Seven signs your dog is getting older: changes in weight, bathroom habits, sleep patterns, dental health, coat quality, and sensory or mobility loss. Learn how to care for a senior dog to keep them comfortable and healthy.
These signs will tell you that your dog is entering the senior stage. It is very common for problems with their weight to appear and they may gain a lot of weight because their energy has slowed down. They eat the same and so they may gain a little weight and sometimes they are overweight. In this case, the ideal thing would be to adapt their diet to their needs, to their energy, so that they maintain their ideal weight. When a dog enters maturity, their physiological needs may be altered. And the thing is, when a puppy gets older, they need to go to the bathroom more often. That is why it is very important that you can be very aware, very alert to how many times your dog needs to go to the bathroom so that they are calm. We may also notice that their sleeping habits may change. For example, when our dog is an adult, between a year and a bit two years old and four or five years old, depending on the breed, we will see that our dog sleeps most of the day and also at night, after going for walks and so on. But in the case of the senior stage, when our dog is a little older, we can see that this sleep is altered. For example, during 24 hours, we can see that during the morning they are sleeping all the time. In the afternoon, they are much more active. At night, they sleep a lot again and wake up at dawn. This is because their entire metabolism is changing. Their energy also induces these types of changes, and that is why these sleep alterations occur. It is very common for our dog, when they are already senior to have dental diseases such as tartar or tooth loss. It is essential that you increase these check ups with the vet so that they can check that their oral and dental health is perfect. We can also observe that the quality of our dog's hair will change as it loses its shine and skin quality, which makes the coat less thick with age. Our dogs sadly also lose their vision and hearing. That is why it is essential that you can be very attentive to what this new situation is like for them, so that you can make everything easier for them at home and feel very comfortable and just like us. Humans also lose agility when our dog is getting a little older. They lose that mobility and energy that they had when they were puppies and adults, and their movements slow down. This is also why they sometimes become a little more fearful.
