Dr. Lera Clone explains when dogs become seniors by size: giant breeds around 5 years, medium-large at 7, small at 10. Senior dogs need blood work and urinalysis twice yearly, and watch for arthritis and cognitive dysfunction, which requires early intervention.
10 years old (female, spayed).
Approximately 15–20 pounds.
Around 5 years old.
Around 7 years old.
Around 10 years old.
Hey guys, My name is Dr. Lared here at Heron Lakes Animal Hospital. Today I'm here with Lily. Lily is a 10 year old female spayed dog. And so we had a request from somebody to go ahead and do a video about how to care for older dogs. Now, older dogs depends on the size of the dog. A giant breed dog such as a Great Dane will start to become older or geriatric. I like to call them old school gangsters because I do not like using the word geriatric at five because they are so big. A medium to large breed dog will usually be considered an OG Old school gangster, remember, at the age of seven. And then the smaller dogs, a dog like Lily's size or even smaller Lily probably weighs in the neighborhood of between 15 to 20 pounds. They start becoming into that category around the age of 10. Okay. Now when you're going ahead and taking care of an older dog, one of the things that you want to take into consideration. First things first, here we do blood work on an annual basis for dogs that we consider young. When the dogs hit that OG status, we will usually recommend checking the blood work twice a year. And so what we're looking for is we're looking for trends. We want to see changes in either the liver or changes in the kidney. Now that blood work also includes a urinalysis which is taking a look at the urine. And because the urine and the blood together are a complete evaluation of the kidney function. Okay. The other thing that you'll want to take into consideration when you have an older patient or older dog is potential arthritis. Now one of the things that I usually will say with my clients is age is not a disease, but certain things happen with age or are more prone at certain ages. And so arthritis is one of those things. So you want to keep track of if your dog is still able to jump in and out of the car, on and off the furniture, that kind of stuff, making sure that they're not showing any signs of arthritis. If they are starting to show some signs of arthritis, then what you will want to do is you can ask your veterinarian to do an orthopedic exam and or they could potentially be put on an anti inflammatory like Daramax, Rumadyl, Metacam, Previcox, Galliprant. These are some drugs that will typically make them feel better pretty quickly and you'll be able to at least gauge, hey, they are definitely uncomfortable because now they look so much better. And at that point then you can determine if you want to do something more natural like a glucosamine and omega 3 fatty acid, some sort of natural supplement that has anti inflammatory effects. Okay. The last thing that you want to take into consideration in my top three aging dogs is their senility. And so what you want to do is you want to keep track of if they're losing their focus, if they seem dazed and confused, if they, if they happen to get stuck in a corner and they're unable to get out. If they just have this like look in their eyes, they're like. And they don't recognize you. Those will be textbook signs of senility. And the reason you want to keep an eye out for that is because sometimes if you end up putting them on some sort of medication or supplement, it is something that can take some time to kick in. And so if they're really bad, sometimes we feel bad that there's not really a whole lot of quality of life. And so we, we don't want to wait that long. So we want to try and catch senility when they're older. If you guys have any questions about this particular topic, leave it in the comment box. If you found this video helpful, give us a thumbs up. Subscribe and share. Thanks for watching and take care of our OGs. Have a great day.
