Easing your pet's pain

Better medicine
Veterinarians also have access to safer, more effective drugs now. A few years ago, Gabriel’s veterinarian might have chalked up the 11-year-old Belgian Tervuren’s pain and stiffness to old age and recommended a small dose of aspirin. Instead, Gabriel takes a two-week course of a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) as needed.

“My veterinarian wants to use it as needed, rather than all the time, because typically dogs have ups and downs,” says Gabriel’s owner, Kathy Diamond Davis of Oklahoma City, Okla. “The same medication works when he has a flare-up of his bulging cervical disk. We’ve learned by trial and error that he needs a two-week course of medication to avoid a quick recurrence.”

Surgery is another common cause of pain in pets. Whether it’s a spay or a fracture repair, the aftermath of surgery is pain. Imagine not getting anything to relieve that pain. When Karas graduated from veterinary school in 1989, that was often the case with dogs and cats. Now veterinarians can provide pain relief that starts before surgery and continues throughout recovery.

New anesthesia techniques include using local anesthetics to block nerves to the area being operated on and combinations of drugs that can be put in IV fluids and continued postoperatively to give pain relief for hours or even days, if necessary, says John Hamil, a veterinarian at Canyon Animal Hospital in Laguna Beach, Calif.

Precautions on pain-relievers If you’ve been following the news about Celebrex and Vioxx, you may also have seen a report about deaths “in rare situations” when dogs were given Deramaxx, a drug for relieving arthritis and post-surgical pain. While death isn’t common, it is a possibility. Read the package insert so you’ll recognize any side effects such as vomiting, diarrhea, lethargy or behavior changes, and follow your veterinarian’s advice regarding regular blood work — usually every three to six months — to test for toxicity that can affect liver and kidney function.

When 12-year-old Diamond, a poodle mix owned by Cheryl Smith of Port Angeles, Wash., somehow twisted the wrong way and dislocated her hip, her veterinarian wasn’t available to operate that day. Instead, Diamond was X-rayed and then anesthetized so the hip could be put back in place temporarily. She was sent home with a liquid NSAID that kept her comfortable until surgery was performed. Afterward, she wore a patch that dispensed pain medication through the skin for the next three days.

“She never seemed to be in serious pain once we got her on the Metacam [the liquid NSAID], and the pain patch also seemed to work very well,” Smith says.

Diamond is expected to make a full recovery. She didn’t fuss at the surgery site while on the pain meds and continued to ignore it even after the controlled-release patch was removed.

“Maybe actual recovery time wasn’t affected,” Smith says, “but ease of recovery was.”

Kim Campbell Thornton is an award-winning author who has written many articles and more than a dozen books about dogs and cats. She belongs to the Dog Writers Association of America and is past president of the Cat Writers Association. She shares her home in California with three Cavalier King Charles Spaniels and one African ringneck parakeet.

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