Elizabeth U. Murphy - How to Age-Proof Your Dog: The Art and Science of Successful Canine Aging

How to Age-Proof
Your Dog

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

Lanham Boulder New York London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Murphy, Elizabeth U., 1958- , author.

Title: How to age-proof your dog : the art and science of successful canine aging / Elizabeth U. Murphy.

Description: Lanham : Rowman & Littlefield, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016035120 (print) | LCCN 2016053901 (ebook) | ISBN 9781442247161 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781442247178 (Electronic)

Subjects: LCSH: Dogs. | Dogs--Aging. | Dogs--Health. | Veterinary geriatrics.

Classification: LCC SF427 .M97 2017 (print) | LCC SF427 (ebook) | DDC 636.7--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016035120

TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

To Markbest husband, best friend.

The afternoon knows what the morning never suspected. Robert Frost

In the United States during the second decade of the twenty-first century, we are, by popular reputation, a youth-obsessed society. However, despite the abundance of magazine covers, TV shows, and movies full of slender, athletic, and attractive twentysomethings, numerous advertisements and infomercials are also full of tips to prevent the aging process. Therefore, our society is really more of an age-obsessed society. We are all getting older at the same rate, and, as we watch our parents age, many of us are worrying about our own aging process, and some of us seek ways to prevent it.

The thing iswe cant. Aging is inevitable. However, aging is not a diseaseit is really more of a compromise. Associated with aging are changes we cant avoid, and some we just have to learn to live with. But, since some changes associated with aging are predictable, we can take steps early in life that modify the degree to which those changes affect how well we live in old age. The fundamental point here is the word wellwe may or may not be able to take steps to affect how long we live, but we all want to age wellin the best health possible, in comfort, in dignity, in joyand the steps to aging well start while we are young. Good nutrition, exercise, early and anticipatory care of medical problemsall starting early in lifecan make the difference between disability and ability later in life.

How does this relate to our dogs? Well, they are aging right along with us, but faster, much faster. All of us who have owned dogs have felt the same regret as Agnes Sligh Turnbull, who said: Dogs lives are too short. Their only fault, really. Again, we cant prevent the aging process in our dogs, and we cant avoid the inevitable result of aging, but we can modify the process, and we can change our dogs pathway to old age starting when we bring them home as puppies.

This book will help you help your dog age successfully. It will provide information that you can use to predict which health problems might occur in your dog so that you can be proactive about them, and so that, teamed with your veterinarian, you can possibly prevent some of them. It will relate some of the aging changes you will inevitably see in your dog with those that occur in humans, and allow you to recognize how it might feel to be an aging dog. As I have said before, we humans can be age-obsesseddogs are not. We humans think, and talk, a lot about aging and how it feels, and we add lots of intellectual and emotional pieces to the mix. I believe that dogs simply feel the way they feel at the time that they feel it, and do not add much more to it than that. Dogs do not seek to understand the aging process, and do not worry about its limitationsthey just focus on what they can do, not on what they cant do, and just keep on doing it.

For example, I recently saw a sixteen-and-half-year-old dog, named Nikki, who still goes jogging with her owners! Many owners wouldnt even think of taking a dog that age for walks, much less runs, because they would assume that an old dog would rather stay home sleeping. Lots of owners focus on their dogs chronologythat is, the age in years, not their dogs ability. Nikki is blind in one eye, but can still see well with the other, can still hear, is slender, muscular, and has some mobility issues, but none of these things interfere with her desire to fetch a ballso her owners keep throwing it! She gets up every single morning with a purposeshe has been chasing the cat in the house, Baxter, every morning for the past ten yearsshe apparently looks forward to it (she starts whining to get out of the bedroom at 6 a.m.). Baxter also apparently looks forward to it (he waits in the hallway in the morning, occasionally sticking his paw under the bedroom door). The owners (when they arent trying to sleep late) apparently appreciate the show. After all, everybody needs a job, and this dog has one (and so does Baxter, by the way). Nikki does what she can do, which is a lot, and definitely does not think at all about what she cant do, and, luckily, neither do her owners.

This book will help you, the dog owner, think like a dog, but act, on your dogs behalf, like a human, allowing your dogs older years to be as comfortable and positive as possible. I want to emphasize that the goal is not simply to extend your dogs lifespan, although the information and tips presented may help do sothe goal is actually to help you extend your dogs healthspan. This is a term used in aging research to distinguish between lifespan, the period between birth and death, and healthspan, the period during which a person or animal is fully fit and free of serious illness. A chronologically long lifespan may include some time when the quality of life is not very good, whereas a long healthspan should include less or none of that timeand, of course, we all want the best quality of life possible for our dogs for as long as possible. To paraphrase the Irish serenity prayer, my purpose in writing this book is to grant dog owners the serenity to accept the things they cannot change; the courage to change the things they can; and the wisdom to know the difference.

And who am I to tell anyone anything about this? I am a small-animal veterinarian who has been in practice, in the same practice, for eighteen years. The same dogs and cats that I saw as puppies and kittens in my first year of practice have now gone through their geriatric years, and I have seen them through all of their wellness visits as well as all of their illnesses. Some have passed away now, and, after grieving alongside their owners, I have been entrusted in the care of another generation of puppies. Seeing the trajectory of the lives of these dogs, along with those of their owners, has allowed me to understand my ability to affect both.