food to help joints ?
 Hi, this is my first post and also our first OES, his name is Oliver, hes 7 month old and lovely, trouble is hes got a limp, hes been limping now for about 5 weeks, the first week we thought wed rest him to see if it settled down (didnt know of the forum or the problems they can have with their joints), we then took him to the vets for his normal check up and told them about it, they gave him some anti inflamatory medicine which lasted about 9 days, this seemd to help a lot so we decided that maybe it was just the medicine that was making him better and to give it a few days to see if he started limping again when the drugs wore off, we gave it a week and he did, we then took him for some xrays (sorry I missed a bit out, on Olivers check up the vet tod us to give him the same food as our other older dogs and that he no longer needed puppy food, weve asked the vet for advice on feeding him etc from the start), the owner vet rang us after the xrays and said that his elbow was ok but his shoulders were growing at different rates and that we have been feeding him the wrong food (the vets told us to feed him adult food), he gave us some glucosiam chondorite (might have name wrong) and told us to feed him on large breed puppy food, I then stumbled across the forum and saw people advising giving him large breed adult food, to make it worse the local pet food stores gave us different advice again.
The vet says that the next couple of month are important and how he is depends on this time. Id say that his limping is getting better, sometimes theres no limp at all but if hes had a mad charging around do the limp can be bad, Id say 60% of the day the limp is either not there at all or hardly noticeable, the rest its a minor limp, we are resting him with one of us sleeping down stairs on the floor with him, he doesnt like it but its for his own good. sorry for being so long winded but if your going to give us advice you need to know the whole story. 
So should he be on large breed puppy or large breed adult food and are the glucosim chondrite tables the same as i could get from the chemist or supermarket as they are about half as much. Thanks mark |
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| I posted the above question but had trouble logging in.
Mark |
| So is the vet saying that he has rickets? Usually you change over to adult dog food the last couple months of the first adult year but it usually depends on how mature your dog is. I would say follow your vets advice or maybe call the dog food company directly. |
| The vet didnt say he had rickets (dont know what rickets are) he said that the shoulder hadnt shaped properly, it wasnt rounded in his socket, trouble is that we always use the same surgery but one vet says feed him adult food (she said that at his 6 month check up) but after the xray the other vet said tha with feeding him adult food we might have caused it and he should be on the large breed puppy, then I see on your forum and one of the local pet food supppliers says that we should use adult dog large breed.
Its so confusing, I was hoping that one of the breeders or someone with a bit more experience of the breed would advise us. 
At his 6 month check up Oliver weighed just over 46 pound and hes putting weight on at the rate of about 2 pound a week, hes not over weight but we dont want to exercise him too much with his problem, with not knowing much about the breed I dont know if this is big or not. |
| There is no "set time" to switch a dog over to adult food. It really all depends on your individual puppy and can vary. Normally, an experienced breeder can tell you when and what to switch to because he or she has raised many litters of puppies and they've watched them grow up and knows what works best for those pups. If you don't have the benefit of working with your breeder, you can get advice from your vet and see what or she recommends. They all know your puppy best.
We can only recommend our own experiences but they aren't written in stone. We have some people that have switched to adult food at 4 months, some at 6 months and others at 10. Everyone also feels that their way is the right way for their puppy. It's not a bad thing, just different but it also doesn't mean that any of those is necessarily good for your guy either. The best thing you can do is work with your vet and switch to a high quality food that will help support your puppy's growth. Do a search for feeding and food here on the forum and you'll see many suggestions. Once again, it's another area that varies for everyone! Good luck! |
| Well I thought that I should update you all on Oliver. He was xrayed by our vet and we were told that he might have a loose flap of cartlidge in his shoulder and might need an op, We were told to give him green lipped mussel tablets whiche vet sold us at about 8.50 per tub, he has to have 2 a day, through reading several articles and talking to our vet we discovered that we could supplement this by giving him glucosiom chondorite tablets which the vet could sell us at an extortinate price, he also told us to feed him hills large breed puppy food at 47 pound per sack.
Well I had the info so i then hunted around for what he needed, bought the Hills from zooplus.com who delivered 2 sacks for 75 pound inc delivery, thats about 10 pound per sack cheaper, no big heavy bags to carry around and delivery very quickly, green lipped mussel from vetuk.co.uk, bought three tubs for about 6 pound each, glucosium chondorite we bought from our local Tesco, they also had an offer on buy one get one free so we bought a years supply and give him two a day, we also give him 2 green lipped mussel and 1 cod liver oil. After about 8 weeks the limp had gone, And fingers crossed it has gone for good, I dont say that he is cured but if the tablets are helping him were not going to stop giving him them, the vet says he might get arthritis in his later years. We rested him for the first couple of months with only short walks mainly on grass, we also spent them two months taking turns sleeping on the living room floor with him as we didnt want to put preasure on his leg having him go up and down stairs or jumping on the bed, is gets cold sleeping on a stone floor in winter with only a big furry dog and 1 blanket for company, we didnt dare get an air bed in case he popped it. We then started to introduce him back into the routine that the other dogs have by letting him sleep on the bed with us but carrying him up and down stairs and introducing him back to the walks with the other dogs but only in the morning. He is now a full lunatic diging in the garden, jumping up at the door when he sees us coming home and barking at anything hes not sure about. Hopefully we wont have anymore trouble with his legs but if we do well still love him and do what ever we can for him as he is one of our children. I hope this helps anybody out there going through anything like what we had to and the info on where to get the same brand products as what your vet sells cheaper is if help Thanks for the support that you gave us Mark, Elaine and of course Oliver |
Wow--that sounds really good! I'm so glad that things have gotten better for him.  |
| Excellent news about Oliver. Thanks for the update!
Laurie and Oscar |
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