Why Some Dogs Struggle to Squat to Poop

By Cynthia Lankenau, DVM, GDVWHM, ACVHM, CVA, RH (AHG), MS-TCVM, FACVBM

✓ Medically reviewed by Cynthia Lankenau, DVM, GDVWHM, ACVHM, CVA, RH (AHG), MS-TCVM, FACVBM — August 28, 2026 For general education — not a substitute for veterinary care.

Joint supplements · August 24, 2026 · 7 min read

Squatting to poop asks a dog's hips, stifles, and spine to hold a deep, sustained bend, and when those joints hurt, that posture is often the first thing to go.

Bodie was a twelve-year-old Lab mix, sixty-eight pounds, the kind of dog who’d spent a decade barreling off docks after tennis balls. His owner called me not because he’d stopped eating or slowed on walks, but because of something smaller and stranger: he’d started circling twice, sometimes three times, before he’d commit to squatting on the grass, and some mornings he’d half-crouch, shift his weight, and just stand back up without finishing. It had been going on for about six weeks, worse on cold mornings, better by midday once he’d loosened up. She thought it might be behavioral. It wasn’t.

I want to state the verdict up front, because I think readers deserve that before the explanation: in most dogs I see with this presentation, a struggle to hold or complete a squat is a joint-and-connective-tissue problem before it is anything else — hips, stifles, lumbosacral spine, sometimes all three working against a posture that demands they flex deeply and hold. It is not usually a housetraining lapse, and it is not usually “just getting old” in the vague sense owners often use. It is a specific mechanical complaint with a specific, findable cause.

What squatting actually asks of a dog’s body

Squatting to defecate is one of the more demanding postures a dog holds during an ordinary day. It requires flexion at the hips and stifles well past what’s needed for sitting, a level pelvis, core stability through the lumbar spine, and enough sustained strength in the rear limbs to keep that position for the several seconds a full bowel movement takes. Compare that to standing to urinate, which most male dogs and many females can do with almost no joint flexion at all. When a dog has osteoarthritis in the hips or knees, or discomfort along the lumbosacral junction, the squat is often the first daily task that reveals it, well before a limp shows up on a walk.

That’s consistent with what I hear from owners and from what shows up in general veterinary guidance on canine arthritis, including from the American Kennel Club, which notes that stiffness and pain are often worst first thing in the morning, when joints have gone hours without movement — the exact pattern Bodie’s owner described.

The counterargument I take seriously: it isn’t always joints

I’d be doing readers a disservice if I said every hesitant squat is arthritis. Constipation causes real straining and reluctance to fully commit to the position, especially in dogs whose stool has become hard or infrequent. Anal gland impaction makes the whole rear end tender in a way that can look identical to joint pain from the outside. Neurologic disease, particularly compressive lesions along the lumbosacral spine, can weaken the hindquarters enough that a dog physically cannot hold a squat even without primary hip disease. So the honest answer is: joint disease is the most common driver I see in dogs over seven or eight, but it is a rule-out diagnosis, not a default one. A dog who is also straining, whose stool looks different, or who has any hind-limb weakness or dragging needs a physical exam before anyone assumes it’s “just joints.”

What’s actually happening in the joint when this shows up

Osteoarthritis in dogs is a slow erosion of cartilage and a change in the joint fluid that’s supposed to cushion and lubricate movement. Two ingredients come up constantly in the joint-supplement conversation, and it’s worth being specific about what the evidence actually says rather than what marketing implies. Glucosamine and chondroitin are among the most studied joint support ingredients for dogs, according to Frontiers in Veterinary Science’s vet-reviewed claim library — and the mechanistic research backs specific, narrower claims than “cures arthritis.” Chondroitin has been shown to support healthy synovial fluid homeostasis, per a peer-reviewed randomized trial (Frontiers in Veterinary Science). Separately, glucosamine hydrochloride has been shown to prevent experimentally induced cartilage degradation in vitro, per a review published in Journal of Veterinary Medical Science. Those are lab-bench findings, not a promise that a chew will get a stiff dog back into a full squat — but they’re the honest floor the whole category rests on.

Green-lipped mussel is the other ingredient I look for on a label, and it has its own, separate evidence trail. In one study, extracts alleviated paw swelling in rats and reduced serum markers of inflammation, including rheumatoid factor, anti-cyclic citrullinated peptide antibody, and pro-inflammatory cytokines like TNF-α and IL-17 (Nutrients). That’s animal-model, in vitro-adjacent data — worth knowing, not worth overstating.

A second dog, a different tradeoff

The dog who changed how I explain this to owners wasn’t Bodie — it was a nine-year-old Cavalier named Pepper, twenty-two pounds, whose owner brought her in convinced she had a UTI because she was posturing to urinate over and over without producing much. Pepper didn’t have a UTI. She had bilateral stifle discomfort so mild that her gait looked almost normal on a leash walk, but the deep flexion required to squat was enough to make her abandon the posture early, over and over, which her owner read as urinary urgency. The tradeoff for that family wasn’t really about medication cost or pill burden — it was about the weeks it took to stop assuming it was a bladder problem and start treating it as the joint problem it actually was. I think about Pepper whenever an owner tells me their dog is “going more often but not going much.” Sometimes that’s the bladder. Sometimes it’s a joint that won’t hold the position long enough to finish.

Reading a joint-supplement label with this specific complaint in mind

If a veterinarian confirms joint disease is behind the squatting trouble, the label-reading exercise matters more than the marketing on the front of the bag. Look for glucosamine, chondroitin, and green-lipped mussel listed with actual milligram doses per serving, not buried in a proprietary blend. For scale, one product I’ve evaluated on this exact rubric — Boops Pets Advanced Hip & Joint — lists glucosamine at 1000 mg, MSM at 500 mg, chondroitin at 250 mg, and green-lipped mussel at 100 mg per serving, positioned to support joint flexibility and mobility. Whatever product you’re comparing it to, that’s the level of specificity worth demanding before you trust a label. If you want a deeper walkthrough of how we score a chew against that rubric, our best joint supplement for dogs piece goes label by label, and our avocado soy unsaponifiables vs. glucosamine comparison covers a newer ingredient class some owners ask about.

The scene that sticks with me

I keep coming back to a phone call, not an exam room. Bodie’s owner rang me about ten days after we’d started him on a joint supplement and shifted his walks to twice-daily short outings instead of one long weekend hike. She wasn’t calling about the supplement. She was calling because she’d watched him, that morning, squat once, fully, and finish — no circling, no half-crouch, no standing back up unfinished. She’d filmed it on her phone, which felt a little absurd to both of us, but I understood why. In my practice, that’s usually the marker owners notice before I do on a follow-up exam: not a change in gait on pavement, but a return to an ordinary, private, unremarkable bathroom moment. It’s a small thing to celebrate. It’s also, mechanically, one of the more reliable signs that a stiff hip or stifle is loosening up. I don’t put a number on how often that happens or how fast — every dog’s timeline differs, and one dog’s case is a case, not a statistic — but it’s the outcome I watch for.

Cold weather tends to make all of this worse, which is worth knowing if you notice the struggle is seasonal; we cover that pattern in more depth in does cold weather make a dog’s arthritis worse. And if you’re weighing a joint gummy against concerns about xylitol or other sweeteners, that’s a separate label check worth doing before you buy anything — see are adult joint gummies with glucosamine safe to share with your dog.

The bottom line

A dog who hesitates, circles excessively, or can’t hold a full squat long enough to finish a bowel movement is usually telling you something about hips, stifles, or spine before anything else — but confirm it with a vet rather than assuming, because constipation, anal gland disease, and neurologic weakness can look similar from the porch. If joint disease is the answer, read the label the way you’d read any other ingredient panel: real doses, named ingredients, and evidence that matches what’s actually printed on the bag.

For related context, read Does Cold Weather Make a Dog’s Arthritis Worse?.

For related context, read Are Adult Joint Gummies With Glucosamine Safe to Share With Your Dog?.