The Liquid Joint Supplement Biscuit Never Turns Down

Biscuit is ten now, a yellow Lab who used to meet me at the front door with a tennis ball in his mouth. These days he meets me at the door and then stands there a second, working out the turn. Our vet found mild arthritis in both hips at his checkup last September, and she gave me three things to do: a joint supplement, keep him lean, and walk him steady and short. He came down from eighty-four pounds to about seventy-eight over the year. He is still stiff getting up after a nap, and slow on the four brick steps down to the fenced back yard.

Then in July he had a tooth pulled, and chewing stopped being a small thing. Soft food only, and the joint chew he had been taking for months turned into something he would hold in his mouth for a minute and then set down on the floor. I called our vet. She said to put the joint supplement in liquid form on his food for a few weeks and pick the chew back up once his mouth healed. STRELLALAB liquid glucosamine is the one I ordered, and it sat on the kitchen counter next to the coffee maker, where I could not walk past it without remembering why it was there.

I want to be clear about what this is. One dog, one sore mouth, seven weeks. I am not a vet and this is not a study. What I can tell you is the thing that surprised me most, and it is not a number on a chart.

The bottle is sixteen ounces, unflavored, and the label says a bottle runs about four months for a dog his size, so seven weeks did not come close to finishing it. I served it with a spoon stirred into his softened kibble in the stainless bowl, morning and evening, at the label amount for his weight that our vet checked. No pill to hide in peanut butter, no chew to get refused.

The first morning I braced for the nose. Labs are not fussy dogs, but a dog with a sore mouth is a different animal, and I had already watched him walk away from a soft chew he had eaten happily for months. He put his head in the bowl, came up, and went straight back down for more. That was the whole test, and he passed it twice a day for seven weeks without leaving a bite.

Seven weeks, twice a day, and he never left a bite. For a dog who had just quit the chew he used to take like dessert, that was the entire review.

Now the honest part, because I would want it if I were reading this. I cannot tell you the liquid did more for his hips than the chew had been doing. For those seven weeks he was also on soft food, shorter walks, and a lot more time flat on the kitchen tile where it stays cool. What I can tell you is that he stayed on a joint supplement through a stretch when he could not have chewed one, and he stayed on it without a fight.

That is the real problem with a sore mouth and a chew. A supplement is only worth what the dog actually swallows. I have stood in my own kitchen with an uneaten soft chew in my hand and done that arithmetic, and it does not come out in your favor.

He healed. In late August I put him back on the soft chew our vet had him on before, since it carries the added ingredient she wanted and he takes it like dessert after dinner. The STRELLALAB bottle is in the pantry now, a little over half full, and I know exactly what I would reach for it for.

Where it earns its shelf space with me: unflavored liquid that goes into food, no pill to hide and no chew to get refused. The label lists glucosamine, chondroitin, MSM, manganese and collagen, made in the USA, sixteen ounces to the bottle. For a dog coming out of a dental recovery, or a dog who has always been a pain about chews, that combination solves a problem a chew cannot solve.

I will not oversell it either. The four brick steps are still a place he takes his time. He still pauses at the tailgate before he jumps into the back seat of the truck. A ten year old Lab with arthritis in both hips is a ten year old Lab with arthritis in both hips, and no bottle changes that. What a bottle can do is keep him on what our vet asked for while something else heals.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

I would tell you to call your vet first, before you buy anything, and describe what your dog is actually doing. Stiff after a nap is a different thing from limping on a morning walk, and that difference matters more than which bottle you pick.

I would tell you that if your dog can still chew, the chew is fine and there is no reason to change a thing. Liquid is not better than a chew. It is easier to swallow, and that only matters when swallowing is the problem.

I would tell you the best supplement is the one that actually gets eaten. Biscuit quit his chew for seven weeks and never quit this. That is about the plainest endorsement I can give a bottle, and it is the only one I have.

The other thing, since we are at the table. He still comes on the short camping trips, the ones where we sit around a fire and do not hike much. He rides in the back seat of the cab with the camper shell over the bed. On the long hike weekends he stays home with Dale next door. That is the trade you make with an older dog, and it has been a fair trade so far.