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Nutrition for Senior Dogs
Talking about nutrition in senior dogs is a tricky question these days, though the general ideas behind nutrition are really pretty simple. That being said, in the age of the internet anyone can purport to be an expert . . . and unfortunately, they do. I urge you to be wary of anyone who claims that there is one diet that is perfect for every senior dog.
This simply is not the case, just as there is no single diet solution for humans. Every few years a new “gimmicky” diet enters the media and in our search for the elusive fountain of youth, many of us can not resist the siren call of the “perfect diet.” This does not mean that we aren’t learning things every day, because we are.
First things first, I am not and do not claim to be a veterinary nutritionist but do believe in a holistic approach to patient care and I know that what we put into our bodies and into our dogs’ bodies influences their health. I also know that while we can not “stop” the aging process, if we use our common sense then we can make strategic changes in our dogs’ diets to support their bodies as they age. As a full time working mom to both a human and multiple furry children (and one with scales) I do not have time to cook for my dogs. And while I am not in the “ANTI-RAW” camp, I do have enough knowledge and experience with food-borne illnesses, such as salmonella that I do not feel comfortable going down that rabbit hole, so to speak. For my furry family, I prefer a balanced approach focused on small adjustments that I can reasonably stick to over time. I am thinking about bang for my buck both in terms of time and nutrients.
The 3 priorities on which I choose to focus are:
1. Gut health
2. Sarcopenia (muscle loss associated with aging) and
3. Inflammation.
In terms of gut health, I am a big fan of probiotics. There are many out there and there is no federal oversight of the supplement industry, so I recommend asking your primary care veterinarian or choosing a product that does “voluntary third party testing.” I am also a fan of fermented foods, in fact, a couple years ago I did my own experiment comparing my dogs’ stool on probiotics versus daily sauerkraut and while I did not end up with publishable results, I felt that anecdotally the benefits were similar. I also support the use of bone broth as a supplement and always bring each of my patients a home-made “pupsicle” made of bone broth made in-house from local beef bones and frozen, as their acupuncture treat.
Sarcopenia is a huge problem, especially with our large and giant breed dogs. Any of you that have known me for a significant amount of time, have heard me refer to “ballet butt.” As our big dogs age, they inevitably begin to push their weight forward and lose muscle in their rear limbs which contributes to trouble rising, difficulty jumping into the car, going up stairs or getting into their favorite chair. This is a very real problem and one way you can try to counteract sarcopenia is by boosting protein intake in our seniors. This can be done by adding animal protein to their meals but it may be more effective to use a supplement. It is always important to consult a veterinarian before adding supplemental protein to your dog’s diet, because some dogs may develop kidney disease as they age, and adding protein to these dogs’ diets may be contraindicated.
Finally, inflammation is a buzzword that actually means something. We are learning more and more about the role inflammation plays in aging and health. For my canine patients I am a huge fan of omega 3 fatty acids which are found in fish oil. A high quality fish oil is a supplement that can benefit your dog’s entire body, even their joints, but you need to consult your veterinarian about dose based on weight. Also beware that some dogs will develop diarrhea on fish oil, so this supplement may need to be started at a lower dose and build up gradually. Turmeric is another well-studied supplement that has known anti-inflammatory and potential anti-cancer benefits. My favorite way to add turmeric to my dogs’ diets is by making “Golden Paste” at home. Doug English, an Australian vet and long-time turmeric researcher, created Golden Paste by adapting traditional recipes to current cooking practices and materials.
I would be thrilled to share a list and to provide links for my favorite recipes and researched supplements with anyone who reaches out.
Dr. Kelly
Defining the Aging Pet
The other day I hurt my back. I wasn’t moving furniture or playing football. I was picking up a towel that had fallen on the floor. It was only a momentary twinge of pain, but I knew that in a few hours those muscles would start to tighten and I’d be paying for the mundane thing I had just done. My body used to take so much abuse with only minor complaints. Age has a way of settling up old debts. And while I can complain to Dr. Kelly about the stiffness or soreness, Raylan, our 9 year old lab cannot. He plods along whether we notice him moving slower or not.
What is it about getting older that makes us all just a bit more… fragile? You’ve likely heard the common refrain, age isn’t a disease, but many of us have also internalized the idea of dying from old age if not from “natural causes,” whatever that means. So which is it? Is it a disease process or not? And if not, why does it bring so much disease in its wake? When we look at our dog or cat with the graying muzzle who suddenly has so many issues where for so long there were none, we can’t help but ask, what changed? The nuts and bolts of this answer are stunningly complicated and even now our collective understanding of all of the mechanisms involved are limited. But the broad answer can be distilled into two distinct facets of the body: renewal and accumulation.
Renewal: We spend much of our adult lives taking our body’s ability to regenerate for granted. Everything from our muscles’ ability to regenerate after being broken down to our immune systems’ constant turnover of cells; it all happens so seamlessly that we barely take notice until those systems start to slow. When they do, torn muscle fibers are slower to reconnect, immune responses are slower to respond or less effective and our ability to navigate through the world just feels compromised in some way.
Many of us are familiar with embryonic stem cells, the primordial goo that gives us all of our parts. But did you know that beyond fetal development, all animals also have adult stem cells that are responsible for the constant turnover that heals you when you’re injured or just maintains organs through the normal wear and tear of everyday life? It’s a lot like a copy machine, elegant in its results, but not without its eventual failings. Like that office copier, it cannot run forever. In time we all run out of toner (to say nothing of the printer jams). And as that system slows, our body and the bodies of our pets no longer respond or adapt to adversity with the same vigor. The end result is that the necessary copies are both slower in function and more prone to error in the duplication effort. This is why we associate a higher risk of cancer with advanced age and one of the reasons why we see so much of it in our aging pets.
Accumulation: Renewal only applies to part of the body. There are some parts that are never renewed, regardless of age. The heart muscle, the intricate machinery of the kidneys or the cartilaginous padding of our joints are all examples of you get what you get. Injury to such places often results in loss of the functional component through accumulation of unwanted material. Often this accumulation is in the form of fibrosis (think scar tissue). A damaged heart cannot replace the heart muscle with more muscle, but something is still required to keep all of the pieces together. This can happen in the kidneys as well, but years of inflammation can also lead to the accumulation of immune complexes that grime up the kidney’s filters, a common problem for our kitties. And whether it’s us or our dogs, protein plaques can accumulate through the years within the neurons of our brains leading to cognitive decline. Accumulation of too many cell layers within the lenses of our pets eyes can cause clouding and sensory loss. Fibrotic fibers in the lungs can reduce air flow capacity. The list goes on and on.
Our bodies and the bodies of our animals are so resilient. They can take an extraordinary amount of damage below a certain threshold and still maintain their critical functions. However, injury after injury adds up. The scar tissue adds up. That accumulation, given time, crosses the line of resiliency and begins to introduce problems.
As Dr. Kelly and I get older, we’re having to consider lifestyle changes that we’re not always excited about. Workout routines I used to be able to do when I was younger might put me in traction today. What we eat requires a bit more consideration now than when we were in our devil may care 20s. We make these adjustments in order to address these unavoidable changes in our bodies. Luckily most of us have decades to adjust to some of our new “requirements.”
Our animals age so much faster than we do. Often it feels as though the adult to senior transition happens over months rather than years. It doesn’t give us the time we need to appropriately adjust for their new life requirements. Not without help. The plans we come up with at White Whiskers are designed to make some of these less than comfortable adjustments as easy as they can possibly be for both you and your animal. Unfortunately, none of us can stop the aging process. But White Whiskers can help slow it and make those senior years as comfortable as possible. Give us a call for your old timer today.
White Whiskers Aging Pet Care provides in-home veterinarian services, including senior pet care, quality-of-life consultations, and pet home euthanasia. Our mobile veterinarian provides compassionate care and peaceful passings for cats and dogs in Colorado Springs, Peyton, Black Forest, Monument, Fountain, Manitou Springs, Woodland Park, Falcon, Palmer Lake, Calhan, Pueblo, and surrounding areas.