Animal Health 5/28/20 - Arthritis

This morning we're joined with Dr. Emerson and kennel manager David.

After Max's family became concerned when they noticed he wasn't his usual self and he had trouble getting up and down.

If you notice your pet is exhibiting any of the same symptoms as Max, make your appointment today with Emerson Animal Hospital.

Morning sunrisers!

I'm dr. karen emerson and today i have with me my kennel manager david and this guy, this beautiful handsome guy right here is max.

Well, max presented a few months ago.

He was starting to have arthritic issues.

We really didn't know the extent of the arthritis.

We just knew he was having trouble getting up and down, just not his normal self, ready to get up and go out and play.

So we did radiographs and the radiographs actually showed that max's spine had what we call bridging and i'm going to show you in depth the radiographs so you can see the extent of the arthritis that was going on in his back.

Basically bridging is when the spine basically starts making extra bone to stabilize itself.

And max has always been a really active, athletic dog.

So this can occur as your dog ages.

They may start limping, not wanting to get up and down like they used to, maybe not wanting to go outside and play.

So they brought him in.

We actually started doing our laser therapy on his back.

We started seeing immediate changes.

We had him on an anti-inflammatory called vetprofen and we actually added another medication called gabapentin that helps basically with the neuro pain.

A lot of people at home probably watching this may be on gabapentin for reasons like that.

After getting the laser therapy, we started seeing a huge change.

He started actually wanting to get up and down easier.

He actually, the other day the owners told me that he was actually running and playing out in the yard with a younger dog.

It's actually amazing what laser therapy has done for max.

Okay, so normally with the spine when we see spinal bridging, this is basically the spine and these are the vertebral bodies.

Right here you can see the body is making extra bone to try to stabilize the back.

Well, as you move down to this radiograph, this is one of the worst cases i've ever seen.

As you can see, the body has made humongous bridging efforts in order to try to stabilizes max's spine, so every time max would run or move, these little areas, basically, were causing this area between his vertebral bodies to narrow in and push up on his cord causing severe pain.

So basically, what the laser does is it goes in and decreases this inflammation right here and helps gets the cells there that we need in order to decrease the inflammation.

So that's how he's able to run and play and he's doing very, very well.

And most of this all has officially now stabilized.

So the laser treatments are just keeping the inflammation away.

And i know a lot of you think as your pet's age, it's normal for them just to limp.

They will limp some, but why not make them comfortable?

Why not make their quality of life wonderful, where they actually want to get up and go outside and play?

Not only will it make their quality of life better, it will also help with them not gaining weight.

They'll will be healthier.

You'll have to run into less problems with diabetes.

So max is living a very happy, healthy life.

He gets his laser treatments sometimes once a week, sometimes twice a week.

It just depends on his activity level.

And remember guys, if you have a pet that's having any arthritic issues, please give us a call.

I promise your pets will thank you.

Announcer: wcbi animal health with dr. emerson was brought to you by emerson animal hospital in west point.