Forelimb muscle activity during level and progressive incline and decline walking in dogs and implications for rehabilitation
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Rachel Mariël Cain, Kate Stanford, Marti Drum, Jim Richards, David Levine, Darryl Millis and Tena Ursini
This study evaluated forelimb muscle activity in clinically sound dogs during treadmill walking on level ground, inclines, and declines using surface and fine‑wire electromyography. Decline walking significantly increased average supraspinatus activity and both average and peak deltoideus activity compared with level and incline walking, whereas incline walking did not consistently increase forelimb muscle activation. No significant changes were found in biceps brachii or triceps brachii activity across treadmill positions. These findings suggest that controlled decline walking selectively increases shoulder stabiliser demand and should be used thoughtfully when designing rehabilitation programmes for dogs with shoulder pathology.
This article is open access under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), permitting unrestricted use with appropriate credit to the authors and Frontiers in Veterinary Science.
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