1/7 As people seemed to like my post on dog gaits the other week (quite literally the most popular post I’ve ever written!), I thought I’d follow up with some musculoskeletal anatomy… #caninescience #dog #anatomy 
2/7 So, the main cool thing here is that your dog (along with most other mammals) has pretty much all the same parts you do. Some are in different numbers and different proportions, but it’s pretty similar…
3/7 This is by @satoshikawasaki & it is fabulous (ok, a little creepy). It shows a human compared to a horse: the front legs are similar to our arms, the back legs are similar to our legs, horses walk on the tip of a single finger/toe.
4/7 Also by @satoshikawasaki, the second example is like a dog (hind)leg. There is a hip, knee, ankle and extended foot. When people talk about ‘backwards knees’ especially in birds (4th example), they’re looking at the ankle.
5/7 You’ll also hear one of the forelimb joints referred to as a knee, it’s actually the wrist (carpus), similar to yours. Take-home message: not all joints are knees!
6/7 It’s not just bones, if you’re a gym-goer familiar with your muscles, dogs have biceps, triceps, hamstrings and quads. Rogue is conveniently upright here for human comparison (she didn’t skip legs day).
7/7 If you’re super into muscles, I’ve coloured puppy Rogue in…
8/7 😜 And these are just gratuitous pictures of Rogue looking stacked – she’s not normally quite this dreadfully behaved but there was a terribly exciting little girl with a princess football!
