My name is Sam Meisler and I am a small animal veterinarian. Today, we’re going to talk about dog arthritis. Arthritis is a huge problem for dogs in the United States. What is arthritis? Arthritis is inflammation of the joints.
Now most of the time, as far as dogs are concerned we’re talking about osteoarthritis. Osteoarthritis is inflammation of the joints involving the bone around the joints as well. The most common joints that we see that are involved with arthritis in dogs are the hip joint, the stifle joint which is the knee of the dog and the elbow joint.
Now, why do we see disease in these three joints; the hip, the knee or the elbow?
The most likely corporate is conformation. Conformation means the way the dog, that particular dog is shaped as far as its joints. We see a lot of problems at the hips with abnormally shape hips that something they are born with and they develop arthritis because of the wear and tear on the joints.
Now, wear and tear brings up another point. If your dog is involved in a lot of use and it’s a hunting dog or lots of walks, jogs with you then you’re going to get more wear and tear and if you already have a problem with the conformation of the dog’s joints then that particular dog will have more problems long term.
That wear and tear issue is weight. Dogs that are heavy are going to have more wear and tear on those joints and if the joints have an abnormal conformation to begin with or not the best conformation, then as they get older that particular dog is going to have a problem as with any disease, osteoarthritis needs so to be diagnosed. And the way we did this is by physical exam and often by x-rays.
The physical exam can kind of isolate which joints are affected. The x-rays will actually tell us whether we have arthritis which is just plain inflammation of the joints and can be caused by lots of other things versus osteoarthritis which is disease of the joints involving the bone. X-ray can differentiate between the two and the treatment is vastly different depending on which one you have.
How do we treat osteoarthritis in dogs?
Now, as a veterinarian, I treat osteoarthritis in three specific ways. Number one; I’ll treat their pain. There are a lot of prescription pain medications that are available for dogs. Talk to your veterinarian about these. You can use some over the counter drugs but again, talk to your veterinarian, some can potentially be toxic, Tylenol and Advil, use them correctly can be toxic, so talk to your veterinarian.
Number two; we use a lot of conjoined sulfate and glucosamine and these are available in a wide variety of products. Again, talk to your veterinarian about specific dosages but these are substance that are found the in the joint cartilage. Taken orally, they tend to go to the diseased joint that needs it.
And number three and this is a little newer, omega fatty acids. Certain omega fatty acids have been shown to help with inflammation in the joint and those are the three ways that we treat osteoarthritis medically.
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