Story bites:
- Nutrition is always the foundation of the house. Fresh, nutrient-dense food is the healthy choice for seniors.
- Medicinal mushrooms pack a powerful nutrition punch to nourish all parts of the aging body.
- Making certain adjustments in the home can help a senior losing his sight.
- More mindful grooming for thinner, aging skin and a stronger connection to your dog.
- The strongest antioxidant to not overburden a senior with environmental toxicity.
It happens all too quickly, right? You turn around and that vibrant, bouncy, into everything puppy is now a slower moving, more cautious senior. Aging not only gracefully, but well, isn’t only for us humans, anymore. November is Senior Pet Health Month. There are things you can do to help your senior feel better and live longer. Here are my top 5 lesser known tips for senior dog care. Please add your own to the Comments, below, so we can all benefit from what you’ve discovered, too.
1.Nutrition
The first isn’t lesser known, but so important. If your dog is getting more sluggish, it could be an easy fix. What are you feeding? As seniors, they need the best nutrition more than ever, and if not now…when? Fresh food is what will give it to them, so find a way to ditch the kibble or canned, and transition to a fresh or frozen raw, a home-cooked or a freeze-dried raw diet. Sometimes, that’s all it takes for your senior to start acting like a puppy again. If that’s not possible, add some of this to the kibble or canned and that can make a difference, too.
If they get a good amount of exercise, you can still feed the portions you were. If they don’t, cut the portions down to make sense, as a leaner dog is a healthier dog; less weight for the heart and other organs to have to carry.
2. Mycelium Matters!
If you haven’t already, add mushrooms to your pup’s diet. Medicinal mushrooms, well-sourced, will support his or her brain, heart, immune, respiratory, digestive and kidney health. The mushroom product we use is HighVibe Mushrooms, which include ten medicinal mushrooms AND the mycelium, the intelligence of the mushroom. The mycelium is the root system that takes all of the nutrients to the flowering parts to feed them. It carries its own nutrients and grounding properties mushroom products leaving this important part out, don’t have. And, the person growing and harvesting HighVibe is a 30+ year mycologist, or mushroom expert. We know it is of great quality.
3. When their eyesight goes
There are tips to make your dog feel more comfortable if/when their eyesight is affected by age. It may start off as aggression or increased anxiety. Maybe someone startles the dog with a friendly pat and he whips around and goes to bite, something that’s never happened before. Maybe following and finding that ball you’ve thrown is more difficult. Maybe she bumps into something you’ve moved into an unfamiliar spot. Noticing your dog’s eyesight going, instead of realizing when it’s already gone, gives you an opportunity to prepare yourself, your home and your dog for what’s coming. Here are some suggestions from the ASPCA to make things easier for your pup:
- clear clutter from the floor
- mark different rooms with different scents or with differently textured rugs, so your dog recognizes which room he’s in by smell or touch. I would add to this to diffuse essential oils when you’re home that are calming, like Peace, Console, Copaiba or Balance. They are all good for anxiety and you’d just have to experiment with which one works best for your individual animal. With the exception of Copaiba, they all are blends and all are available at the essential oil brand I use, doTerra.
- block off dangerous areas such as pools
- keep familiar things like furniture and food and water dishes in the same place
If your dog does go blind, there’s a beautiful product that was created and is made by my friend, Silvie Bordeaux, called Muffin’s Halo. It’s a harness with a head attachment that helps your dog learn to navigate its surroundings without bumping its head into things. Muffin’s Halos have helped thousands of dogs around the world lead less anxious, happier lives without their sight. Thank you, Silvie!
4. Be extra careful and more gentle while grooming
Like us, when dogs age, their skin can get thinner, too. It becomes more fragile and sensitive, so vigorous brushing can hurt. Be mindful and more gentle when grooming now and if your dog has a thicker coat, I’ve found it helpful to more actively use my hands along with a brush to gentle take out tangles and get to the root of the hair to stimulate the follicles and massage the skin. Working the brush with your hands can be not only very effective and efficient, it is also more of a bonding experience because you are sharing energy in a touch therapy manner. If that energy is calm and loving, you both benefit so much.
5. Endocrine disruptors and environmental toxins affect them more than ever
If considering environmental toxins when walking your dog was like a video game, you’d both be jumping behind buildings and running for your lives. It’s pretty toxic out there and by the time your dog gets to be a senior, unless you’ve been mitigating that toxic overload with a nutrient dense, fresh food diet and some key supplements, the burden is weighing heavily on its body. One way I help my pets offload oxidative stress or free radicals is with Carbon 60. It is, hands down, the most powerful antioxidant on the planet, packing a heavier punch to remove toxins by close to 200x more than Vitamin C or E. My dog loves it; it is suspended in cold-pressed, organic virgin olive oil, a great omega 3 heart healthy oil, and has some added black seed oil and curcumin, additional antioxidant firepower. I give Ani one pump two times a day in each meal and I know I’m doing something powerful for her to ward off environmental toxicity damage.
I’ll be revisiting senior health all month with tips, knowledge about conditions that can affect seniors and suggestions to shore up their immune systems and their gut microbiome health.
To their best health ever.
Jody
