It depends how long and how often the dog was worked on the spring pole. From my experience, if I worked a dog for 30-45 minutes 3x a week, for a 6 week keep, and stop 1 week before show, the dog wouldn't recover in time. It would take a dog at least 3 weeks to recover with no mouth work. You also have to realize that even after he's done working the hide 3 weeks out and finish his keep on the mill, which also play a part in putting extra work on his mouth from just blowing out air, will slow down the healing process. So once I realized how much straining a spring pole could do to my dogs mouth, but also know how important it is for them to be on it too, I will only let them work on it 10-15 minutes 2-3x a week during the off season(when they're not in a keep) Once they are locked and put on a keep, id stop using the spring pole. Ever since I started this strategy my dogs showed more mouth and kept their holds longer than before when I used to use a spring pole in their keeps.