: Why is this anal expressing so common now? I don't remember ever needing to this to a Dog when I was a kid and I had dogs all my life. Could it be related to how we feed them now?

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The change hasn't been in what we feed our pets but rather the culture, as humans, we have around animals that has evolved. With proper care, and as more and more research becomes available to us, the better we can care for our pets, and the longer our pets can live healthy longer lives.

Living in the wild or with little veterinarian care or without anal gland expression dogs suffer from impaction and infection. The glands are used to produce "juices" for better lack of a term, that are used in marking and tracking. To manually express them MORE OFTEN can be a sign of poor dieting, but not the general need to do it. They can be naturally expressed if a dogs fecal matter is firm and formed, but a poor diet that is causing runny or loose stool can cause this to back up in the glands, thus causing an extra need to manually express them.

I don't know if this is necessary to say, but I'll note it anyways: This does NOT mean creating a diet that will constipate your dog, and force solid stools to pass is either safe or a quick fix. Always go to a vet or well qualified groomer if you do not know the proper way to express them yourself. Example: my mother in-law was doing it herself to her senior Chihuahua and ended up causing permanent fecal incontinence in her dog, do to poor technique and because she was doing it too often reducing the muscle strength in his anus.