How to Care for Older Dogs With Joint Pain

Video Transcript

"Hi. I'm Dr. Greg McDonald. I'm a veterinarian in Southern California and I own McDonald Animal Hospital in Santa Barbara. Today we're going to talk a little bit about health care of your dog and older dogs that might have joint pain. It's a very very common problem for dogs. They get to be 8, 9, 10 years old, they'll start to have stiff joints. And the owners first notice after a long walk or over doing it on the beach one day, the next day they are very very difficult time getting up. Especially if they have been sleeping for a little while. And so that's the first sign that the owners usually notice that an animal is starting to have joint pain. We are very fortunate now, when I first graduated from school, we didn't have a lot of products. But now we have a lot of products and we start out with what we call nutraceuticals. Nutraceuticals are kind of half way between a nutrient and a pharmaceutical. So they are very very safe for your dog. If it was unfortunate enough that your dog broke in to the whole box and ate it, it's not going to hurt your dog as opposed to what some of the pharmaceuticals might do. So we start out with those first when the dog first starts showing these signs and I will go over a few of those products with you now. One of the ones that we like is called Duralactin. Duralactin is formulated from cows milk. It's a special protein that they've isolated from cows milk that actually cuts down inflammation throughout the whole body. So this actually a very very nice product if there is inflammation in the liver, kidneys or the joints. And so it's another nice product. We call it an nutraceutical again because it's a nutrient, half way between a nutrient and a pharmaceutical. One of my other favorite ones that we like to use is called Cosequin. Cosequin is a little more specific and it helps dogs with their joint problems. Once again it's a really really nice product because it can't hurt the dog and you can start it out. Now one of the things that everybody needs to notice is that when you first start it, you don't notice any changes. It takes a week or sometimes even a month before you notice all of the benefits from these products. Another product that I like is called Glyco-Flex. And Glyco-Flex is another nutraceutical and I like this one because it has like ten different ingredients in it. And Glyco-Flex, it comes as a nice little chewable tablet. You can give this to your dog every day and it's going to help with the joint pain. Once your dog, this is a disease that's progressive and once your dog keeps showing signs and you've already had him on nutraceuticals for sometimes a year or two and then they're still getting sore again, then we step up into the pharmaceutical area. And we got lots of different products there as well. Duramax is the one that I like the most. But again, that's a nonsteriodal anti-inflammatory and it does have some more side effects that the nutraceuticals don't have. So once we choose that, then we start doing a little blood testing to be sure we aren't harming the dog. Checking the liver enzymes and also being sure that the dog is not getting sick. They can start having GI signs if we keep high levels of that going for a long time period."