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Mature dogs and cats enrich our lives with love, loyalty and wisdom, so watching our companions grow older should be a comforting and rewarding experience.
Thanks to better preventative care, advances in veterinary medicine and better nutrition, pets are living longer and have a higher quality of life than ever before.
As a caring owner, you play a key role in helping your senior pet remain healthy. The decisions you make regarding exercise, diet and health care have a big impact on your older pet.
It’s easy to overlook the need for regular health checks as our pets advance in years – we can tend to simply put their decreasing level of activity down to ‘old age’.
Just as we take ourselves to the doctor to monitor our health and wellbeing, your pet will benefit from regular health checks.
We recommend at least six-monthly health consultations to ensure pets are fighting fit in their senior years.
Problems often encountered with advancing age include:
arthritis
heart disease
dental disease
behavioural changes
weight changes
altered sleep patterns
liver and kidney problems
thyroid overactivity (in cats)
During a consultation, your vet examines your pet and may recommend blood and urine tests and sometimes X-rays to screen for any age-related conditions. If caught early, these conditions can be properly managed.
As a general rule of thumb, a dog who is 7 years or older should be considered middle to senior aged.
A regular consultation with your vet will determine the best healthcare maintenance program for your dog’s age. For smaller breed dogs, your vet may elect to wait a couple of years before performing any geriatric monitoring.
Large breed dogs (Great Danes, St Bernards, Rottweilers and German Shepherds) are considered to be senior by 6 or 7 years of age. Small breeds (Chihuahua, Toy Poodle and Maltese) aren’t considered to be senior until they are 10 or 11 years old.
Cats generally live longer than dogs and most won’t show signs of ageing until they are 10 or 11 years of age.
