while everyone looks for answers in the wrong place.
About 80% of my cases have a medical component. That was not something I set out to specialize in. It just kept showing up case after case until I could not ignore it anymore. And now I feel a responsibility to say something when I see it being missed.
So I am genuinely asking, not coming for anyone. What is the hesitation with a pain med trial? What do you actually lose? A few weeks and the cost of the medication. What do you lose by not doing one? A dog who keeps getting labeled a behavior problem while her body is quietly screaming that something hurts.
She is telling us. In the clearest way she knows how.
You don't lose anything by doing the trail but you have everything to lose if you don't.
Picture of Roulette just because.
