Alternative Medicine for Animals – Alternative Ways to Treat Your Dog’s Arthritis

We all get old and that includes your faithful dog sitting by your side. If you are already there yourself you more than likely also know just how annoying arthritis can get if you suffer from it. Then you should also realize that it’s no different for your dog, he just can’t complain about it like you do. He also can’t do anything about it on his own, like you can. So it’s important that you take care of your poor aging dog and help to alleviate some of the pain that he might be experiencing. There are all kinds of different treatments that are open to you and your dog other than the traditional ones the vet might offer and below are a few things that you can try to help ease your dogs arthritis.

Even if your dog is put on prescription medications for their arthritis, you might notice very little to no improvement and this could be disappointing and could end up costing a lot of money for nothing and could even be putting your poor dog at risk with side effects that might come with the drugs. But you can help him on your own if you want to lower the risks and lower his pain.

The most important thing is to look around and evaluate the environment in which your dog is living in. For instance understand that when your dog has arthritis and you have stairs, the arthritis is going to make it difficult for him to get up and down the stairs. Also, it might make it more difficult for him to stand or walk on surfaces that might be kind of slippery. So, you can do things to try and make his environment more friendly for him and less painful. Make sure that his food and water is always kept downstairs if you have stairs and put some rugs in areas where the floor might be slippery. Make sure the rugs have nonslip backing so they won’t slip when he walks on them. You also might want to make sure that he has a nice soft and comfortable bed to sleep in at night as well.

Give your dog some nice low impact type of exercising. If you take him on short and slow walks, this is going to keep him from getting stiff and will help with his mobility and his strength. You also might want to let him go swimming as well. Just like with people exercising in water is low impact but has a wonderful affect on strengthening their muscles which in turn will help their joints.

You also want to make sure that your dog is not overweight. Carry too much weight around is going to put more strain on the joints. So your dog needs to be put on a good diet that includes an increase in lean proteins. You can do this by adding eggs and meat to wet dog food, not to the dry dog food. You also should reduce his intake of grains and carbohydrates that come in starchy foods.

You might also want to consider putting your dog on a glucosamine therapy a long with some chondroitin sulfate. Both of these things will help to treat the symptoms of arthritis as well as help to keep the joints protected. Fish oil is something else you might want to give to your dog. The Omega-3 fatty acids in this is good for reducing the joints that are have the inflammation. For every 10 pounds of your dogs body weight you can give him 1000mg of the fish oil.

Another thing that has been discovered that helps with the arthritis is virgin apple cider vinegar. If this is put in your dogs water it can actually help the arthritis symptoms because it has the ability to reduce any calcium deposits there might be in your dog’s joints.