Tag: Senior pets

A dog develops a cataract when the lens of the eye clouds, which is caused by changes in the water balance in the lens or changes to the proteins within the lens. When the lens becomes cloudy, light can’t reach the retina, causing blindness. A mature cataract looks like a white disk behind your dog’s iris. The part of the eye that usually looks black will now look white.

As happens with humans, dogs often slow down both physically and mentally as they get older. Caring for an aging dog requires different considerations when compared with the days when she was young and spry. So, being aware of your dog’s limitations is an important first step in ensuring that her golden years are indeed golden.

Ralph Waldo Emerson famously wrote, “All diseases run into one — old age.” This statement applies to both people and pets; after all, our pets age faster than we do. Though there is no perfectly accurate human-to-dog or human-to-cat age comparison, it’s startling to realize that a three-year-old pet is roughly equivalent to a 30-year-old person.