Dogs with weak pasterns. Before and after photos. - Page 1

Hi every one.

Is there anyone who was worrying about his/her young dogs weak pasterns? But with aging, proper nutrition and excercise they get strengthened?

Let's see the before and after photos of those beautiful dogs.

As I remember, there have been at least a couple of people posted on here about this in the past few years, but none very recently. I agree, dogademirel; it would be nice to see how their dogs improved, if they did, especially with 'after' photos of dogs where the advice they got here about swimming, and walking on sand, etc, has worked. Unfortunately dog owners often ask questions or relate problems but then they never come back to tell us how it turned out !

I have had a couple of dogs with weak pasterns over the past 30 years or so. Sorry to say, I saw no improvement despite many so called remedies I tried, and I doubt the other posters did either or else they probably would have posted.

One was out of a VA2 male and a high V female who was a good producer. Other than this defect my dog was an excellent conformation dog. His mother did not have this defect but father had this problem also, though perhaps not as bad. That the father went VA2 could well have been politics. At the time, I was told by a famous breeder in Germany and a couple of SV judges that underwater treadmilling was the answer. I spent hundreds of dollars on underwater treadmilling in anticipation of showing him. We walked up hills regularly, took long walks with weights on his back legs and did special exercises on a step ladder. But in the end, there was next to no improvement, although his muscles in the back were strengthened, this was not really his problem as he had good musculature. Lastly, there is no food or supplement that is going to help this.

you can do a forum search and find quite a few past discussions on this subject.

I have never had a dog with completely down pasterns, have had a couple with what I consider "soft". I do have personal experience with 2 dogs that went down, basically means walking on pasterns. one came up at past 12 months and finished AKC Championship, the other never came up. I have seen several that came up prior to 12 mo.

I'm not a vet or scientist, I do consider it genetic, for what that's worth, though the AKC Champion did produce several litters and none, as far as I know were down. no idea how that translated to future generations.

as I said,
TIFWIW

Rik

Yeah I think its a problem with a genetic basis; and as such careful attention should be paid if breeding. But then, there are so many things that need to be taken into account when trying not to 'breed on' what might be considered a 'minor' fault - depends just how 'down' they are, I guess.

The fact that weaker pasterns DO sometimes firm up makes it worth trying to give them a 'helping hand', surely ? Given what we still DO NOT know about how & why genes 'work', [ie when they 'switch On' in one dog but not another ] maybe the environmental trigger of a specific targetted exercise CAN do some good, at least in some cases. So Auslese I would not be too fast in writing that help off.

Completely agree with you about dietary supplements.