Adult Pet Care

Taking Care of Your Adult Pet

Most pets and people are born with a healthy body.  Their bodies begin with extra capacity to make up for the wear and tear of time. Some systems slow down while others lose their “fine tuning”.

The kidneys, for example, begin with four times as much filtering capacity as your pet needs to cleanse it’s blood and so does the liver. As time goes by, organs slowly and steadily lose their ability to function. This is called the aging process.

Eventually, one organ’s ability to function decreases past a critical point, and we see a degenerative disease. It may be the kidneys, heart, lungs, joints or another organ system, which is the first to break down. All older pets and people have some partial organ loss.

There are treatments available for most of the problems of old age. The first step is to determine what they are in your pet and treat them to maximize the pet’s quality of life and life expectancy. Our pets age more quickly than we do, but not at the same rate. A three year old dog or cat is equivalent to a twenty seven year old person. A six year old dog or cat is equivalent to a forty two year old person. An eleven year old dog or cat is equivalent to a sixty year old person, and a twenty year old dog or cat is equivalent to a one hundred year old person.