hmmm....i have no expertise here at all, but i wonder if it's not they don't hurt just like humans do, but that they're just better able to deal with it.

perhaps they have stronger adrenaline reactions?

i'm just thinking....while it's true i don't know how i'd react if taken down by a lion , i have broken bones in a big way, got up, and kept on playing. i've torn tendons (knee) and ligaments (ankle), and kept on going. the thing is, when i played sports like rugby (which i am injury-retired from contact sports) - i thrived on getting hurt at least a bit, that pain. i fed off both the adrenaline and the pain.

i've always just assumed the same is true for dogs, except that they have far stronger adrenaline reactions.

and i've always thought (keeping in mind i truly have NO idea what i'm talking about here, but from the little i've read) that the difference between a hard dog and a soft dog isn't the level of pain they feel, but how they choose to react to it. a hard dog maybe thrives on the pain, or responds well to it, while a soft dog doesn't.

....though like i said, i don't know - i guess i'm basing that on my human interactions with pain and pain tolerance. people's reactions to pain have always fascinated me. but i may be guilty of being highly anthropomorphic here w/respect to dogs.

maybe that's what you guys are thinking though. i've always thought pain was pain, and that was equal amongst all, but it's how we react that divides us. unless i'm getting really semantical here.

anyways, interesting!

The articles that Connie found were pretty interesting...AND made a lot of sense. I think of dogs doing bite-work with muzzles on, or running around with a torn paw as I would any other athlete focused on the competition; maybe the pain is felt AFTER the adrenaline/excitement wear off. I'm thinking that the sensation of pain may not be so different than ours, but the understanding of it and reaction to it is. We have the cognitive resources to fully understand the details of what's wrong with us when we injure ourselves; we may take pain more seriously than our dogs would because of this. I've had some pretty stoic dogs, but you could still clearly "see" the pain on their faces when they were hurt, even though they were usually willing to keep on going. I never assume my dogs are tougher than me where pain is concerned. So far as I can tell my pain tolerance is much greater than my Greyhound, but less than my Dobe. They're all different, like us, except much furrier.

they were good articles....and it's true. i can seriously injure myself and act like everything's fine, but....

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While their "eternal infancy" as our pets makes it ok to shriek and howl if a favorite toy is taken away or a toe is stubbed, something far more primitive and survival-oriented kicks in when they are seriously ill or disabled.

....you don't want to be around me if i stub a toe. i'm pretty much exactly like those dogs.

i was thinking though. i broke my collarbone, snapped it over 90% - and i showed no visible pain reaction. i broke a girl's collarbone, and she lay on the ground and screamed. i think our bodies, and probably dogs, can be trained to accept pain (and/or to release a lot of adrenaline) and i think what we mentally see as acceptable demonstrations of pain really feeds into this. human, dog, i'm thinking pain is to some degree a function of personality.

Well, this doesn't pertain exactly to dogs but I think it is probably similar.

In the book SURVIVING THE EXTREMES by Dr. Kenneth Kamler, he talks about being in the Amazon and seeing a young boy from a local tribe with a badly fractured arm. This boy showed very little pain reaction at all and functioned quite normally. (Dr Kamler set the arm, BTW.)

What Kamler said is that, in survival situations, the body knows it is hurt so it shuts down the pain receptors so an organism can get on with the business of surviving. It seems to me that dogs would be much the same. (I mean, we are all pretty well focused on training and behavior within an evolutionary framework anyway, so an extension to pain is not that difficult.)

It's a good book too.

I would say both of you are probably right. If you think of it in terms of comparative anatomy, both dogs and humans have pain receptors which tell the brain there is a threat to the overall well being of the body.

Dogs, however, are probably more likely to go the route Kamler describes and their bodies shut off those receptors when it is not advantageous to acknowledge pain, which is probably a good bit of the time when your genes are telling you there might be a bigger, hungrier predator around the corner (or if you just gotta have that ball :grin.

Anyway, just a (fairly) logical presentation based on what little I could find. As for assessing if they think of pain the way we do, who knows?

Are we asking "how" a dog feels pain or "how much" pain a dog feels? The original question seemed geared towards the latter, and I have no idea how one might tell, when we can't even tell if another human feels the same things we do, and humans can talk.

i've always seen how much pain you feel as being directly related to how you feel pain. but pain is a highly personalized experience that i'm not sure we can express, that's true.

I hvae also wondered the same thing. Maybe everyone has the same favorite color, just what registers in my brain as "purple" is what registers as "black" in the cranium of the goth down the street? (Actually, I doubt this, for various reasons.)

Not saying that we have our own reality, rather that we percieve different things as the same.

How dogs feel pain? I am not sure HOW they do. I think they were given pain receptors just like we have been given pain receptors, though they are not just like ours probably.
What I do know is that they do feel pain. I knew a woman once who let her dog be in labor- who was visibly distressed and suffering for days, she said dogs don't feel pain and they don't feel pain like we do. I told her, why does a dog cry when you step on it's foot? Why does it cry and yelp when injured?
I haven't done any research on HOW dogs feel pain. But they sure do. I felt so bad for that ladies dog. She finally took her into the vet, the vet was irrate. All but 2 puppies were dead, they died in the womb from the distress of a complicated delivery for the mom dog.
No matter how they feel pain, they do feel it, and I am glad as dog lovers we are sensitive to our dogs and the pain they feel.
They are kind of at our mercy aren't they? wouldn't it be weird to have some other life form larger than us deciding what our pain tolerance is? no thanks.
Very interesting topic to think on and read about.
God bless you
Sharon Empson

I agree with Amber. I think for the most part they feel pain as we do, but don't show it (stoic), because in the natural world, pain usually is an indication of weakness.

I think Leah has a good point. It tends to very with the situation. If the animal is in a live or die situation,I don't feel like pain will hinder the animal in it's struggle to survive. I think humans are the same way. In Viet Nam I saw soldiers fight on with injuries that were horrific. Injuries where death was envidable, yet they fought on. I feel like their bodies provided the necessary chimicals to block the pain. Animals may be more reluctant to show pain because it could make them more volunable. Just my personal opinion from my experience, nothing more. Bruce Hart