The joint-care routine we started at four

There is an old labrador who walks our beach most mornings, a lovely black fellow with a grey chin and a careful way of moving. One winter I watched him decline over a few months, the trot shortening to a walk, the walk shortening to the flat section near the car park. His owner and I got talking one day and she said something I have never forgotten. We only started looking after his joints when they started hurting, and by then we were behind.

I went home, looked at Charlie, four years old and airborne half the time, and started his joint routine that week. Nothing hurt. Nothing was wrong. That was exactly the point.

Joint care has a cruel piece of timing built into it. By the time a dog shows you stiffness, the wear that caused it has usually been building quietly for years, and cartilage is not a thing you get to rebuild on demand. So the care that changes the story is the care that starts while the dog still looks bulletproof. The best time to look after a dog's joints is the years when he seems to have no joints at all, just springs.

Why we started at four

Four felt almost embarrassingly early. Charlie was in full flight, leaping off the deck steps, cornering on the wet grass like a motorbike. But big dogs load their joints hard from the day they are grown, and every one of those glorious years leaves a small deposit. You do not see the account balance until much later. Starting early meant we were protecting cartilage he still had, keeping muscle strong while it was easy to build, and shaping habits while he was young enough to learn them as simply the way life is.

There was another reason, quieter and more honest. Prevention is cheap in every way that matters. A five-minute warm-up costs nothing. A ramp costs less than one vet visit. The routine below asks so little of an ordinary week that the only real barrier is that nothing is wrong yet, and nothing being wrong is a strange reason to wait.

The routine, piece by piece

The warm-up. This is the heart of it. Before anything fast or hard, the beach sprint, the ball, a big off-lead run, Charlie gets five minutes of brisk walking first, with a couple of gentle sit-to-stands worked in. Cold muscles and cold joints take impact badly, and most of the tweaks I hear about happen in the first wild minutes out of the car. Now the lead stays on until he has walked himself warm. He knows the pattern so well that he does his own little trot-up while he waits.

The weight. Nobody loves this one, so I will say it plainly and kindly. Every extra kilo rides on those joints through every step, every jump, every set of stairs, and keeping a dog lean is the single most powerful joint protection there is. You should be able to feel ribs easily under a light layer and see a waist from above. Food scales beat guessing, and treats come out of the daily total rather than on top of it. Charlie considers this policy an outrage. His hips consider it a gift.

The muscle. Strong muscle is a joint's suspension system. Steady, regular movement builds it, so we favour consistency over weekend heroics, a proper walk every day rather than nothing all week and two big hours on Saturday. Swimming is the bonus round, all the muscle work with almost none of the load, and living here we are spoiled for it. Hills, sand and uneven ground are quiet strength training too.

The supplements. Charlie has been on a vet-recommended joint supplement and fish oil since we started, and I will keep the detail deliberately light here, because the right products and amounts depend on your dog's size, breed, history and diet. This is a conversation for your own vet, and it is a good one to have early. Take the question to your next routine visit: what would you start now, at this age, for this dog? Vets light up at that question. They spend too many appointments being asked it four years too late.

The check-in. Once a year the vet goes over his movement properly, and between visits I watch for the small tells, hesitation at the car boot, a changed sit, stiffness in the first minutes after a big day. Early is a moving target. You have to keep looking to stay ahead of it.

The surfaces we said no to

Routines are what you do. Just as important is what we quietly removed. Our floorboards were the big one. A big dog cornering on a slippery floor is doing a small uncontrolled splits several times a day, so runners and rubber-backed mats went down along Charlie's main highways, the hall, the kitchen turn, the landing zone near the door. He gets traction everywhere he gets excited.

Repeated big jumps were the other. One leap off the deck is a dog being a dog. Fifty ball launches with a skidding, twisting landing, every day for years, is a repetitive strain machine, so fetch became shorter, lower and more about the sniff-out than the leap. The car boot got a ramp. He looked at it like I had insulted his entire lineage, and learned it in a weekend for cheese. Stairs at speed became stairs at a walk. None of it shrank his life. It just took the sharpest edges off the thousand small impacts a week that nobody counts.

Charlie is older now, and I honestly cannot tell you which parts of the routine deserve the credit. That is how prevention works. You never get to meet the problem you avoided. What I can tell you is that he still does his ridiculous sideways gallop when the beach opens up in front of him, and that every time he does it, some quiet part of me thanks the black labrador and the woman who told me the truth near the car park. Start now, while it looks unnecessary. That is the only time starting really works.