Protecting Senior Pet Mobility Before the Signs Show

This episode is sponsored by Antinol +

Aging in dogs is a gradual process, and the earliest mobility changes are often subtle enough to be dismissed as a pet simply getting older. In recognition of Senior Pet Awareness Month, The Vet Blast Podcast presented by dvm360, host Adam Christman, DVM, MBA, welcomed Monica Tarantino, DVM, MBA, former chief of staff at a general practice in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Lisa Lippman, DVM, of Bond Vet in New York City.

Tarantino describes when the senior transition actually starts and why function and mobility become central to quality of life, and Lippman makes the case for a proactive approach to joint health, including the gait and behavior cues pet owners should report before an obvious limp develops.

Below is a partial transcript, edited lightly for clarity.

Adam Christman, DVM, MBA: If there was one shift in mindset you’d want the veterinary community to make in how we approach senior pet mobility, what would that be?

Monica Tarantino, DVM, MBA: I think really the shift that I would hope for the most is to stop treating slowing down as an inevitable part of getting older. When we went to vet school, I remember we were taught about clinical signs like PU/PD, polyphagia, whatever the clinical signs are. But we were never really taught about the signs of slowing down, or “they’re just getting older,” which people say as they walk into exam rooms. And I really want us to shift that so when we hear one of those phrases, we go, “Wait a minute, we need to stop and dive into why they’re saying this. Why are they saying, ‘Oh, they’re just getting older’? Why are they saying they’re slowing down?” Because those can often be clues that those pets are uncomfortable and just deserve a closer look.

Unfortunately, I think an upsetting thing is that we still euthanize pets for things like arthritis—essentially their orthopedic skeleton wearing out. So this conversation that we’re having here today is so important to me, because if we can be doing something in advance and being more proactive with their joints and with their health, and helping them be able to function for longer as they get older and really increase that health span for them, then I really think that we should be doing that.

Adam Christman, DVM, MBA: One thing I always say is, as we all know, age is not a disease. Our pets are living longer because we’re identifying things early, and they’re living with chronic disease with good quality of life. Dogs with CKD and OA, even with certain cancers, can have good quality of life because of the work that we’re doing in veterinary medicine. I don’t know what your thoughts are on that, Lisa.

Lisa Lippman, DVM: I think we’re doing a better job every day, and there’s this new concept that I learned about just in the last couple of years, which is lifespan versus health span. You want to live more years, but you don’t want to live more years if those years are not quality. So what is your health span? Your health span will give you that quality of life. And then we go back to the topic that in veterinary medicine we don’t even have an agreed definition of quality of life, but we all know that it involves comfort, and comfort is paramount when we are talking about all the diseases that you mentioned and keeping our pets comfortable as long as possible. I think that conversation is so interesting, and we are just on the tip of the iceberg of talking about that. It deserves a lot of attention.

Want to hear the rest of the conversation? You can listen here or wherever you listen to podcasts.