Old Girl

[Usual2usual]

Hi,

Our old girl is finally looking and acting...well....old. She is estimated to be around 15 (was a rescue so not exactly sure) and we have had her for 9 years.

It just seems to have happened very suddenly she is shaky on her legs, falls on the (laminate) floor and gets a bit confused at times like forgetting which way the door opens so standing in the wrong place and we have to gently move her so we can open it to let her out.

She is still spirited enough, eats well steals her puppy brothers treats (even though he is now bigger than her!) and runs about the garden albeit only for about 30 seconds then she is done.

I suppose my question is does anyone have any advice on older dogs, supplements I could buy to help her joints maybe? Any other words of wisdom?

We have started using yumove supplements for the older dog. Not has made a big difference. She has arthritis and is now moving a lot better. I highly recommend them. I think they have 30% off til the end of June.

The confusion sounds a little like canine cognitive decline (doggie dementia). When my boy (nearly 16) started showing signs I put him on Aktivait which is pricey, but definitely helps. It takes a month or so for improvements to show. Good quality Omega oil and MCT oil can also help.

I would book a vet appointment first though, as there are veterinary options as well and I would want the back end weakness checked, as well as checking for arthritis, as a large proportion of elderly dogs have it and pain can look like cognitive issues in some cases.

The Canine Arthritis Management website is great for advice re supplements and managing the environment once they get elderly and start slipping on hard floors. We have rugs in our quarry tiled kitchen and their grip tape in strips in the kitchen and back porch doorways.

My boy has something neurological going on, although no-one is sure what and the vets don’t think a general anaesthetic would be wise, so all we can do is monitor him, as he can’t have any scans.

Like your girl, he is a happy lad, still loves his food, enjoys his sniffy walks, has his version of geriatric zoomies every evening and still seems to enjoy life. He still has more good days than bad, but it’s something we monitor closely and he has regular vet checks as well. We keep a chart on the fridge door and mark up any neuro episodes or how good/bad days have been using a traffic light system, so we can keep the vet up to date.

My old lady GSD's arthritis pain was managed for several years with Metacam plus YuMove Advanced, then I switched to PharmaQuin Joint Complete instead of YuMove because it's the same thing but cheaper and available at my local pet shop (I bought the horse version, which is just a bigger pack). When that was no longer cutting it we added Amantadine, which "has been shown to improve the effectiveness of NSAID medications when combined with them". I had to get that on a private prescription from the vet and order it from local pharmacy. If you do that, shop around because I found quite a difference in prices (and ask the vet to prescribe it in pack quantities, which I think was 56, because that's much cheaper than breaking into a second pack). It cost just over £60 for a month's supply.

I tried CBD oil, which some people reckon is fantastic, and didn't see any difference. There's been a small-scale clinical trial that showed it was effective but it was at pretty high doses, which would have been prohibitively expensive in the UK.

She got a monthly massage from a canine physiotherapist, and daily stretches to help with the muscle pain caused by her walking to keep some weight off the worst side.

Some great advice here thanks!

Will google some of the stuff above and speak to the vet when she has her boosters and check up next week.

There’s a new product out for osteoarthritis called librela. It’s a monthly injection based on monoclonal antibodies , same as the ones they use to treat rheumatoid arthritis and sometimes Covid in humans. Our old girl suddenly went downhill like you’re describing in November, she couldn’t get up from the tile floor and sometimes used to cry at night with pain in her joints. We kept doing cycles of antinflammatories and supplements but they were messing with her liver. Librela was approved in the EU in Feb (I checked it’s also approved in UK) and we started using it straight away and honestly she’s a whole new dog, there was a literal transformation over the course of a week. She’s still not 100% but she can play, run short distances, get up and down from the tile floor easily, and no lobger cries at night. Cannot recommend enough!

My little old lady has just started on these new injections too, slight improvement so far but she only had the first one four days ago.
A year or so ago she was on a monthly course, four months long of a different one ( forgotten the name sorry) which helped a lot but these new ones are said by my vet to be even more effective. She’s on Loxicam for pain but I need to monitor that as she’s always had IBD.
I’ve used some supplements, salmon oil, glucosamine, Joint Aid, a few others but can’t say they’ve made much difference. The injections have been the most effective.