physicians whether you're human physicians or animal physicians are taking the same training initially and then moving on so i thought they might have integrated the two but my bad  the veterinary hospital flynn's and i we've had a couple of your other divisions on the grooming and and boarding you offer a full range of services there and you came on today to talk to us about in particular about senior dogs and that's a whole different care that there's a different level of care for senior paths and arthritis one of the things that we frequently will see start developing and we can start seeing it even an early age early age being one while we can see with some certain breeds of dogs signs of arthritis or hip dysplasia as early as fourteen to sixteen with of age  conformational problems and frequently we will see that as they're getting older never got to disguising signs of pain or discomfort starting subtle changes people think oh well they're just getting a little older they're slowing down there are things that we can do for them nutritionally there are different model of these that are available as horses call therapy cold laser treatments acupuncture things like that that are available in addition to medications  and things like that fish oil and you do so yes with hospital or that particular breed you notice that in more than others certain breeds yes larger breeds such as the golden retriever german shepherd you know any of the larger breed dogs have a propensity towards certain orthopedic problems such as have dysplasia or smaller breed dogs have a tendency towards new problems  and then such as your friend here a lower back problems with spinal arthritis and things like that are injuries especially in the longer back talks like the toxins are frequently shit or jack russell terrier and you know interesting with tucker here doctors that he was actually paralyzed by a veterinarian with really bad i mean he didn't even have die for medic use i had to hold him vertically because if i believe  flat he just suffocated too and it's been almost eight years now and i've been kind of playing with him all day so i don't know if he'll show demonstrate anything for us but over time and with a lot of effort such as one of the items i use cold nutritional supports that we offer which is das quinn has the m s m in it and i preferred to give them the ones that are like a tree so very easy to give your pet a trade it's very hard to give them a whole handful of supplements so the supplements that are designed to be or they have difficulty getting they don't want to go down the stairs because if they've got arthritis in the front legs they've got to bear all of that weight on the front legs going down that with gravity and arthritis sometimes i'll stumble they'll be afraid to go down the  and so i think i should do something should should i just inadvertently just go to the pet store and start buying these products should you think it's i should bring my dog in is evaluated i think evaluation is the first playing get an idea of just how much arthritis maybe there are just based on physical exam and then you know if they are lame getting an x rated to evaluate exactly what's going on inside of that and that's a good diagnostic tool to have actually because you can physically see on that x rays the damage is done by the joints that are affected how much damage is done how much joint disease is there how much degeneration of the joint there is and there's different degrees of arthritis to have a six month old animal have arthritis arthritis is basically inflammation in the joint and some bony changes and bone remodels over time you can wind up getting really severe arthritic changes to a joint and a fairly young  animal some orthopedic surgeries are recommended at twenty weeks of age which is pretty young and that's pretty scary you know they can have significant joint disease at an early age so what do you think what do you attribute this inflammatory saying that a tin can be the nutrition that we're giving the dogs we're giving them too not much nutrition the too young of an age some people are saying it's because of you know we're neutering them too young there's no clear cut one specific answer as to why a lot of it is the breed and the confirmations so we look at this this arthritis as an immune disease no actually it's basically wear and tear on the joint arthritis is just basically a fancy way of saying inflammation in the joint degenerative joint disease is where the bone actually starts changing you start getting proliferation of the bone the bone is trying to stabilize itself so it starts building up more and more calculus which is the bony deposit trying to stabilize that joints and stability do you think spinal alignment misalignment has some effect on on this condition for the knees on the hips now we do have back i don't we don't think of that and specifically with dozens but their legs were originally bad but short and they were bred down that way they were bred to be longer and same thing with basset hound you know and they get a little overweight at times and the weight and the stresses  house you have to be careful not to trip over dog beds that are front of every couch off the bed and in fact the bed is on the floor and so it's only maybe twelve inches of height as opposed to the normal bed and there's dog be you're not going on the hardwood floor take all these precautions because it's so traumatic to to all of a sudden have a dog with the injury that your disco describing or a back injury and it's a life changing event actually  so you brought up nutrition dr bates and nutrition is key because what we take in our body utilizes whether it's good for us or bad for us and certain things become toxins that cause more damage so how when somebody gets a puppy brings that puppy home what should we be feeding our dogs there at depending upon what type of dog you have there are certain diets that are designed specifically for say a large breed puppy to help give them the minerals that they need to build healthy bones to gradually have them put on the body weight so that they're not packing on the pounds before their frame is ready to handle that weight stressor a puppy a softer bones that exact than their growing up fast they've got growth plates that are constantly generating new bone growth and if they put on too much weight too fast they can actually have to develop problems with their elbows what is the length of time from birth let's say puppyhood to adulthood stopped growing again at the pens probably the breed of dog and the size the dog if you're looking at something like a german shepherd they can continue growing up to eighteen months to  many times these guys they stopped their last growth spurt is about nine months to a year's age and over that last portion they may not be growing their bones but the bone place or are fusing as it maintenance during the growth phase so that they're not getting too much nutrition or be giving them too much too fast and they're actually going to gain too much weight it's matter of giving them the proper diet so the bones can develop as they're growing and then keep giving them good lean muscle mass so i have this situation where we're noticing my dog limp or the things you describe not wanting to get up and take not want to take that first step so i come to the office and you do your evaluation if you feel that x rays require you take the x ray and then we see we have this problem would you please tell us some of the steps that you would take been to try to cause regeneration the bone or reversal the issue what we can do is number one we want to provide pain relief and how would you do that is where we have non steroidal anti inflammatory is available to us which are the equivalent of us taking an aspirin don't have your own pet i would never they are frequently toxic to our paths we have a liver like that big and they have a liver like that big exactly in the end their liver as actual different pathways to metabolize drugs than ours were pretty close but we have some major differences exactly and designed for dogs so you're not going to local pharmacy your grocery store and picking them up and saying here to ask them to call me in the morning so that's i think it important concept for people to understand so you do a little bit of that and then you were talking about some of their arm or their leg by the time that those six to eight weeks have passed their muscles have pretty much weathered from decease and the same thing happens with our with our pat absolutely absolutely and it happened with tucker and i i've done as much as i can to take steps to prevent that or lessen that is all therapy range of motion therapy for them to help keep the blood flowing and the muscles moving to deliver the natural liver the nutrients to them and oxygen exactly oxygen is important so we look at the few minutes and we don't have it work done so so we look at nutrition and that's a basis as far as i'm concerned with everything and then you look at it removing the inflammation basically that's  an anti inflammatory and said that's right and these natural things like to american girl and so they all do that same thing so so you look at that because where there's inflammation there's disease where there's diseases information so you want to that's what would be my next step in dealing with the issue how i approach it is i get them on non steroidal effects and hated to bring down the inflammation and then i try to back them off of that to see where i can keep them comfortable without them having too much m n less is more sometimes but first we need to get there deal with the first problem which is the pain and discomfort and then look at modahl it is to help ease the continued onset because once you have arthritis it's an ongoing process as a matter of trying to main facility your initial facility that was and then a nice local one here for for us and this area in peter's township that i understand takes care of all of washington a number center in mount lebanon and i understand even people from virginia come to laser would you explain to the audience what color laser is and what it does not familiar with utilizing it myself so that basically what it does help is bring down the information stimulates the blood flow and helps to ease the inflammation  it's basically a light and it's green and it's put on for a short amount of time and we know the light is frequency and we know the body is frequency and what we're  and we look at it like well everything's wireless these days but he's not he's not motherly and i heard and and so but the interesting thing is over time with proper things like you're talking about you can regain some function of your body starts to regenerate the body wants to heal and wants to heal it's designed to heal it if we support it properly exactly in the first diagnosis to manage pain if there are if you know if they're feeling discomfort they're not going to want to get up and walk are right nobody wants to see that kind of pain it's heartbreaking but it's also we also don't want to see them sitting there like a lump on a long we want to have them preserve their quality of life right and that's what it's about is about quality of life so you mentioned this underwater treadmill which if i could paint a picture for the audience it's a treadmill with glass sides on it that you fill up with warm water hot water whatever the temperature you require is from a regulate and the dog is placed on there and it kind of i don't know if you remember the cartoon the jetson's when they open up the that's basically what it is but why why utilize water with it because of the buoyancy it takes the pressure off of the joints and helps them basically float as they are they are in a vast so they're maintained with some point say but helps to get their loads moving keeps the muscle moving have muscle memory so if they can get that muscle moving to that blood flow going to get the oxygen to the joints and to the muscles and preserve their their function so muscle memory cells are go from stem cells into purpose cells and then they kind of remember that they have their purpose and they want to try to gain regain back to where they are they are interesting enough he when he went paralyzed and maybe it wasn't the first year or so but i had a physical therapist and he w see the therapist twice three times a week and we did water therapy he wasn't too happy with that but it was kind of in a bathtub basically it wasn't the treadmill i mean the treadmill would work for him he didn't have  and i did see some improvement and i did i mean there was no kicking his partner working him which i constantly do and what i've been doing in recent years i take him into my pull and put him on the first step down in the pool and we sit there and i rock him and make imitate him walking in and when i first started to that it was massive fear i mean i had a vest on him as well but it was massive here and then over time it was like ok it's not so bad you know and that water therap certified i personally am not but there are that are in areas in the area and in most people's areas across the country where certified veterinarian so if you recommend that you send them to them or they come into the office we would send them out so what's the theory behind acupuncture again it's we're all electrical signals about where the electrical signals getting blocked and stimulating that to try to open up that pathway or encourage the body to build other pathways around wherever that blockage is and i also did that on this guy he was he was being tortured all the time no it wasn't i was in pain for he didn't my back only had acupuncture and you don't feel you know in we did regular traditional acupuncture and then we also did a lesser extent that acupuncture and when you would apply the electrical voltage to it you would see its muscles moving a little bit and so forth and as you say it's important because you're doing a number of things your narrow exciting and so the body saying what is that i got it i got to look into that and see what it is so it begins to build new pathways to areas that might be scar tissue now and you can get he's not as able to do what he was right before i stopped and so it doesn't take her long for for this body to say ok it's easier for me not to be functioning right now you know so  it's got created in the m s m and what is its base the basis check amazed but they've added through designing the foods giving them the fish oil things like that directly in the food for dogs that ok and you pretty much of the same philosophy on treatment as tremendous and modelling so does it flare up a little more in cold weather absolutely we know when the weather stormy weather to my you know if you've got arthritis you kind of know sometimes when the weather's going to be changing for the worst and you'll see an increase in patients coming off as a result of that then during this period of time frequently one day they're limping on their front leg and then a couple of days later it's their back leg and a kind what they call a shifting leg lameness and one of the first things i look for in a young animal that comes i'm lumping is  in pennsylvania we are hotbed for lyme disease us i say quite a quite a big surge of lyme disease some sort of area a set of signs and symptoms can present themselves and in you think it's one thing and it could be something else exactly since our pets are paired we don't see say that's an issue here and it needs to be dealt with as something you can ignore because it just gets worse over time absolutely thank you so much for walking and watching doctor how do you like that thank you so much for watching healthy pets healthy owners on your host dr