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The little things

Share advice for keeping your aging dog happy and healthy

  
(Page 2 of 2: Viewing entries 11 to 13)  
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The Urban- Hounds- (Formerly- the

Every dog must- have his day.		 
 
Barked: Sun Jun 26, '11 5:15pm PST 
I am very lucky that so far I dont see many changes in my older guys. Norbert will be 9 in July and Tubby is 10, Ping is 8 (not too old for a small pug). I dont consider any of them ancient, but they are older, the old lady of the house is Dr. Z, she is 12, but we adopted her at 9 and she has always been a grumpy old lady. I do notice that Tubby plays with his toys a bit less, usually he only plays now befor bed. Norbert also cuts his fetch games a little shorter.

Personally I think its great an 11 year old is running to the dog park, dont worry too much about the rollerblading, its great he was doing it at 9. I agree get the xrays

Edited by author Sun Jun 26, '11 5:18pm PST

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Sanka

The ground is my- newspaper.		 
 
Barked: Tue Jun 28, '11 9:27pm PST 
Madison, they are so deceptive, aren't they. Just when I think I should let Sanka off leash for behaving "good" a la walking slowly, he'll see or smell something of great interest and dart off. Definitely not a full sprint. I can easily catch up to him. But it's a sound jog that makes you wonder what the heck was making them walk so slow to begin with. laugh out loud

Don't they have to sedate some dogs for x-rays? Even if they don't, Sanka is very good at the vet, but you can not physically manipulate him. He'll literally like seize up his muscles so you can't move him. He's not scared, he just doesn't want to move lol. Plus, he does not like laying on his side. It'd just be a whole lotta trouble for just confirming whether he has arthritis or not.

It'd be amazing for him not to have some arthritis or some other form of joint disease. Those are almost guaranteed with age.

Edited by author Tue Jun 28, '11 9:28pm PST

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Tyson

Ball?! Did- someone say- BALL?!!!!!		 
 
Barked: Sat Jul 9, '11 5:18am PST 
Tyson is only 8 and has started feeling more, well, old this year. He is much more stiff and just within the last week has snapped at our kids 3 times. The 2 times with my daughter were one after another because she was harassing him; shoving him around, won't get out of his face, etc. The time with my son, I think he thought our son was going to step on his bad leg. I'm planning on calling the vet after the weekend and talking about starting pain management for his arthritis as we knew it was just a matter of time.

Tyson has lost some weight and that was partially from switching him from all-ages dog food to higher quality puppy food (large). The puppy food had the same calories but higher protein and he seems to be doing fine on it.

He's getting gray on his face and I'm not just talking a little. His profile picture was taken only last year and if I took a new pic today he would look like he had aged years.

Now, one thing that I'm planning on doing that I have been a bad parent about is taking him for walks. I think it will actually help both of us to lose weight and try to get better conditioning. Like Tyson, I have arthritis, diagnosed three years ago at 30. There are days when it hurts to get out of bed much less go for a walk, so I can definitely relate to our aged pups. As we are both starting walks from scratch we're following a schedule from this website.
http://www.thewalkingsite.com/12week.html
It seems like it has a nice slow progression and if it isn't slow enough then I'll just modify it for us.
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  (Page 2 of 2: Viewing entries 11 to 13)  
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