Arthritis
in Dogs, Horses, Ponies & Cats
An Introduction
Arthritis means ‘joint inflammation'. It can be either acute (short term and relatively sudden) or chronic (long term and usually deteriorating).
Animals affected with arthritis usually show lameness, which can be anything from a mild inconvenience to quite painful and disabling. If the arthritis is secondary to injury, it usually affects only the injured part. If it is part of generalised disease, it can affect several or even all joints.
While actual cure is very unlikely, in chronic arthritis (which is the most common form to come to the AVMC), an integrated program of natural medicine input appears capable of usually bringing about a variable degree of relief or even long-term improvement. Many have found natural medicine to be able to offer a realistic alternative to steroid or NSAID therapy. In horses, it is not unrealistic to hope for a return to riding work. Attention must, of course, also be paid to saddling and shoeing, in the case of horses.
Treatment options used, often combined and integrated, have been veterinary homeopathy, veterinary acupuncture, herbal medicine, LASER, chiropractic manipulation, nutritional therapy and natural feeding.
For a fuller account of this topic, see:
