How to Help Dogs With Arthritis

Video Transcript

"The question is how to help dogs with arthritis. Arthritis should be diagnosed by your veterinarian first. It plagues millions of dogs especially older dogs and dogs that are overweight. So there are lots of different things that we can do these days in veterinary medicine to help dogs with arthritis. The number one thing to think about is if the dog is overweight or obese, weight loss. That can help tremendously. And also preventing weight gain is a big thing to help these dogs. There are a lot of other things as well. These days there are a lot of diets that may have fatty acids, glucosamine supplementation to them. Those are very beneficial. Also just supplementing glucosamine can be of help as well. Check with your veterinary clinic, they can tell you if that's appropriate or not. Also there are a lot of non-steroidal anti-inflammatories or nsaids these days that actually can be given on a daily basis or as needed to help dogs with arthritis. There are lots of these different medications that can be used and really give some of these dogs benefit from their achy joints and these arthritic joints that are very stiff. Now other things these days we focus on would be rehabilitation. There are actually canine rehabilitators that can help discuss range of motion therapy, swimming therapies, underwater treadmills, things like that as well that also can help these dogs in the long run."