Arthritis treatments?

[aabraham]

Has any one had any success with treating arthritis in their dogs? Mine is 7 years old and is fine during training but when we get home and he lays down he is damn near lame when he gets up. Only shows up when we do a fair amont of land work not water work. Going to take him in to the vet for some xrays. But I have heard their isn't a lot that can really help.Thanks for any advice.

[1st retriever]

We had some dogs that boarded at the kennel I worked at that were on Rimydal and they had a pretty good case of arthritis and it helped them a lot!

[JoAnn Stancer]

There are alot of NSAID's on the market today that will help him out as well as a joint supplement will help him out also. I have my 9 year old who had a tplo done on his knee at 4yrs on PHYCOX. It is a joint supplement with a antiinflammatory reagent in it. He is only on that and no NSAID's. You won't see much of an improvement with a joint supplement until he has been on it for 4-6 weeks. Well worth the wait.

[Jill Simmons]

We switched to Dasuquin. It's expensive, but it makes a dramatic difference.

[moscowitz]

I use previcox. Seems to do the job. And supplement with FlexIII

[Sabireley]

I use Osteobiflex on one that has arthritis from a TPLO gone bad. Without it she cannot go up and down the stairs and really favors the leg. With it, she can run up and down the stairs and gets around very well. I used to use Synovi G3. I think the results are as good or better with Osteobiflex (store brand), and I can get it from Walmart or Target.

[ErinsEdge]

You have a lot of options that work very well. Start with one like Synovi G3 or Phycox and that will probably care care of it for awhile. You can later on see if you need to supplement with an NSAID

[mostlygold]

IMO all performance dogs should be on a glucosamine/chondroitin supplement and a fish oil supplement. Both of these have great anti-inflammatory properties and it is the inflammation in the joints that causes the problem. Also NSAIDs help tremendously with the pain and inflammation. Radiographs of the suspected joints will help determine just how bad the arthritis is. You could also consider a course of acupuncture/chiropractic treatments. The golden I just lost at age 16+ yrs severely damaged her right shoulder when she was 8 yrs old. Medications were not helping her; every time she ran around she ended up terribly lame. After 3 months of chiropractic/acupuncture treatments, she was sound as she could be and never had another problem with that shoulder.

My current dogs ages 6, 5 and 1 yr are on Dasuquin and salmon oil. My old girl was on metacam for the last 3 years of her life. Kept her comfortable and she tolerated it very well. Be certain blood work is done to check liver and kidney function BEFORE starting any NSAIDS on your dog.

Good luck
Dawn

[Montview]

I would personally look into starting him on Adequan injections as well.

Definitely glucosamine/MSM/chondoitin supplement, a NSAID that he seems to be able to tolerate well as needed (I would probably give a dose prior to expected training to help get it on board sooner rather than later...that is what we do with our girl who has ED/HD when we take her to the beach or somewhere else she's "inspired"), possibly consider chiropractics or acupuncture depending on what the radiographs show you.
7 is still so young, I'm sorry that you're having to deal with this.

[MSDOGS1976]

Definitely glucosamine/MSM/chondoitin supplement, (

My retriever is 8 and has started having problems, just as aabraham described. I started mine on the above supplement and it has helped. I will discuss with vet on my next visit. I imagine she will need pain med's at some point, but hopefully further down the road.