Influence of Joint Disease on the Performance of Gundogs

The term gundog embraces dogs who undertake a variety of tasks, each of which brings its own special challenges, both in terms of environment and the type of work undertaken. They may be peg dogs, picking-up dogs, wild-fowling dogs, work in the beating line, in rough shooting, pigeon shooting, or belong to the Hunt Point Retrieve breeds that frequently work on the grouse moors.

This diversity of work is significant in terms of the type of injuries seen and equally important, the significance of an injury with respect to continued activity. For example, a peg dog which only retrieves birds within a limited range, often at a relatively slow speed on forgiving ground, may cope with pathology that a dog in the beating line or one retrieving birds over several hundred meters in a challenging environment would find difficult.

It might be thought that breed variation would influence a dog’s willingness to work despite a painful joint but most breeds appear to react similarly when there is the opportunity to find or flush game. Fans of the Spaniel breeds believe their dogs hunt the hardest and enter dense cover with the greatest enthusiasm. While the smaller Spaniel breeds undoubtedly have an advantage in thick undergrowth, in general, there seems to be little difference between breeds in their eagerness to work.

In a survey involving more than 1,300 gun dogs in Great Britain, a dog had a 25% chance of being injured in a shooting season. Fortunately, the majority were minor foot injuries and less than 50% of owners sought veterinary attention for their dogs. In contrast, articular pathology accounted for only 39 cases in this series of 1358 injuries incurred over two shooting seasons (Houlton J. A survey of gundog lameness and injuries in Great Britain in the shooting seasons 2005/2006 and 2006/2007. (Vet Comp Orthop Traumatol 2008;21(3):231-237).  [...]