Hip Dysplasia In Senior Dogs
Copyright © 2019 by Margaret Madison All Rights Reserved
My husband and I have always adopted the pets that nobody else wanted. In February of 2014, we were ready to bring another dog into our home and our only requirements were that he be a senior
dog with medical issues, and he had to have a good deep bark. We found Spiderman on PetFinder.com and he fit all of our criteria. I think the name also helped convince my husband, a fan of comic book
superheroes, that we should make the drive out to meet this one.
Spider had been in a foster home for a while and only one person had come to see him in that time, a man who wanted to use him hunting up north. That would not have suited this guy as he could barely walk due to hip dysplasia. I told the foster mom what we were looking for and that all we wanted was to give a good home to a senior and to try to make the time he had left on this earth as comfortable as possible.
There were other younger energetic dogs in the foster mom’s house and Spiderman did not have much patience for them. He’d snap at them when they got too close. The foster mom affectionately called him a “grumpy old man”, but he just didn’t want to get bumped by those rock-solid muscles called Staffordshire terriers and be in pain. The foster mom explained that she did recently run out of his pain meds but figured she would let us buy the next bottle if we were going to adopt him. We got down on the floor with him and loved him up in a gentle way. We knew we wanted to bring this guy home and the foster mom was very pleased.
She brought him out to our home within a few days to do the home inspection before releasing him to our care. The poor guy could barely walk and he was still quite grumpy with our dogs too. We kept our other dogs away from him and got Spiderman to our vet ASAP to open a file and to get him some pain medicine. It took a few days for Spiderman’s pain to get back under control and he seemed to hobble around a little easier. But there had to be something more I could do for him, so I started researching supplements and hip dysplasia.
I found a company with a product that was supposed to work. They are called Be Med Free and their product uses grapeseed extract, MSM, green-lipped muscle, and glucosamine chondroitin. (http://bemedfree.com/liquid-glucosamine-for-dogs/ ) The dog food I was feeding him also contained glucosamine chondroitin. I gave him the maximum dosage of glucosamine chondroitin for a dog his weight and I broke up the dosage for half the amount in the morning and half the amount in the evening to ensure a constant stream of the supplement into his system.
To help with inflammation, I heard that turmeric was useful. I discovered a recipe online for “golden paste” made with turmeric powder, coconut oil, Ceylon cinnamon, and fresh ground peppercorns. I faithfully made this for him and would take a rounded teaspoon full, add a little water to make it into a gravy, and I’d mix it into his food. A picture of the recipe can be found here: https://mamabee.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/petnblog.preciouspets.org_.jpg The only change I made to this was to add the same amount of Ceylon cinnamon as ground organic peppercorns.
Be careful with that turmeric though because that stuff can stain. Spider had a tendency to drink a lot of water, due to the Metacam he was given for pain, and if we didn’t stop him and make him pace himself with the water bowl, he’d end up bringing back up his food…turmeric and all. Yes, we had some carpet stains but for the most part, we had enough luck to remove them.
The other part of this was a product from GNC Pets, Hip & Joint, extra strength chewable tablets. He also received one of these tablets each day. He ate it without hesitation.
Using this, we got a few more good years out of him before we did finally have to put him down. It got to the point where his dysplasia progressed to the point where his quality of life was no longer there, despite our best efforts.
Here he is in his better days soon after these homeopathic remedies began to show results: https://youtu.be/wOfmlBngAr8