From:
Pam Sessoms
Date: 2002-01-08 17:48:00 UTC
Subject: Re: [Ferret-Health-list] glucosamine
On Tue, 8 Jan 2002, dianeiverson11 wrote:
>
> I had my Molly at the vets yesterday because of hind end weakness,
> and xrays showed her to be arthritic in her lower vertebrae(spurs and
> lumps).....and also cloudy joints in her stifles.
> <snip>
> Last night I was paging through a dog and cat catalog, and came
> across some glucosamine treats designed for arthritic dogs. I take
> glucosamine myself, and know the benefits, but I was wondering if it
> has been fed to ferrets at all.....or is it a big no-no???? Would
> nibbling on one of these daily perhaps help her joints???
Christopher already mentioned that I used glucoasmine/chondroitin with my
wonderful old lady ferret Sonic. We used a cat dose of Cosequin which is
a prescription version, but certainly there are plenty of OTC
formulations. Sadly, it did not really help her. But Sonic was a very
complicated ferret, and most of her lameness problems were not actually
caused by arthritis, we learned later. But before we figured out that her
hind end trouble was not primarily caused by arthritis, we also tried a
trial of Adequan injections; it's similar to glucosamine/chondroitin but
some cases that don't respond to those will respond to Adequan, in other
animals.
I guess all's I'm saying is that YES, these kinds of things appear to be
quite safe in the cases I've heard of, including Sonic's. :) No harm was
done, Sonic just didn't have the right problems for them to work as it
turned out. To administer the glucosamine/chondroitin, I'd just open a
capsule and sprinkle the powder into her soup. She had soup twice a day
to hide her complicated cocktail of meds. She didn't seem to be able to
taste the stuff at all.
It's worth a try! With the glucosamine/chondroitin, I think we did a
trial for like six weeks to see if it would help; with the Adequan, we did
about four shots, one week apart, if memory serves...
Good luck, please keep the list updated on your progress!!
-pam s.