Our doctors and staff take pet pain relief very seriously. We know that pain causes the body to heal more slowly and less effectively. Relieving pain improves healing and minimizes the time spent in discomfort.
Restoring your dog or cat to complete health is optimum. When a chronic condition prevents full healing, we provide an arsenal of weapons against pet pain for a comfortable existence and a higher quality of life.
Addressing Pet Pain
Because the comfort of any patient in pain is a priority, we employ a variety of preventive pain management strategies. Comprehensive pharmacological pain management includes the use of local anesthetics, narcotics, and anti-inflammatory drugs. Surgery and dental procedures include multiple forms of pain prevention and relief, including the use of advanced anesthesia and monitoring techniques.
Patients with chronic pain, such as senior pets with arthritis or other geriatric concerns, receive multi-modal pain management plans to include medications, restorative therapies, environmental modifications, nutritional support, and more.
Acute pain is more of an injury that happens when they're out running around. For example, if a dog jumps up and down trying to catch a Frisbee, or the dog chases after a ball or a squirrel. Often, those dogs can hurt different parts of their legs, specifically tendons and ligaments. You'll notice that dog pulls up that leg pretty quick, gets three-legged lame, not using the hurt leg. Sometimes you'll see heat and swelling, and other times we can hear them cry out. Those are all going to be acute types of pain.
Chronic pain is more so for those dogs with chronic conditions, typically in older dogs, our senior citizens, our little sugar puppies with the gray muzzles. Senior dogs tend to have more issues with either arthritis in the spine, the hips and the knees, and sometimes the elbows. Those are all going to be significant places for them to have chronic pain.
And those signs will be a little bit more subtle, and they're not necessarily going to be something that will cause them to cry or yelp. Maybe they're not jumping up in the car as quickly; they can't jump on the bed or complete walks and do those sorts of things like they used to be able to do. They may be slow to get up and down off beds or their dog beds, and they may not be as playful or active. Those are going to be the things that we look at in regards to chronic pain.
Phone: 651-459-9663
