Arthritis Treatments That Worked – And Those That Didn’t Work

Ron Hines DVM PhD

Dog Owner Reports

As you read the emails below, please remember that cause and effect are sometimes an illusion.. When things occur, one shortly after the other, we call them cause and effect when we believe the first event caused the second event to happen. If we feel that the two incidents were not related, we call the second event a mere coincidence. Cause and effect and mere coincidence can be very difficult for us to sort out. It’s only when they occur repeatedly in pets receiving a medication that we can be relatively certain that we are not dealing with a mere coincidence. Also, just because something occurred in one dog does not mean it will occur in your dog. RSH

Owner updates in green   My comments in purple

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April 6, 2023

Our 10 year old German Shepherd, Layla, was on meloxicam for her arthritis pain. But it seemed to make her nauseous. Our vet replaced the meloxicam with minocycline, an antibiotic with a strong anti-inflammatory effect, combined with Cartrophen® injections. She’s gone from barely being able to walk up 2 flights of stairs, to going on 3 km walks with a big smile on her face. She weights about 100 lbs and started with a once a week 1.3 ml subcutaneous Cartrophen injections just behind her shoulders once a week for four weeks. Now she is getting them about every 2 weeks depending on how pained she looks. We never tried Adequan.   Layla gets two 100 gm minocycline pills once a day hidden in some Havarti cheese. The label on the pills says we can give her a second dose per day, but we have never needed to, at least not until the cartrophen starts to wear off after about 1.5 weeks.

Perhaps you could add minocycline and cartrophen to your arthritis article.

H. H., Nova Scotia, Canada

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