844-436-7691
The short answer: arthritis is not a thing that happens to old dogs. It is a progressive joint disease that usually starts years before anyone notices, and by the time a dog is visibly limping it has typically been going on for a long time. The single biggest reason it goes untreated is that owners file the early signs under "slowing down with age." This page is about catching it earlier than that — the signs that come before the limp, the five stages the international veterinary consensus actually uses, and what the evidence says is worth doing at each one.
Written by Marc Brannigan, Co-Founder & CEO of HempMy Pet. Last updated 21 September 2026.
The Signs Owners Miss
Arthritis rarely announces itself. It gets quietly absorbed into what people believe ageing looks like.
The sofa. The car. The stairs. The last third of the walk. Greeting you at the door. Withdrawal is the most reliable early pain signal in dogs, and it is almost always read as a personality change instead. Ask yourself what your dog did a year ago that they do not do now.
Watch them stand up after an hour of lying still. Stiff on rising and looser once they are moving is the signature of a worn joint — and because it resolves within a minute, owners see the recovery rather than the problem. It is worst in cold or damp weather.
A dog who has started sitting lopsided, lying on one side only, sleeping in a new place, or shifting position all night is telling you they cannot get comfortable. Restlessness after dark is one of the earliest arthritis complaints and one of the last to be attributed to it.
By the time a dog limps, the disease has usually been present for a long time. The useful signs are the ones that look like a change in personality rather than a change in movement.
The Twelve Early Signs, and What Owners Usually Call Them
The middle column is the thing people say out loud. The right column is what is actually happening.
| What you notice | What owners usually call it | What it usually means |
|---|---|---|
| Slow to get up | "He's just getting old" | Joint stiffness after rest — the most common first sign of all |
| Stops jumping on the sofa or into the car | "She's grown out of it" | Anticipating pain on landing. Dogs avoid before they yelp |
| Hesitates at stairs | "He's being lazy" | Stairs load the hips and elbows more than flat ground |
| Shorter walks, lagging at the end | "He's slowing down" | Exercise intolerance — the joint tires before the dog does |
| Stiff after a long walk or a big play session | "She overdid it" | Post-exercise flare, one of the clearest patterns there is |
| Licking one joint or paw | "Nervous habit" | Referred discomfort. Dogs lick at pain they cannot reach |
| Restless or pacing at night | "Old dog nonsense" | Cannot find a comfortable position lying still |
| Sitting lopsided or lying only on one side | Nothing — usually unnoticed | Offloading a painful joint, often the first asymmetry to appear |
| Grumpy when touched or handled | "He's got moody in his old age" | Pain-related irritability. A genuinely common and misread sign |
| Muscle loss over the hips or shoulders | "She's lost weight" | Disuse atrophy on the painful side. Feel both sides and compare |
| Bunny-hopping with both back legs | "Funny little run" | Classic hip pattern — both sides hurt, so neither takes the load alone |
| Slipping on hard floors | "Clumsy" | Weakened supporting muscle plus reduced confidence. Also how a mild case becomes an acute injury |
If several of these are true, write down which ones and when you first noticed them. That list is worth more in a ten-minute consultation than anything else you can bring.
The Five Stages — Not Four
"The four stages of arthritis in dogs" is one of the most-searched phrases on this subject, and it is not quite right.
There is a real, published international staging system, and it has five stages numbered 0 to 4. It is called COAST — the Canine OsteoArthritis Staging Tool — developed by an international expert panel, the COAST Development Group, whose consensus guidelines were published in Frontiers in Veterinary Science in 2023. The version used without x-rays is called COASTeR.
The reason this matters to an owner rather than only to a vet is the shape of it: the first two stages have no visible clinical signs at all. The tool exists specifically to catch the disease before the point where most people start looking.
| Stage | What it means | What an owner would see |
|---|---|---|
| Stage 0 | No clinical signs. No risk factors identified. | Nothing. A healthy dog with no particular predisposition |
| Stage 1 | No clinical signs. One or more risk factors identified. | Still nothing — but the dog is a predisposed breed, overweight, has a known joint abnormality, or a past injury |
| Stage 2 | Clinical signs present. Mild osteoarthritis pain. | The subtle column above: slow to rise, stopped jumping, stiff after big walks |
| Stage 3 | Clinical signs present. Moderate osteoarthritis. | Obvious and consistent — visible lameness, clear reluctance, changed behaviour |
| Stage 4 | Clinical signs present. Severe osteoarthritis. | Significant impairment affecting daily life and quality of life |
The two silent stages are the whole argument for raising it early. A large-breed puppy, an overweight dog, a dog who had a cruciate repair at four — those are Stage 1 dogs, and the guideline's position is that the conversation should start there, not when the limp arrives.
Source: COAST Development Group international consensus guidelines, Cachon et al., Frontiers in Veterinary Science, 2023.
Which Dogs Get It, and When
Earlier and more often than most owners expect.
Osteoarthritis is a disease of joint wear, not simply of age, which is why it is not confined to old dogs. The risk factors that put a dog into Stage 1 are reasonably consistent:
- Being overweight. The single biggest modifiable factor, and it works two ways — extra mechanical load plus the inflammatory effect of excess fat tissue.
- Developmental joint disease. Hip and elbow dysplasia, luxating patellas, osteochondrosis. These produce arthritis in young dogs, sometimes before two years old.
- A previous injury. Cruciate ligament damage in particular. A repaired knee is a knee that will develop arthritis.
- Size and breed. Large and giant breeds carry more risk, though small breeds get it too and are more often missed because their signs are less dramatic.
- Repetitive high-impact activity. Weekend-warrior exercise patterns — nothing all week, then three hours of ball on Saturday — are harder on joints than consistent daily movement.
Arthritis cannot be reversed. Cartilage does not regrow, and no supplement, diet or drug undoes damage that has already happened. What is genuinely achievable is slowing the progression and keeping the dog comfortable, and both of those work much better when started early — which is the entire point of the staging tool above.
What a Vet Can Actually Do
Worth knowing before the appointment, because the options have changed significantly in the last few years.
- Diagnosis. A physical examination — joint range of motion, pain response, muscle symmetry, gait — often with x-rays. Radiographs confirm and grade it but do not correlate perfectly with pain; some dogs with dramatic x-rays are comfortable and vice versa.
- Weight management. Listed by the consensus panel among the foundational elements that apply at every stage. Unglamorous and more effective than most of what follows.
- NSAIDs. Canine-specific anti-inflammatories — carprofen, meloxicam, grapiprant and others. Still central. They need periodic bloodwork and they are not interchangeable with anything in your own medicine cabinet.
- Anti-NGF monoclonal antibody injections. A monthly injectable targeting nerve growth factor. The COAST panel was unanimous that either an NSAID or anti-NGF is appropriate first-line for Stage 3 and Stage 4 dogs, and more divided about Stage 2.
- Adjunct pain medication. Gabapentin, amantadine and others, layered on when a single drug is not enough.
- Physical rehabilitation. Hydrotherapy, targeted strengthening, laser, acupuncture. Consistently underused and genuinely valuable for maintaining the muscle that supports the joint.
- Surgery. For specific structural problems — cruciate repair, and joint replacement in advanced cases.
One timing note from the consensus guidelines worth carrying into the appointment: a Stage 2 dog usually needs a minimum of four weeks of pain control before the response can be judged, and a Stage 3 dog likely eight weeks. Stopping at day ten because nothing obvious changed is the most common way an effective plan gets abandoned.
What You Can Do at Home
These are the foundational items — the things the consensus panel recommends for every dog at every stage, including the ones with no signs yet.
- Get the weight off. If you can do exactly one thing, do this one. A few pounds is a lot on a dog, and it changes both the load and the inflammation.
- Consistent daily exercise, not bursts. Two or three shorter walks beat one long one, and regular moderate movement beats a sedentary week followed by a heroic Saturday.
- Fix the floors. Runners and rugs across laminate, tile and polished wood. Slipping is how a manageable joint becomes an acute injury, and a dog who is afraid of the floor moves less and loses more muscle.
- Remove the jumps. A ramp into the car, steps up to the sofa or bed, and a gate at the stairs if they are a struggle. Every landing is a load.
- Raise the bowls for a dog who is stiff through the neck and shoulders, and give them a supportive orthopaedic bed off cold hard floors.
- Keep the nails short. Long nails change how the foot loads and make slipping worse. Easy to overlook, easy to fix.
- Warmth before movement. A warm bed and a gentle few minutes before a walk does more for a stiff dog than the same effort afterwards.
- Keep a log. Rate the first thirty seconds of rising, out of ten, every morning for a fortnight. It converts an impression into something you and your vet can actually track.
What Not to Feed a Dog With Arthritis
A common question with a more boring answer than the internet suggests.
There is no specific food that causes or worsens canine arthritis, and claims that grains, nightshades or particular proteins drive joint inflammation in dogs are not supported by evidence. The thing that genuinely makes arthritis worse is overfeeding, whatever the food is — because body weight is the one dietary variable with a clear, repeatable effect on joint disease.
So the practical list is: too much of anything, calorie-dense treats and table scraps that quietly add up, and free-feeding that makes portions impossible to track. Count treats as part of the daily calories rather than as extras. Therapeutic joint diets exist and some carry useful evidence, but they work as part of a weight plan rather than instead of one — worth asking your vet about directly.
Never give human anti-inflammatories. Ibuprofen, naproxen and paracetamol are genuinely dangerous to dogs.
Where Hemp Fits — and What the Consensus Panel Actually Said
We make hemp products, so here is the guideline's own position rather than ours. It is not entirely flattering, and we would rather you had it than not.
CBD appears in the COAST consensus guidelines. It is listed among the nutritional supplements a veterinarian might consider, as a minority recommendation — three of the nine panel members. For context, that is exactly the same level of support as glucosamine, chondroitin sulfate, green-lipped mussel, undenatured collagen type II and avocado-soybean unsaponifiables, each of which also scored three of nine. Every one of the familiar joint-supplement ingredients sits in the same minority bracket.
The panel gave four reasons those supplements did not get stronger backing: limited evidence base or equivocal efficacy, familiarity, additional cost, and variability in product quality between suppliers.
Three of those four are honest limitations we cannot argue away. The canine evidence base is genuinely thin — all five trials that met inclusion criteria for the 2023 Frontiers in Veterinary Science systematic review were osteoarthritis trials and four of five reported a benefit, which is the strongest showing CBD has in any canine application, and it is still five small studies. One of them was our own 90-day trial, overseen by veterinary pain specialist Dr. Robin Downing with researchers from Colorado State University. Another, run at CSU and using the most objective measures of the five, found nothing at all. We publish both.
The fourth reason is the one we can do something about. "Variability in product quality between suppliers" is a real and specific criticism of this industry, and it is the reason we are vertically integrated: we breed our own hemp, grow it on our own certified-organic Colorado farm, formulate it in-house, and third-party test every batch. That does not make the evidence base larger. It does mean you know what is in the bottle.
So the honest placement: hemp is a supplement conversation, not a replacement for weight management, exercise, non-slip flooring or whatever your vet prescribes. Those come first because they have the strongest support. If you want to add something on top of them, this is a reasonable category to look at, and joint comfort is the one place where the canine research on CBD is at its best rather than its weakest.
Give it consistently and judge it over weeks. Joint comfort is cumulative rather than a dose for a bad day — the same four-to-eight-week window the guidelines apply to prescription options is a fair yardstick here too. Our serving guide works from body weight and converts milligrams into drops for the bottle you own.
Grown, formulated and batch-tested by us, so you know what is in it
250mg Hemp Seed Oil
Small dogs · by the drop
$49
1,000mg Hemp Seed Oil
Medium and large dogs
$99
Large Dog Hemp Treats
5mg each · easiest daily option
$32
Seed to sale on our own Colorado farm, full-spectrum, third-party tested every batch. Serving by weight →
Shop Hip & Joint Mobility → Hemp for Dogs With Arthritis
An arthritic dog is usually on medication, so talk to your vet before adding hemp — it can change how quickly the body clears other drugs. We cover that, and the published safety findings including the liver-enzyme data from our own trial, in hemp and CBD side effects in dogs.
When to See Your Vet
Book an appointment if:
- Your dog is slow to rise, hesitant at stairs, or has stopped jumping onto furniture or into the car
- They are stiff after exercise or in cold weather
- You can name things they used to do and no longer do
- They have become grumpy about being touched or handled
- You can feel muscle loss over one hip or shoulder compared with the other
- They are restless at night or cannot settle in one position
- Your dog is a predisposed breed, overweight, or has had a previous joint injury — even with no signs at all
Sooner, rather than at the next routine visit, if:
- A limp appeared suddenly or they will not bear weight on a leg — that is a different problem, covered in why is my dog limping
- There is a firm swelling anywhere on a limb
- They cry out when moved or touched
- A dog already on arthritis medication has got noticeably worse
For veterinary-school background, the Cornell Riney Canine Health Center's osteoarthritis page is a reliable starting point, and VCA Hospitals has an owner-focused overview.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the four stages of arthritis in dogs?
There are actually five, numbered 0 to 4, under the Canine OsteoArthritis Staging Tool (COAST) published by an international expert panel in 2023. Stage 0 is a dog with no signs and no risk factors; Stage 1 is a dog with no signs but one or more risk factors such as being overweight, a predisposed breed, or a previous joint injury; Stage 2 is mild pain with clinical signs; Stage 3 is moderate; Stage 4 is severe. The important part is that the first two stages have no visible signs at all — the tool exists to catch the disease before an owner would notice anything.
What is the best thing for dogs with arthritis?
Keeping them lean. It is the least exciting answer and the best-supported one, because body weight affects both the mechanical load on the joint and the inflammation around it. After that: consistent daily exercise rather than weekend bursts, non-slip flooring, removing jumps with ramps and steps, physical rehabilitation, and whatever pain control your vet prescribes. Supplements sit on top of that foundation rather than in place of it.
Can a dog heal from arthritis?
No. Osteoarthritis is progressive and the cartilage damage does not reverse — no diet, supplement or drug rebuilds it. What is realistically achievable is slowing the progression and keeping the dog comfortable and mobile, and both work considerably better when started early. That is why the staging system puts so much emphasis on the two stages before any signs appear.
How long will a dog with arthritis live?
Arthritis is not itself a life-limiting disease, and a well-managed arthritic dog can live a full normal lifespan. What shortens life is uncontrolled pain and lost mobility leading to a quality-of-life decision, which is a very different thing from the disease killing the dog. Weight control, pain management and keeping muscle on the dog are what change that trajectory.
What not to feed a dog with arthritis?
There is no food that causes or worsens canine arthritis, and claims about grains or nightshades driving joint inflammation in dogs are not supported by evidence. The dietary factor that genuinely matters is quantity: overfeeding, calorie-dense treats, table scraps and free-feeding all add weight, and weight is the one dietary variable with a clear effect on joint disease. Count treats within the daily calories. Never give human anti-inflammatories such as ibuprofen, naproxen or paracetamol.
At what age do dogs get arthritis?
Earlier than most owners expect. Dogs with developmental joint disease such as hip or elbow dysplasia can have arthritic change before two years of age, and any dog with a previous cruciate injury will develop it in that joint regardless of age. It becomes more common with age, but treating it as an old-dog disease is exactly how the early, treatable years get missed.
How can I tell arthritis from an injury?
Watch the first thirty seconds after your dog has been lying still, then watch again after twenty minutes of movement. Arthritis is typically worst on rising and eases as the dog warms up, then returns after rest. A soft-tissue injury tends to be the opposite — fine on rising and worse after activity — and can usually be traced to a particular day. A limp that is getting steadily worse in both states needs imaging rather than a rest plan.
What do the guidelines say about CBD for dog arthritis?
The COAST international consensus guidelines list a cannabidiol supplement as a minority recommendation, supported by three of nine panel members — the same level as glucosamine, chondroitin sulfate, green-lipped mussel, undenatured collagen type II and avocado-soybean unsaponifiables, which all scored identically. The panel's stated reasons for the minority rating were limited evidence base or equivocal efficacy, familiarity, additional cost, and variability in product quality between suppliers. Joint comfort is where the canine CBD research is strongest, but it remains a small evidence base, and supplements belong alongside weight management and veterinary care rather than instead of them.
The Short Version
Arthritis starts long before the limp. The signs that matter early are the ones that look like personality rather than movement: things they stopped doing, stiffness in the first thirty seconds of standing, and an inability to settle at night.
There are five stages, not four, and the first two are invisible — which is the case for raising it with your vet while your dog still looks fine. Weight, consistent movement and non-slip floors do more than anything you can buy. Everything else, ours included, goes on top of that.
Shop Hip & Joint Mobility → All Hemp for Dogs
Hemp for Dogs With Arthritis · Why Is My Dog Limping? · Night-Time Restlessness · Our Clinical Trials · Serving by Weight
Marc co-founded HempMy Pet in 2016 with his wife Natalie, the company's COO. HempMy Pet breeds its own hemp genetics, grows them on its certified-organic Colorado farm, and formulates every batch in-house under human-grade standards — seed to sale, nothing sourced overseas. Every batch is third-party tested and the certificates of analysis are published. More about us.
HempMy Pet ran its own 90-day study of 37 dogs with chronic joint discomfort. Of the 32 that completed it, 30 (93%) showed a benefit, and 94% of owners reported their dog's quality of life had improved. It was overseen by Dr. Robin Downing, DVM, MS of the Downing Center for Animal Pain Management, with Lori Kogan, Ph.D. and Peter W. Hellyer, DVM of Colorado State University's College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences, and published in the Journal of the American Holistic Veterinary Medical Association. Read the methodology.
Why Dr. Downing: in 2005 she became only the third veterinarian in the world credentialed as a Diplomate of the American Academy of Pain Management. She founded the International Veterinary Academy of Pain Management, is a Diplomate of the ACVSMR, a Certified Veterinary Pain Practitioner and a Certified Canine Rehabilitation Practitioner, and was the AVMA's 2020 Bustad Companion Animal Veterinarian of the Year. Chronic joint pain is her life's work. Read the published paper (PDF).
This article is general information for dog owners, not veterinary advice. It is reviewed and updated as new peer-reviewed evidence is published, and where the evidence is thin or negative we say so.
These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. This article is general information, not veterinary advice. If your dog is unwell, contact your veterinarian.
