Does hitting your dog on the butt give it arithists?

Answer 1

Arthritis is not a specific result. However...

Many dogs, especially larger breeds, are prone to pelvic bone disorders, including hip dysplasia, which is extremely painful for the animal, very hard to correct, and shortens the life of many animals, as some may need to be put down to prevent extreme pain, and impact with that part of the animal may exacerbate that condition. Likewise, when something goes wrong with high-stress joints (hips, knees in humans, etc.), arthritis is often a complication. Is it caused by the impact, or a post-injury immune reaction? No idea.

That said, it's generally accepted that you can effectively train any healthy dog without resorting to negative operant conditioning (exceptions are prey response stuff like car chasing -- maybe (Grandon et al)). Positive conditioning works a LOT better. This has to do with canines' underdeveloped neocortex. They're hyper-specific in their thinking, so it's almost impossible to negatively counter an undesirable behavior -- too easy for the dog to fail to correlate the cause (bad behavior) and the effect (pain). In humans, the neocortex helps us generalize (e.g. if pinching someone in the nose is wrong, punching anyone in the nose is wrong - a generalization). Dogs don't have this capability.

As such, I would like to Strongly encourage you to avoid hitting your dog as a method of behavior modification. It doesn't work and it can permanently injure the creature.