Arthritic Rott-Shep

Our 10 year old GSD/Malamute mix is getting around 1500 mg of
glucosamine/chondroitin every day and the vet recently switched him over to
a liquid anti-inflammatory/pain medicine called Metacam. He seems to be
doing very well on it.

I realize that you post said you are looking for links, but I just wanted to
let you know what has worked well for our dog. I had one GSD who lived to
be 12 1/2 before we lost her to degenerative myelopathy and my other sweet
old GSD girl lasted until age 14, so we must be doing something right.

Yours in GSDs and rescue,

Lea
www.shepherdrescue.org

The bad thing with arthritis is that you either treat the inflamation with
prednisone or you treat it with NSaids but you can not use both. Since
she's been on the prednisone so long for Addisons then I'm sure taking her
off it is out of the question.

If I were in your position I would ask my vet about increasing the
prednisone dose enough to allow her some relief. Predinisone long term in
high doses is not recommended but at this stage in her life it's more a
quality of life and keeping her comfortable. You may be able to get away
with alternating days on the dose or even a high dose one day and a lower
dose the other.

I had the same issues with Barney when his mast cell cancer invaded his
mouth. We had to stop the NSaids for the arthritis but he did OK on the
high doses of prednisone to treat the cancer but as we decreased the pred
his arthritis became more painful for him. Towards the end the prednisone
wasn't working as well as we hoped with the cancer so we put him back on his
Deramax and I just kept him comfortable as could be until he passed away.

Good luck
Celeste



"Monroe" wrote in message
...
Thanks. Spike has been on a combined MSM/Glucosamine/Chondroitin for
a few years now. I'm a fairly skeptical sort but there was not
question in helped. So much so that I started taking it and cut in
half the med for my neck arthritis.

Spike will soldier on as much as she can. An incredible being. And
I'll do everything I can to help her out.

On Sun, 15 Jan 2006 20:25:19 -0500, "HouseODogs"
wrote:

Our 10 year old GSD/Malamute mix is getting around 1500 mg of
glucosamine/chondroitin every day and the vet recently switched him over
to
a liquid anti-inflammatory/pain medicine called Metacam. He seems to be
doing very well on it.

I realize that you post said you are looking for links, but I just wanted
to
let you know what has worked well for our dog. I had one GSD who lived to
be 12 1/2 before we lost her to degenerative myelopathy and my other sweet
old GSD girl lasted until age 14, so we must be doing something right.

Yours in GSDs and rescue,

Lea
www.shepherdrescue.org


--

Monroe