Canine Services
Dog Senior Care
What is the most important thing to know about when caring for a senior dog?
I think the most important thing is just to simply realize that there is a difference in a senior dog versus a younger to middle aged dog. Catching any kind of problem earlier in their life is going to be much more beneficial to us as veterinarians. We prefer to attempt to treat any issues immediately as opposed to seldom seeing a dog and by the time they come in to see us, they have an advanced problem already. So realizing that there is a difference and trying to address those differences early is the key to senior care.
What is the life expectancy of a dog?
Well, that’s a hard question to answer because there is no black and white answer, let’s be honest. Depending on the breed and size of the dog, those can vary greatly. If you have a large breed dog—say like a Great Dane or a Mastiff—making it into double digits is kind of a big deal. So 10 or 11 years is pretty old for those large breeds. It’s not unusual to see a Doxin or a Yorkie or a Chihuahua live to 15, 16 years, or maybe even older than that. So normally my knee jerk answer is 13 to 15 but, just as with the examples I listed, you can have variations in that depending on the size and breed of the dog.
How does getting older impact the health of my dog?
It’s a little different than it is for you and me. A lot of ailments that we as humans suffer from veterinary patients suffer from as well, but they show it differently. In fact, a lot of times they don’t show it at all because they tend to be very stoic. But one of the most common things that we see is arthritis. We also see eye conditions, whether it’s cataracts or nuclear sclerosis. There are various things that affect their vision. Skin growths are also very common, very common. When it comes to lumps and bumps, some of them are benign while others are malignant, so the sooner we catch those and address them, the better off we’ll be.
How can wellness care extend the life and vitality of my dog?
As I just mentioned, the sooner you can catch any of these ongoing conditions, then the better chance for a successful outcome that you have. I’ll just use a different example, kidneys. If an animal comes in and, say, he’s eight, nine years old, we do a blood panel on him and he comes back his kidney numbers are starting to become escalated, we can do diet changes, and there are supplements that we give to improve the kidney function. But yet if that all comes in at 12 years old and the dog is in full blown kidney failure, options are extremely limited at that point.
Does my dog still need regular wellness exams as they get older?
Yeah, absolutely. In fact, I would argue that it’s much more important, and I know that’s kind of an odd thing to say, but with a young, healthy animal, there’s less likelihood that they’re going to have any of these issues that I keep referencing. However, considering how fast dogs age and how stoic they are, again, they don’t show you very many signs. Why? Because they’re a dog, because they’re pack animals. If they show weakness like that in a pack, they’re going to get left behind, singled out, or worse. So they are programmed to not show you anything, and usually by the time they do show you something it’s already pretty advanced and they just can’t compensate for it anymore. That’s why it’s very important to continue doing examinations and perhaps even more frequently than you had in their younger years.
What are some signs and symptoms that my dog may be slowing down?
Well, again, thinking about the problems that are most common, arthritis is one of the first things I mentioned earlier. And so what does that look like? In a dog that used to bounce all over the place, run, jump fences, jump on and off of furniture, bed, stairs—well now they’re looking at that staircase and they’re just like, “Oh God, I don’t want to go.” They want you to pick them up. Maybe they don’t jump on and off of things anymore. Sometimes they’re wobbly when they go to posture to use the bathroom, or maybe even it’s just a step to get to the yard that they’re stumbling and falling down now where they never did that before.
Another very common thing is when they’ve been sleeping for a while, either all night or even a long nap during the day, they wake up and they’re really stiff and have trouble getting up and getting going, so to speak.
Those are some of the not-so-subtle signs in some cases of what arthritis can look like, and again, depending on what condition. They can look a lot of different ways, but those are some of the most common signs.
Another one in older dogs might be heart conditions. I didn’t touch upon this earlier. So what you might think a very inconsequential cough might be the beginnings of congestive heart failure. If you bring them in, we as veterinarians can hear a heart murmur, maybe we hear fluid in the lungs, we do an x-ray, we diagnose it, we get them on meds, and they do better. So just be mindful of those seemingly subtle changes and if you see something that just doesn’t look right or maybe the dog’s doing something that you never did before, it’s probably worth getting them looked at just to be safe.
Why is it important to avoid self-diagnosing if my dog is slowing down or whether they’re actually sick?
Because it’s easily mistaken. I’ll use one example with dogs that come in for vomiting. It’s one of the most common things that we see animals walk in this clinic for. Vomiting could be that they’ve found a dead something in the yard, maybe they found a piece of food that they weren’t supposed to eat. Maybe they overate. It could be any or all of these basic things. But you know what? Vomiting could also be the first sign of kidney disease, liver disease, or that perhaps a toxin is presenting that way.
You run the risk if you try to diagnose some of these things at home and say, “Oh, it’s probably nothing.” Yeah, you might be right. But what if you’re not right? Then you run the risk that you could have treated a condition much earlier and cured that condition, but if we don’t address it quickly enough or we’re wrong on that initial diagnosis, then it could have a very less than desirable outcome.
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