Adult Care
Most pets and people are born with a healthy body. Their bodies begin with extra capacity to make up for the wear and tear of time. Some systems slow down while others loose their "fine tuning."
The kidneys, for example begin with four times as much filtering capacity, as your pet needs to cleanse its blood. So does the liver. But as time goes by organs slowly and steadily loose their ability to function. This is called the aging process.
Eventually one organ's ability to function decreases past a critical point and we see a degenerative disease. It may be the kidneys, heart, lungs, joints or another organ system, which is the first to break down. All older pets and people have some partial organ loss.
There are treatments available for most of the problems of old age. The first step is to determine what they are in your pet and treat them to maximize the pet's quality of life and life expectancy. Our pets age more quickly than we do but not at the same rate. A three-year-old dog or cat approximates a twenty-seven year-old person. A six-year-old dog or cat approximates a forty-two year-old person. An eleven-year-old dog or cat approximates a sixty-year-old person and a twenty-year-old pet approximates a one hundred year old person.
