February 7th, 2010
I have a 1 and 5 year old german shepherds. I would like to avoid giving them pills (glucosamine,multivitamins). Is there a more natural way to make sure they get proper nutrition so I reduce a chance of them having problems with their hips and bones in general? Thanks
Why don’t you look up glucosamine on Wikipedia? I just did, and it looks pretty natural to me. I started using it some months ago, just after I got a 10 year old rescue dog who had longstanding cruciate ligament damage in his back legs when I got him. He had trouble getting into my van when I got him, now he jumps in like it’s nothing, and bounces around like a young dog. It comes in a powder which is very easy to add to food. Next time I buy it, I’m going to get the version made for horses, it’s cheaper and fine for dogs, it says on the label.
And I’ll add another story to the first one. I had a 2 year old cat who developed severe respiratory problems. Every 4 to 6 weeks his lungs would fill up so he could hardly breathe and he was miserable. At the time, all the vet could offer was steroid shots, which worked well, but I was told they weren’t good as a continual treatment, so only give them when absolutely necessary. The prospect of a lifetime of this for the cat didn’t look good. By chance, I found a book on megavitamin therapy for cats. I decided there was nothing to lose, and started giving the cat 1,000mg of vitamin C daily, which is a huge dose. Six months went by and he didn’t need any steroids. I took him off the vitamin C, the filled lungs came back. Back on the 1000mg. I tried several times, same result. He stayed on the vitamin C for a little more than 2 years, and one day I stopped it again but the filled lungs never returned and he lived in perfect health till he was 17 and had kidney failure,very common in cats.
Moral of this: it’s almost impossible to find a perfect food, and if I had a breed prone to joint problems, as Shepherds are, I’d give the glucosamine as well as a very high quality food. Each animal is different, and some may do very well even on table scraps while others need more. Why not weight the odds in your dogs’ favour?
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