Senior Living: Simple Hacks and Good Medicine for Old Dogs

Dr. Marty Greer joins host Laura Reeves for a discussion of Senior Dogs in this month’s Veterinary Voice. Marty and Laura drill down on current medicine and important life hacks for our old dogs, adding to the information in our episode on Canine Cognitive Dysfunction.

DHA and Fatty Acids

Specially formulated and prescription diets from the top dog food companies are researched and tested just for senior dogs, Greer noted. “We've seen (for example) Purina come to market with two diets,” Greer said. “One is called Bright Minds. You don't need a prescription for it, you can buy it at your local feed store.  Then their higher level, it's got three times the amount of fatty acids and some of the other important nutrients in it called Neural Care, which is a prescription diet. We've seen behavioral changes on that. We've seen reduction in number of seizures. So there's a lot of really interesting things we can do. We feed our dogs anyway. You're not talking about putting him on a drug or putting him on anything different, you're just talking about changing their diet to something that's going to improve their cognitive function.”

Pulse Dosing

“One of my favorite things to do for these old guys that you're reluctant to do anesthesia on is called pulse dosing of an antibiotic,” Greer said. “The pulse dosing works that you give it for five days every other month. It does a really good job on the anaerobic bacteria that live under the gums of our dogs as they get older that cause that really foul, nasty breath. So, it actually reduces the bacterial load in their mouth. It's a really nice way to keep your dog’s mouth more healthy without using an anesthetic procedure. “The dose is 11 milligrams per kilogram, twice a day for five days, and it will considerably improve your dog’s health. We know bad teeth aren't just a bad breath issue, we know that it causes heart disease, kidney disease and systemic disease.” Download today’s episode or more products recommendations, tips and hacks!