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Senior dog care guides: joint support, cognitive health, diet adjustments, and how to give your older dog the best years yet.
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I noticed it on a Tuesday morning. Cooper was about nine years old, and I was looking at him in the backyard sunlight — the kind of low, angled morning light where…
Read the guide: Dog Eye Health After 7: What’s Normal Cloudiness and What Isn’t
The first time Cooper slipped trying to get onto the bed, I laughed. He was eight years old and had always leaped up with no problem — it just looked like a…
Read the guide: Senior Dog Ramps and Stairs: What Actually Helped Cooper’s Arthritis
Cooper had his first ear infection when he was four years old. Then another one at five. Then two in one year when he was seven. By the time he was ten,…
Read the guide: How to Clean Your Dog’s Ears (And Prevent the $400 Infection I Kept Getting With Cooper)
When I brought Birch home — a scrappy little mixed-breed pup with floppy ears and an underbite — I swore I’d do things differently than I did with Cooper. Cooper was my…
Read the guide: Dog DNA Testing: I Compared Embark vs Wisdom Panel on the Same Dog
I remember the moment a vet first told me Cooper was overweight. He was six. The vet did that thing where she pinches the ribs — I’d seen it done before but…
Read the guide: Dog Weight Management: Why Even a Few Extra Pounds Is Serious After Age 5
I am not going to pretend this is an easy post to write. It isn’t. It’s the post I needed to read before I had to have the conversation, and it’s the…
Read the guide: Quality of Life Decisions: The Hardest Conversation You’ll Have With Your Vet
For most of Cooper’s adult life, we did one vet visit a year. Annual wellness exam, vaccines, heartworm test, done. That felt responsible. That felt like what you were supposed to do.…
Read the guide: How Often Should Your Senior Dog Really See the Vet? (Hint: More Than You Think)
Dog Supplements / Senior Dog Health
A few months after bringing Birch home, he had a round of antibiotics for a skin infection. Anyone who’s been through antibiotics with a dog knows what comes next: days of soft…
Read the guide: Probiotics for Dogs: Do They Actually Work? What the Science Says
The morning I realized Cooper had arthritis wasn’t dramatic. He just… didn’t want to get up. I called him for breakfast and he stayed in his bed, looking at me with that…
Read the guide: Dog Arthritis Management: What You Can Do at Home Without Surgery or Expensive Drugs
The hardest thing about kidney disease in dogs isn’t the diagnosis. It’s learning that by the time most dogs show symptoms, 65 to 75 percent of kidney function is already gone. I...
Read the guide: Kidney Disease in Dogs: Early Detection Before It’s Too Late (The Signs Are Subtle)