aging dog

Question
I have a 1/2 red nose pit and 1/2 black mouth kerr female who turned 8 im May. Although she was bread to be used as a cow dog she is house broke and is just an inside pet.  She is slightly over weight.(72lbs) She snores a lot at knight and wants to sleep a lot the next day. For the past year I've been noticing a lot of limping in her front legs especially first getting up. She likes to run along the fence chasing after the cows but seems to be in pain after her bouts of running and wants to just lay down and not get up. The vet says she is very health and is maybe getting arthritis. I am giving her Synovi G3 Soft Chews (1 daily) and it seems to help her. I also give her 325mg buffered aspirin made for dogs when she appears to be hurting. I guess I would just like to know if I need to be doing more. I think she could loose more weight if I could find a decent diet food that she would like. I mix about 1/3 regular food to get her to eat it. I also give her brewers yeast which has amino acids in it too. I've heard it is a natural flea repelant. Could the G3 and brewers yeast together be too much fatty acids? Would appreciate your thoughts! She is very special to me.


Answer
Hi Ellen,  I would stop the brewer's yeast as it is just an old wive's tale about it repelling fleas.  You see, dog's don't have pores, unlike cats, so anything ingested will not come out through their skin.  That's why dog's pant, because they don't have any pores to sweat through, so anything ingested for fleas will not repel them because there is no way for it to come through the skin.  I would put her on a good senior food (since she is technically a senior at 8 yrs old).  I would also put her on glucosamine also to help with the joints.  Limit her exercise (just as you would with a human senior).  Basically treat her like s senior now and put her in retirement.  :)  It's hard because dogs tend to follow their instincts even if it hurts, so they will run themselves literally to death if allowed.  Hope this helps,

Dawn