Understanding Pain Relief For Your Dog

Knowing how to address your dog’s pains and aches is very important and seemingly obvious. However, as a pup parent, you’re bound to either overestimate or underestimate your dog’s pain without some sort of benchmark to compare it to.

Following are some pointers to help you better understand pain relief for your dog.

Spotting Pain: Acute Pain vs. Chronic Pain

Our dogs can communicate their pain and discomfort by biting themselves or not using the part of their body that is injured. Just a quick stroke through your dog’s fur to feel for swelling or making some observations on where they bite themselves can help you further in identifying the source of pain. Generally, a dog’s pain can be split into two categories; acute and chronic pain. Acute pain is a pain that has only recently come about by your dog and it isn’t particularly sharp. This type of pain doesn’t carry over for a long time, in the event that it does, it then becomes chronic. Chronic pain occurs over an extended period of time, arthritis in dogs is a prime example of Chronic pain.

How quickly should you consult a vet?

If you suspect that your dog is in pain, it’s best that you take them to the vet as early as possible. If the pain is acute and you are equipped to manage it, do so right away because, in spite of it being acute, you wouldn’t want your dog going about their day with nagging pain.

Medication commonly used for pain management

For starters, giving your dog human painkillers like Advil or Tylenol is a huge no-no. They can reap all sorts of havoc on your pup like stomach ulcers and vomiting to name a few. Veterinarians usually prescribe long-term medication for chronic pain like Rimadyl and Previcox which are non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). NSAIDs are commonly used to relieve pain, any other specific drugs should be specified by your vet.