The tablets taste BAD. And I mean BAD. I know some people who use Greenies pill pouches or similar. You can sometimes get it compounded into a flavor by a compounding chemist.

Otherwise it is just getting your tableting technique sharpened up but some dogs are all but impossible to tablet

Dr. Chris

Kurt

Some dogs don’t react well to Dasuquin, no matter how effective it is. It’s awful.

Glycanaid HA is my preferred starter joint supplement. Let me explain why….

Supplementation is (or should be) a carefully laid out plan that adds layers of supplements according to the needs of the dog.

The first supplement should aim to provide as many of the building blocks of cartilage as possible….an ample supply of good quality joint health products.

So ingredients like glucosamine HCL, chondroitin, MSM and hyaluronic acid are all important building blocks. Glycanaid provides these ingredients better than even Dasuquin or Glycoflex, especially as it contains the hyaluronic acid (HA). I reviewed these top products recently and can send you the review if you are interested.

So that is why I like Glycanaid. You can watch a video here….

Glycanaid Video

Dr. Chris

You have mentioned “mental” benefits…do you mind elaborating it for our readers? Thanks in advance

Stem cell therapy is great but will only work for the treated joints so can get v expensive for multiple joints. It may only work for 18 months or so as well before needing to be repeated.

You might be better to fine tune your supplement plan, especially of we are trying to avoid the NSAIDs. This is entirely possible with a well devised supplement plan, which is what my book ‘Modern Dog Arthritis Treatment’ spells out in simple but scientific detail.

My favorite starting supplement is called Glycanaid because it has all the joint building ingredients such as glucosamine, chondroitin, MSM, hyaluronic acid. It also has Vitamin C as your dog is on.

If you try Glycanaid at some point, get it through this link and you will receive my book for free with any Glycanaid purchase.

Glycanaid + Book

Hope that helps and happy to help you through the maze of supplementation

Dr. Chris

I want to be sure he gets the optimum dose for his size. He has Arthritis in his right knee. Ihad been giving him cosequin DS

This went really well! Our dog – a German Sheppard – does much better!
Best wishes, Hannah

Dogs don’t get RA very often but they can be affected by the cold. Less so than us I think but you notice the difference for them over the winter.

Randy Huggins
a1hydrocodone.com

Randy Huggins
Medical-rights.com

The arthritis was so bad that the VET said this is the right decision.

But this is the first place that helps me determine what I can do that is likely going to help my pooch out, or provide me with some guidelines to use.

Also appreciate the information on the other nutrients and minerals as well.

My best treatments for back pain are the pain killers, in particular gabapentin. You might want to speak to your vet and see if he thinks a drug like gabapentin is a good one for your dog.

To those who joined this fun & simple contest, thank you very much! I enjoyed reading your stories; those were very precious moments with our furriends. I salute you all for being animal lovers!

I hope you’ll join me again for another round of game soon

Dasuquin is a good product but as far as its efficacy goes you can get the same benefit using another good quality supplement and then adding the ASU as a separate supplement at the appropriate stage of arthritis.

I would suggest Glycanaid first. I know these people are happy to deliver overseas – Singapore is in fact their biggest non-US customer, so not too far away. There have been a few issues with overseas credit cards through their payment system but if you contact them direct it is easy. The guy is a vet – Dr James St Clair. His email is drj@topdoghealth.com

If you mention that you would like my ebook, he or I will get this to you as at no extra charge as well. it can help make a lot of sense of the whole supplement thing rather than focusing on specific products.

Hope that helps. Email me at support@dogarthritisblog.info if you need some clarification on this.

As much as Jasmine can fool anybody she wants, fooling her is an impossible task.

She knows which days are work days and which days are fun days.

At the first sight it would seem clear how she does that, as each have their own routine.

In the morning on the work day Jasmine goes on a morning patrol around a block, then she gets her breakfast, and the hubby takes a shower and goes to work. On the fun day there is no patrol, no breakfast and no shower. Hubby packs up breakfast into a lunch box and off the the farm they go.

Seems simple to distinguish between the two routines, right? Except …

Every once in a while hubby needs to do something that prevents him from taking the guys along. It hurts Jasmine’s feelings if she gets left behind. So we tried to fool her. We carefully recalled every detail of the work day routine in order to follow exactly the same steps, including the shower. (at first hubby tried just faking the shower, but that didn’t work.)

It doesn’t matter how hard we try, she knows that it is not a work day and that she is being left behind! How? Beats me! And it’s not the time of the day either, as sometimes hubby goes to work earlier and sometimes at the same time as when they go to the farm. I swear she’s reading hubby’s mental picture of where he’s truly going!

Couple times she even tried to control the situation by refusing to have her breakfast! “If I don’t have breakfast now, we’ll certainly go to the farm then!”

In a way her efforts work anyway though. She makes hubby feel so bad for not taking her with him that he tries his hardest not to do that. And when he can’t help it, then he quickly comes up with a way to make it up to her!

Jasmine was about two years old when we took in a 7 years old male, Bruin. He was old and big a nobody wanted him—we were his last chance.

Jasmine took it like a lady and allowed him in her home. They both enjoyed chewing on bully sticks, but Jasmine quickly found out that the stick Bruin was chewing on was soft and gooey and much more fun than her own. Few times she carefully stole it from him, but quickly realized that it was not a very safe way of doing things.

At that time, when I got really busy and she wanted attention she learned to come up and ask for some. Since she asked nicely—she knew that asking nicely is what works—I would take a break, pay attention to her, and give out some bisquits for tricks.

Bruin, of course, would drop everything and rush over as well.

One day she came as usually but when I pulled out the bisquits she didn’t want any. Bruin did though. And then Jasmine walked away to now abandoned stick. “Finders, keepers!”

Only then I realized that that was the purpose all along! “I go over for bisquits, he drops the stick and the stick is mine!”

And that’s how it was from then on. I thought that all that effort deserved a reward so I’d play along. I would then give Bruin a brand new stick. He didn’t care, he got his share of bisquits.

So treating the arthritis can be helpful

► See my Modern Dog Arthritis Treatment ebook (at http://www.dogarthritisplan.com)
► You are already reading my blog http://www.dogarthritisblog.info.

Also keep in mind that even if the arthritis is driving the muscle pain, the muscle pain may not go away even once the arthritis is controlled. There are things called trigger points which can hang around like a bad smell. Search trigger points on the blog. Search for a trigger point person in your area as well maybe.

I have three dogs: Charlie the whippet (13 years old this November!), Fargo the labradoodle (8 years old) and Billy the whippet (2 years old).

Last summer, Charlie collapsed and lost the use of all his legs. It turned out that he had a compressed spinal cord due to a ruptured disc and some longer-term bone issues that we hadn’t known about. He had a big operation to remove the tops of some vertebrae in his neck and then he had to learn to walk again. I gave up my office job to work freelance from home and look after him.

It was a huge learning curve. Charlie had gone on hunger strike in the animal hospital and he’d lost about three kilos (not a good look on a whippet), so they sent him home early. I’m glad to say his appetite returned immediately but he couldn’t even stand up at first, and for the first day or so I even had to drain his bladder with a catheter. I’m not a nurse of any kind so this was a new skill for me! Eventually, after months of hard work in which Charlie showed massive patience, courage and tenacity, we got him on his feet again. His left foreleg was weak and he tended to drag the foot a bit, but he was able to enjoy his walks again and I thought that was the best we could hope for.

Then, this summer, Fargo the labradoodle ruptured his cruciate ligament and had to have TPLO surgery followed by physio/hydrotherapy (thankfully, all my dogs are insured!). During one of Fargo’s sessions I happened to mention Charlie to the physiotherapist, who told me to bring him along and he’d see if there was anything he could do for him. It turned out there was. It seems that Charlie has been compensating for his weaker limbs as he recovered from his operation, and this has caused them to become weaker still. Just one dip in the hydrotherapy pool seemed to work wonders, and five weeks later I can’t believe the difference in him.

Both Charlie and Fargo now go to hydrotherapy every week and I do stretches and other exercises with them at home. Fargo is getting steadily stronger as he recovers from his TPLO and I hope that we’re strengthening him up enough to protect the cruciate ligament in his other leg. It seems to be working so far. Charlie has made amazing progress. He’s building muscle, standing much more squarely and he hardly drags his foot at all now. And the best part of it is that he’s still improving.

Due to their different exercise requirements, I walk all three of my dogs separately at the moment. It takes some time but we all really enjoy it and I can’t think of much I’d rather be doing. I love giving each of the dogs some one-to-one time. Billy gets a proper run while I make sure that Charlie and Fargo enjoy their shorter, slower-paced walks. That said, their walks are getting longer now and I’m also looking forward to the day when I can take them all out for a good walk together again!

Well this past winter (Jan or Feb), we were out for a walk and I noticed her urine was quite dark but otherwise she seemed fine. That evening though, Suzee wouldn’t even get up to eat she was so lethargic. We knew something was wrong and called her vet the next morning. After test after test, they weren’t sure what the problem was, but her blood test showed a Red Blood count dangerously low-21%. The conclusion was that Suzee had IMHA. Now was the tough part. Suzee was put on a high dose of Predisone and later Azathioprine. Although her appetite came back big time, she was losing muscle mass due to the Predisone. Her head became bony and her spine became very pronounced. She had to be helped into the car. No more jumping.

She was going back to her doctor every couple of weeks and she was responding to the treatment. Her blood counts were improving, but she still looked awful. But she ate everything! One day I forgot to put her food away and she got into it. Well when I discovered it she was all bloated from the food she ate. The next day was her regular recheck and we found out she gained 4-5 pounds overnight! But her blood count was getting better.

Because of the Azathioprine though Suzee was also susceptible to various infections though. On one hand she was getting better, but on the other…

Early this summer her doctor said Suzee was in remission. In August all meds were stopped as they had been gradually reduced over the previous months. In September she had her last recheck since being off the Predisone for a month. The message from her doctor was, “replace all medication with 2 cookies a day. See you in 6 months. Suzee’s blood count is perflectly normal.”

Yesterday we out for a walk and we walked by a 3-4 foot retaining wall. Suzee sensed something was up there and in one quick leap she was up at the top of the wall with no running start. Yes, Suzee is back to normal, jumping on the wall, onto the bed, up on furniture….

The 8 months were long, but we had a great vet who was always available with advice and to answer questions. It was all worth it to get our Suzee back!

He would usually sleep in my room. One time, my sister asked if he could sleep on her room. So I took his teddy bear and lured him to the other room and left him there. I rushed back to my room and closed the door.

My sister yelled, “Louise, you’re puppy dragged his stuff out!” and when I opened my door, I saw him sitting in front of my door beside his teddy. So I took the teddy and threw it back to my sister’s room, then I ran back to my room while he tried to drag the teddy back to my room too. He was already in front of my door I suddenly closed it.

When I opened my door to check on him again, he tried to drag the teddy back in… so I shut the door before he could.

Then fourth time I opened the door, he left the teddy and rushed into my room by himself. Talk about saving yourself. XD

People that have concerns over these drugs need options to avoid or minimize their use. I go a LONG way to doing this on my site http://www.dogarthritisplan.com

Essential fatty acids, whether the long-chain EFA & DHA, or the shorter-chain ALA Omega 3′s are both considered super-unsaturated, and are therefore both extremely sensitive to oxidation, light, and heat. Your statement that fish-oil based Omega 3′s do not have problems with oxidation is completely false. Flax oil is almost always cold-pressed, which means the oil is fresher and not subjected to heat or any of the refining processes that fish oils are subjected to.

furthermore, there is an increasing amount of research that suggests that Flax oil Omega 3 (ALA) is only converted to EPA & DHA when the body requires these longer-chain fatty acids. It has nothing to do with poor conversion or inferiority of one source in comparison to another. You don’t see Horses eating fish, yet their coats, skin, joints, and overall health has been shown to improve when feed a plant-based diet of Omega 3 (ALA). perhaps do you research next time…

Talk soon.

Chris

Thank you!
Jason O’Leary
Webmaster: Candy Direct

I have a friend who is a veterinarian that started performing in-clinic stem cell procedures. She was awe-struck by the healing she was seeing and told me about it.

As a result, I started working for MediVet Midwest, a branch of MediVet America. I promise I’m not just trying to sell you something. I give you my word, this is a truly incredible advancement in Science. Please look into it!

Glycanaid HA

But if you just want to start with a super-supplement you can’t go wrong with Dasuquin.

Elbow dysplasia is nasty. ASSUMING that is what your vet has diagnosed there is actually not a lot that helps either way – surgically or otherwise. I used to operate on them and if they get really sore would still do that. But in the meanwhile rest, supplements and pain relief are ok for most dogs.

The supplements ARE confusing. I am just about to email out a review of the best ones, but my number one at this stage is called Glycanaid HA. If you buy through this link you will get my $27 ebook Modern Dog Arthritis Treatment for free which might help you as well. Let me know if there are problems shipping to Japan and I can help out.

Glycanaid HA

With the supplements just start slow and take your time. A good quality joint protector like Glycanaid HA is the best place to start and in the meanwhile pain killers, rest if sore and gentle exercise if doing ok. Weight control is vital.

If you can control the arthritis at this early stage your dog will do much better in the long run.

Good luck and keep me up to date

Christopher

I have had a few dogs escape my scalpel blade and do well up until about 8-10 years of age and then start to get sore. The owners are often not happy for surgery by this age so we try trigger point therapy which helps quite a lot.

Conservative therapy can work in the short term but has a reasonably good chance of leading to surgery eventually, despite periods of doing quite well on the knee. But as you say you have lost nothing but a little time by trying conservatively, so long as the arthritis does not get too bad in the meanwhile.

I give people all the options (including conservative therapy). They make their own mind up as to what is best for them and their dog (long ago I gave up trying to guess what is best for people!)

Would I operate on my dog if he had a complete tear? Yes.

Good luck and good on you for all your efforts.

Christopher

Which is better? It depends. They both WORK as well, though the simple surgery has a thicker, slightly stiffer knee at the end. Arthritis is an inevitable consequence of knee injury so I would not blame all the arthritis on the surgery If your dog did ok with the first op he might do ok with the same again, maybe chat to your vet again?

I was at first eager and willing to do whatever it took for him to be better, including the best and most expensive surgery. After much research, and talking it through with friends and family, I came to the realization that a torn CCL is not an emergency, nor does it require immediate action. I also realized that I should give him the opportunity to heal on his own, knowing full well that any Conservative Management approach would be a slow and trying process on both of us.

I am glad to report that it has been 24 days since the injury. Although Duggan is still limping a lot (60% of the time), there has already been an obvious improvement. He even put full weight on the bad leg over the weekend! Despite both of the surgeons telling me that he has no chance of recovery without surgery, I know that what I am doing is the best thing for my dog, and I am seeing some remarkable things.

I just want to urge everyone and anyone out there considering surgery that it IS NOT ALWAYS NECESSARY, and MAY NOT BE THE BEST THING FOR YORU DOG. It is possible for them to heal on their own. It’s not easy emotionally, physically (all the lifting and carrying), nor financially (I changed Duggan’s diet, started him on glocosamine/chondrine, Cartrophen injections, hydrotherapy etc), but it’s still an option. And at least for me, the repercussions of surgery versus conservative management are worth a little deliberation.

Surgery is irreversible, can lead to death, is costly emotionally and financially, is invasive, can cause terminal complications etc. Taking a more conservative and natural approach is also costly and can have complications in terms of arthritis.

And at the end of the day, if the conservative approach fails despite my best efforts, I can have the surgery done. If you decide to have the surgery without giving nature a change to heal itself, there is no turning back.

I think you are on the right track when you say he might have a sore back or pain in his other knee as well. There are very good back pain drugs like Gabapentin. The knees will need assessment with your vet by the sound of it.

Good luck.

Chris