Dog Arthritis Treatment

Osteoarthrosis And Canine Arthritis

Dog arthritis treatment is important. Of all the dog illness symptoms, lameness and dog joint pain is so common. Knowing what you can do yourself is important. Top tips from Dr Per Schonbeck.

Dog joint pain can be a problem in all ages. If its a younger dog you will start to be concerned about dysplasia, OCD or other "growth" diseases. In the elderly dog age osteoarthrosis is almost considered to be normal.

Dog arthritis treatment are different depending on the cause. You need to be very care full in young dogs as things can go terrible wrong if certain diseases not being promptly treated.

What if you suspect dog hip pain?

In young dogs limping for more than a week, i strongly recommend to seek veterinary advice. Like the dog on the x-ray needed operation on its radius bone, because of growth disease.

Canine arthritis in the elderly dog is a more slow developing disease. This give you more possibilities to try different treatment strategies

Arthritis Supplements

Benefits of Glucosamine

You will see many benefits using some kind of glucosamine supplementation in your dogs arthritis treatment. This benenefits you can read about on the Benefits of Glucosamine page. Several clinical glucosamine studies in humans have showed great effects in slowing down the progression of cartilage breakdown. Using this remedy early in the process is mandatory for it to have proper effect.

Liquid, tablets or dog food glucosamine, well its up to you. You do give up some flexibility using the dog food type. Some times glucosamine dosage dogs need adjustment according to the disease.

Is there any risks using glucosamine? What about diabetes and glucosamine? I got a mail from one concerned owner and you find my response regarding glucosamine and diabetes.

Pentosane Injection

Pentosan (Pentosan polysulfate sodium) is another possibility. In sweden it is sold under the name Cartrophen injection.

I call it a super glucosamine. This is not entirely true as it contains no glucosamine. But it has great benefits and used like glucosamine. You need veterinarian visits as injections is needed.

No Better: Then Maybe Rimadyl

At some point the glucosamine, omega, or chondroitin is not enough. Often i recommend to try some kind of non steroid anti-inflammatory medicine (NSAID). Rimadyl for dogs is often used. In Sweden there is others as well, but the Rimadyl was the first one and the most known.

How these NSAID medicines can give pain relief you can find out in Rimadyl for dogs page.

Most important is the Rimadyl side effects. Sied effects is possible, but according to a big investigation in the Europe Union cartrofen (Rimadyl) side effects are not more common that other dog registered NSAID medicines.

Gold Bead Implants

In Denmark this was very popular 10-15 years ago as a dog arthritis treatment. With a big gauge needle under general anesthesia small gold pieces are placed next to the joint capsule. In the beginning we used the acupuncture points. This was not so important we found out later.

Used in the hips i got very positive results. Lame dogs got much better and many of them did not need any more medication. Others did.

Why does it works? Well, most likely it has to the positive ionisation by the gold in the area. This somehow changes the joints physiology and pain reduction is possible.

In Sweden this is controversial and therefore i find it difficult to do.

Dog Obesity and Exercise

Lot of dogs is far too heavy and dog obesity is a big problem. In my practice there is no way around it, time to loose weight. This can make the need of NSAID disappear in some dogs.

Exercise should you change to little and often. Not long walks once or twice a week. No, only short walks but more often. This is important as too long walks will irritate joints more.

Light exercise is important as to little movement will make your dog more stiff in the joints. This will also sped up the arthritis development.

Not too much. Not too little.