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While efforts are made to answer all questions as quickly as possible, if an immediate answer is required or if your pet is in need of urgent or emergency care, contact your pet's veterinarian immediately.
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It may be necessary to consult your pet's veterinarian regarding the applicability of any opinions or recommendations with respect to your pet's symptoms or medical condition.
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Arthritis is a very common problem in pets and affects 20% of pets older than one year of age. Most joint problems occur early in life; however, the signs of arthritis usually don't become apparent for many years. The pain of arthritis varies greatly; some pets may be reluctant to rise or jump while others may have a severe limp or other gait abnormality. Older cats often have vague pain signs such as changes in general behavior, grooming, sleeping patterns, and sometimes even urine or defecation accidents. These accidents are often a result of a painful cat being unable to climb fully into their litterbox resulting in urine or feces being left just outside the box. If your dog or cat is exhibiting any signs potentially associated with arthritis, see your veterinarian for a full examination.
As always, it is important to select a highly nutritious natural food with quality ingredients which does not contain artificial colors, preservatives or other potentially harmful additives. It is also important to feed a high quality protein diet to pets with arthritis to combat muscle wasting and muscle loss that often occurs in pets as they age.
There are commercial foods which are specifically designed—with glucosamine, omega 3 fatty acids and other features to help improve joint health—for "mobility issues". However, many of these commercially available "joint foods" have inferior ingredients as evidenced by labels that reveal no actual meat in the ingredients, relatively low protein levels, and often have glucosamine (or other joint health ingredients) that are well below therapeutic levels.
For these reasons, my preference is to select a high quality, relatively high protein food and then add separate joint supplements to the feeding regimen. In my opinion, this is superior to selecting a mediocre pet food because it has additional glucosamine or fatty acids. There are a number of dietary supplements available to combat the pain and inflammation of arthritis.
Dietary supplements to consider for pets with arthritis:
Work with your veterinarian to determine which joint supplements may offer the most benefit to your pet with arthritis. As many supplements take weeks to exert positive effects in the joints, it is important to follow your veterinarian's advice on how to monitor your pet for an appropriate response.
Other tips for helping pets with arthritis: