Arthritis in Older Dogs: Keeping Them Comfortable

If your dog has started taking the stairs one at a time, or stopped coming to the door to greet you, it is worth resisting the obvious explanation.

Slowing down gets accepted as simply what happens to old dogs. Sometimes it is. Far more often it is arthritis, which means it is pain, and pain is treatable. Owners who address it are regularly astonished by how much of the dog they assumed was gone for good comes back within a fortnight.

What arthritis actually is

Cartilage cushions the ends of bones inside a joint. When it wears down, bone moves against bone, the joint becomes inflamed, and the body lays down extra bone around the edges in an attempt to stabilise it. That process is painful and it is progressive.

It cannot be reversed. It can be slowed considerably, and the pain can be managed well, which together make an enormous difference to how a dog spends its last few years.

The signs owners put down to age

Dogs almost never limp obviously with arthritis until it is advanced. What they do instead is stop doing things, quietly.

• Stiffness after rest, worst first thing in the morning and after a long sleep, easing once the dog gets going. This is the classic sign and the one most often dismissed
• Reluctance on stairs, or taking them one at a time
• Hesitating before jumping into a car or onto furniture, or stopping altogether
• Lagging on walks, particularly in the last stretch
• Not coming to greet you, which owners read as age or indifference
• Difficulty rising, especially from slippery floors
• Licking one joint persistently
• Irritability when touched, or a new dislike of being groomed over the hips or spine
• Muscle loss over the hindquarters, because a dog that hurts stops using those muscles
• Toileting indoors in a previously reliable dog, sometimes simply because getting outside has become difficult

A useful test at home is to think about what your dog has stopped doing in the last year rather than what it is doing badly. That list is usually more revealing than watching it walk.

Weight is the most powerful thing you control

Nothing else on this page comes close. Every extra kilogram passes through arthritic joints thousands of times a day, and excess fat is also metabolically active, producing inflammatory signals that make the joint disease itself worse.

Weight loss in an overweight arthritic dog produces improvement comparable to medication, and it is the one intervention with no downside at all. It is also the hardest, because a dog that hurts moves less and gains weight more easily, which is exactly the loop that needs breaking.

If your dog is arthritic and carrying extra weight, that is the place to start, and it is worth asking a vet for a specific target and a specific daily amount rather than deciding to feed a bit less.

What genuinely helps

• Prescription anti-inflammatory medication. The mainstay of treatment, and the thing that changes a dog's day most immediately. Veterinary anti-inflammatories are designed for dogs and monitored with bloodwork on longer courses
• Controlled, regular exercise. Little and often beats one long walk at the weekend, which tends to cause a flare. Lead walking on level ground is ideal; sudden sprinting and ball-chasing are not
• Swimming or hydrotherapy where available, which builds the muscle supporting the joint without loading it
• Traction indoors. Rugs and runners on smooth floors. A great deal of an arthritic dog's daily distress is simply slipping, and this costs almost nothing to fix
• A thick, supportive bed in a warm spot away from draughts, and raised food and water bowls so the dog is not reaching down
• Ramps rather than jumping into cars
• Keeping nails short, since long nails alter how a dog stands and adds load where it is least wanted
• Joint supplements, which are reasonable to try alongside everything else. The evidence is modest rather than dramatic, so they belong as an addition to treatment rather than a replacement for it

What to be careful about

• Never give human painkillers. This matters more here than almost anywhere, because arthritis is a condition where owners are tempted to reach for the cupboard. Paracetamol, ibuprofen and aspirin all cause serious harm to dogs at doses that seem small, and ibuprofen in particular causes stomach ulceration and kidney damage. Cats are more sensitive again
• Do not stop medication because the dog seems better. The dog seems better because the medication is working
• Avoid the weekend warrior pattern, where a quiet week is followed by a long Sunday walk. That is a reliable route to a flare-up
• Be wary of anything promising to cure arthritis. Nothing does, and the money is better spent on the things that reliably help

The conversation worth having

Arthritis is managed rather than solved, so it is worth asking your vet directly: what is realistic for this dog, how will we know it is working, what should trigger a review, and what will the monitoring cost over a year. A plan you understand is followed. A prescription you do not is abandoned by the third month.

Ask too about the point further down the line. Knowing in advance what deterioration looks like, and what options exist when medication is no longer enough, spares you making that decision for the first time on a bad night.

Cats get it too, and hide it better

Arthritis is very common in older cats and almost never presents as limping. What you see instead is a cat that no longer jumps onto the windowsill, sleeps somewhere lower than it used to, has stopped grooming its back end, or has started missing the litter tray because climbing into it hurts. A high-sided tray and a step are sometimes all it takes.

Arthritis is the classic slow cost, and that is exactly why it goes untreated. There is no crisis, only a consultation, then medication every month, then bloodwork to keep an eye on the kidneys and liver, indefinitely. Each individual item is affordable and the open-ended total is not, so the dog is quietly left to manage, and it manages by doing less and less.

Consultations, diagnostics and the ongoing medication that makes an old dog comfortable are covered on Skeepy Pet HMO plans at any vet clinic in Nigeria, which turns arthritis from a recurring monthly decision into something simply being treated.