Teenage Poodle Joint Health

 Humphrey recently celebrated his fifteenth birthday! Hooray!

Being a teen is never easy, especially if you're a dog. For Humphrey, the past six months have resulted in a fair bit of joint deterioration - age-related arthritis, and weakening of the ligaments. Luckily, there's a nearby (and surprisingly reasonably priced!) board certified sports medicine specialist vet near Humph's summer digs!

A few weeks ago, Humphrey underwent a full assessment to determine the root of his stiff joints and decreased mobility. The results included this assessment (looks like his rear passenger tire is a little low!).

It also turns out that he has a lesion where  he recently had a wasp sting on that  rear passenger foot - which might account for the weight distribution.

The specialist recommended a few interventions. He has started physiotherapy - initially therapeutic laser (a new post on that to come), and this week he begins aquatherapy at he clinic's rehab facility (more on that to come in a separate post, too).

In the mean time, the specialist recommended a few supplements.

First, she recommended a full tablet per day of Centrum for Women 50+ - apparently it contains the right dose of calcium and no iron (unlike the men's version of this product). 

The other thing she recommended is a supplement with undenatured collagen type II (UC-II). We went with Flexidin Advanced (the regular, non-advanced version of this contains glucosamine, which is comparatively not effective).

 

Flexadin Advanced had several advantages for Humphrey over the plain stuff - it contains other useful ingredients (including Omegas, brewer's yeast) and is a chewable in a flavor he enjoys.

The thing about UC-II is  that it is fascinating, and seems to have some good science behind it!

UC-II is a form of edible collagen - which is a fancy way to say it's just a bunch of gelatin loaded into a chewable or capsule. What makes UC-II special is that it's basically pulverized chicken cartilage, and is easily digestible.

Once digested, the collagen/cartilage provides nutrition to help rebuild ligaments and restore some joint health. This is a really nice 2020 meta-analysis of studies (there's even a scrollable list of the studies included, which involve humans and animals). To summarize:

- in humans and animals, UC-II outperforms glucosamine in RCTs- by a lot!

- after 90 days of UC-II supplements, humans showed significant improvement on standardized mobility scales and a reduction of pain on pain inventories. Similar results were found in dogs

- in one of the studies, they investigated what happened after 30 days of withdrawing UC-II - and gains were lost, so basically if it works, a human or animal has to take it for life to continue to the benefits

- no adverse effects found in any of the studies

So far, after two laser treatments and a week of Flexidin, he's showing really significant improvements in knee/hip strength and mobility. He has a long way to go, but it's promising to see him back to his old self.

Though age-related physical deterioration is tough, with age comes wisdom, as this recent photo of him implies...