Sometimes we ascribe too much human characteristics unto our pets and it’s even the wrong kind.

Most days, I make my two mini poodles run after their treats for exercise as I throw the treats at some distance. I also make them go through their tricks like sit, down, stay, belly up, twirl, and roll over. Training time is feeding time and feeding time is training time.

I got to thinking the smaller of the two is getting lazier as she doesn’t do a full twirl and seems to have forgotten how to roll over. So recently I coaxed her to do a full roll over. In the days following, she seemed withdrawn. I thought she was being moody with her sister.

But Monday night when I called them for their nighttime treats,she yelped in pain coming of her bed and yelped twice more as she came close to me. She even wet herself from the pain.

Thursday, the Urgent pet vet tested and took X-rays. Turns out my 9-year old dog has back pain. Hopefully the meds and rest will restore her. What I thought was laziness was her body telling her she can’t roll over anymore but in her desire to please me she did.

I know she likes the babying we have been giving her since she started feeling pain but I don’t think she understands or expects the apology I give her. I don’t think there’s any question that we can never be as good to our pets as they are to us.

From now on, no more strenuous tricks, just sit, down, stay and the like. I knew I only have just a few more years with them but I wanted to give them a quiet happy life and didn’t want to have caused them pain. And I had decided long ago not to subject them to any surgery to prolong their lives. I consider that selfishness on my part and asking too much as they’ve already given their whole lives to please me.

Please don’t feel too badly about this. You caught it quickly and addressed it immediately. Sounds like they both have the life of Riley.
Wish more pet owners were like you.

Unfortunately they can't tell us what's wrong or even that there is anything wrong.
Their instincts from nature are to cover up that they even have a problem.

I wouldn't be so hard on yourself that you didn't immediately pick up on this problem. Keeping them exercising as they get older is normally good for them, just like with us humans as long as it's age appropriate exercise. Just walking and keeping the weight down is the best thing you can do for them to keep healthy in older age.

Maybe cut back on the gymnastics. Most nine year old smaller dogs wouldn't have any problem with this, yours just happened to have picked up a injury somehow.

I agree with other posters, don’t feel bad.

As parents we make mistakes, surely with a non verbal different species we would as well.

The fact of the matter is you love her and got her the care that reaffirms that, though you’re the only one who doubted any of that

Dogs appear to be stoic where pain is involved (stoicism being a human trait) but in reality animals don’t think or not think about pain. They deal with it as nature dictates. Humans like to project a lot of their attributes on animals in general but they just don’t process information the same way.

Thanks for the kind words everyone. I needed to confess my sins. Hopefully, she'll bound from this.

Here's a video of the two of them mock fighting for my entertainment. Lulu is the smaller dog with the back pain today and Layla is her sister. I had started giving them glucosamine pills early this year and about a week ago started giving them multivitamins.

She and only she of the two would stalk her water dish every time she took a drink.