Are You Accidentally Hurting Your Pet? The Truth About How You Carry Your Pets

By Dr. Ryan Chuang | Pet Health & Wellness

Most pet owners love their dogs and cats deeply — yet unknowingly cause them long-term harm every single day. One of the most common culprits? The way we pick up and carry our pets. As a veterinarian, this is a topic I have wanted to write about for a long time, and I hope this article helps every pet owner protect the animals they love.

Why Animal Spines Are Different From Ours

To understand why carrying technique matters so much, we first need to appreciate a fundamental anatomical difference: humans stand vertically on two legs, while dogs and cats stand horizontally on four. Their spines are aligned completely differently, and the forces of gravity act upon them at a totally different angle.

Spinal structure difference between animal and human 

• As you can see, the spine structure and alignment are quite different between human and animal.

• For dogs and cats or other four-legs standing animal, the spinal alignment is horizontal in their natural standing position. In contrast, since human stand on two legs, the spinal alignment is vertical. The spine tolerates the force in totally different angle and direction.  

• If you want to feel the difference, try standing on the ground with both your arms and legs and attempt to walk like a animal. I believe you will have back/neck/spinal pain after few steps. That’s because human and animal anatomy are very different. Therefore why we human always force animals to do these unnatural posture to injure their spine😭？

We all knows dogs are smart It’s not necessary to foce them to do tricks to prove that!.

• Since many pet owners see their pets as family, they often treat them as kids and carrying or picking them up like a baby 👶or a kid👧. However, these incorrect position and posture creating pressure and inapproriate angle to the spine and joints and eventually cause injury and chronic intervertebral disc disease.

• The following slides are the common incorrect position and posture

Can you find out why these position incorrect?

All these position are creating great pressure to the spinal due to inappropriate angle and force, e.g. standing liking human,being held belly up like a baby, crushing the abdommen, etc.

Intervertebral disc disease and injury💥

Intervertebral discs are cartilage structure locate between each spine vertebrae as cushions to  absorb the pressure and force and stablize the spine to prevent from injury. Long term inappropriate posture and position often cause chronic and irreversible problem.

Most patients start to show symptoms when they are older, including hindleg weakness, difficult rising, arched back, back pain, leg shivering, and for the more severe case they may not be able to use the leg or even lose feeling and pain sensation.

Normal spinal radiograph

Normal and consistent intervertebral space between each spine

Spondylosis deformans, which means abnormal new bone growth due to unstable spinal status, so the body is trying to bridge the spine to make them stable.

The white material is the calcium deposit in the discs, showing evidence of degeneration intervertebral disc

Does these position really cause problem?

• The effects of poor position is accumulated over times, examples like playing your phone while crunching in the sofa, watching TV in bed, bending your neck while playing the video games and crossed your leg when sitting. All these poor position doesn’t cause problem immedicately, however might eventaully causing injuries if constantly neglected.

• As I always say, animals don’t talk. They can’t express their feeling unless it’s really painful, and often they can’t tell where the problem is.

• Most of the animal body is flexible, so they don’t seem to feel uncomfortable even being carried in inappropriate postures and unfortunately the symptomes only start when they are older.

Please stop carrying them or picking them up LIKE A TOY OR A BABY. Please also stop using those poorly designed carrying bag.

PLEASE STOP HURTING THEM IF YOU REALLY LOVE THEM

HOW SHOULD WE CARRY OUR PETS?

There are some basical principles

1.Keep the spine as straight and horizontal as possible. Imagine you just pick up the animal off the ground while they can still maintain the same spine alignment.

2.Avoid applying force only to the upper body or forelegs while you picking them up. 

3.Avoid pick them up sudddenly and swiftly to prevent from injuries to the muscle and joint. Expecially if the animal are heavy or bigger, slow motion with food support are essential.

4.Ensure that the animal body has a good and stable support from front to back in your arm.

5.If you feel they are too heavy to carry, please let him walk by himself, or stand naturally

• These are the information of how you should carry your pets correctly. Please share to your friends. I have been seeing more and more old animal suffering from spinal problem and back pain nowadays.

• They end up need acupuncture regularly.

• You can prevent the problem by maintaining good position before it’s too late.

• All the content were written by Dr Ryan Chuang. Please do not copy or modify without permission, but welcome to share and repost.

• If there is any photo infringement, please contact me and I will remove it as soon as possible. Thanks.