Lame Front Leg in Man and His Dog.

I have developed an enhanced empathy for dogs that are lame in a front leg, mainly because I've been lame on one of my front legs for the past few months.

Our arms have pretty much the same bones and joints as the front legs in dogs and cats. The first bone in the front leg is the shoulder blade. One end, big and flat, is attached to the spine and rib cage by several muscles and the other end is part of the shoulder joint.

In dogs and cats the front leg is used mainly for walking and running, and sometimes digging, so it pretty much goes straight down to the ground, and the shoulders are not very far apart. Millions of years ago our ancestors started using their front legs to swing through the trees, and much later they began using them to throw spears and footballs. Shoulders that are broad and far apart work better for those things so we have "collarbones" between the front of our chest and each shoulder. You can feel yours between the area where the pendant on a necklace would lie and each shoulder. Your collarbone helps you raise your shoulder and arm.

A few months ago it became extremely painful for me to raise my arm. I had done some damage to my "rotator cuff," a group of muscles and tendons that converge around the human shoulder. I could no longer turn on the dome light in my car, much less swing through trees or throw spears.

Dogs and cats have collarbones, but they are so small they often don't show up on X-rays. Their shoulders are not as prominent as ours but you can easily feel them. (If you can't your pet is too fat.) The next joint down is the elbow and looks more like our elbow.

Down at the end of the elbow is the paw. Just above the paw, where most of the flexing occurs, is the wrist. Our wrists and theirs too are made up of several small bones. Our hands have one bone for each of our five fingers. In the paw of a dog or cat there are four bones, one for each of the four toes. Some dogs have a fifth bone, and a small fifth toe, called a dewclaw. Cats have these too, and often have two or three dewclaws. Finally, each toe, like each finger, has three small bones. We have fingernails and toenails. Dogs and cats have claws.

In dogs, foreleg lameness, other than that caused by trauma, is not as common as hind leg lameness. More different things go wrong with front legs but there are none that are as common as hip arthritis and torn knee ligaments in the hind leg.

Dogs and cats also have the same bones and joints in their hind legs as we do. The hip joint - the attachment to the spine - is deep in the hindquarters and hard to feel. The thigh in dogs and cats is thick and doesn't stick out as clearly from the body as our thighs do, and the knees may not look much to you like knees.

You can spot the heel though. Dogs and cats actually walk on the "balls of their feet." Their heels, ("hocks") are higher and stick out behind. The Achilles tendon, from the back of the heel to the knee, feels a lot like ours.

I finally had a doctor look at my shoulder. Physical therapy is helping it get well. I'll be swinging through trees again before you know it.