You stroke your dog's back and you feel the difference. The hind legs have got narrower. The hip bones stick out where there used to be muscle. Muscle loss in an old dog creeps up on you and you only notice once a fair amount has gone. The frustrating part: it keeps itself going. Less muscle means less confidence. Less confidence means less movement. And less movement costs more muscle.

Two kinds of muscle loss, two approaches

In an ageing dog two things run alongside each other.

The first is age-related loss. From around seven years old the body builds muscle protein more slowly than it breaks it down. That happens in every dog, including a perfectly healthy one.

The second is loss through disuse. A joint that hurts gets spared. The muscle around it no longer gets any stimulus and shrinks within weeks. This type moves much faster than age-related loss.

The distinction matters. Age-related loss can be slowed down. Disuse loss can largely be reversed, provided you remove the reason your dog is holding back.

The vicious circle in four steps

1. There is pain, stiffness or a lack of confidence on the floor.
2. Your dog moves less and shifts weight onto the front end.
3. Muscle mass in the hindquarters drops.
4. With less muscle, standing and turning get wobblier, so they move even less.

Every lap makes the next one worse. Waiting for it to improve on its own does not work here.

Where you break the circle

Point 1: take the pain away

As long as moving hurts, your dog will hold back. Every training plan falls apart on that. So have the joints examined first. For arthritis there is a lot available these days in pain relief and long-term management. What you can do at home is covered in arthritis in dogs: home care.

Point 2: make the floor trustworthy

This point gets skipped almost every time. A dog with less strength no longer dares push off normally on laminate or tiles. They mince along, keep their legs close together and take short steps. Steps like that barely load the muscle.

Give that same dog grip and you will see the stride lengthen. That is exactly the load that maintains muscle mass. Non-slip dog socks with silicone on both sides work well here, because the grip stays put even when the sock turns. You get the right size from the size calculator.

Socks do not build muscle themselves. All they do is get your dog moving again. That is the precondition for everything else.

Point 3: move little and often

For building muscle in a senior dog the old rule works in reverse. Not one long walk at the weekend, but four short ones a day. Ten minutes at an easy pace, four times over, does more for your dog's muscle mass than a single hour they need two days to recover from.

Other things that help:

• Walking on soft, uneven ground. Grass, a forest path, loose sand. The paws have to keep correcting there and that trains the small stabilising muscles.
• Gentle uphill work. A mild slope upwards asks a lot of the hindquarters. Do not push it on the way down.
• Standing exercises. Simply have your dog stand still on a mat for half a minute. Standing is muscle work.
• Sit-to-stand repetitions. Getting up from a sit five times is a proper exercise. Build it up slowly.

Point 4: check the food

A stubborn myth says an old dog needs less protein. For a healthy senior the opposite is closer to the truth: they use protein less efficiently and therefore need enough of it to hold on to muscle. If your dog has kidney problems the picture changes. Discuss that with your vet.

Keep an eye on total weight as well. Fat that replaces muscle still loads the joints but carries nothing.

Measuring whether it is working

Change is hard to see when you look at your dog every day. So measure.

Put a tape measure around the thigh, roughly halfway between hip and knee, with your dog standing. Note left and right. Repeat every two weeks in the same spot. A difference of more than one to two centimetres between left and right points to one-sided sparing, often because of pain on that side.

Take a photo from behind once a month as well. Side by side, three months of photos show you exactly what happened.

What to avoid

Stairs are not strength training. They ask for an explosive movement from hindquarters that can no longer deliver it. The risk of a misstep outweighs the gain.

Jumping in and out of the car belongs in the same category. A ramp or a lifting harness costs you a bit of effort. It saves the joints.

And rest is not therapy. A dog who spends three days in their bed after a bad day loses more in those three days than they gained from gentle walking. Talk to your vet about how much movement is sensible. If your dog also struggles to get up after resting, read old dog having trouble getting up.

What you can realistically expect

With disuse loss and a decent plan you will see a difference in size and in how easily your dog stands up within six to eight weeks. With age-related loss, staying stable is already a win. Getting back to the muscle mass of five years ago is not going to happen. Halving the rate of decline is.

Frequently asked questions

Can an old dog still build muscle?

Yes, just more slowly than a young dog. Muscle that disappeared because a painful joint was being spared comes back best, once that pain is treated. Expect six to eight weeks with short daily stimuli rather than a few long efforts.

How do I spot muscle loss in my dog in time?

Feel over the thighs and along the back with both hands every week. Prominent hip bones, a narrowing rear end or a clear difference between left and right are the first signs. You will often also see your dog shifting weight forwards and placing the hind legs closer together.

Do non-slip socks help against muscle loss?

Not directly: a sock does not build muscle. What they do is release the brake. A dog who no longer dares push off on a slippery floor takes short steps and hardly loads the hindquarters. With grip they dare to walk normally again and that is the stimulus the muscle needs.