Topical review
Nutrition and Behavior in Senior Dogs

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With increasing age, some dogs develop a neurogenerative disease that is commonly referred to as canine cognitive dysfunction syndrome (CDS). Diagnosis of CDS can be clinical or based on laboratory tests. The main behavioral changes associated with CDS are disorientation, altered interactions with people or other animals, sleep-wake cycle alterations, house-soiling, and changes in activity level. Ruling out medical conditions that can cause similar changes in behavior is important when performing a clinical diagnosis. Management of CDS includes dietary and pharmacological intervention. Dietary treatment of CDS has been based on the use of antioxidants and mitochondrial cofactors, and recent work has shown that long-term supplementation with medium-chain triglycerides can improve cognitive function in aged dogs. CDS must be considered an animal welfare issue and the implications of this are discussed in this article.

Section snippets

Recognizing Canine Cognitive Dysfunction Syndrome

Diagnosis of CDS can be clinical or neuropsychological, e.g., based on laboratory tests. The acronym DISHA is frequently used to describe the main behavioral changes associated with CDS: disorientation, altered interactions with people or other animals, sleep-wake cycle alterations, house-soiling, and changes in activity level.2 Apart from the clinical signs mentioned earlier, CDS may cause other symptoms, including an increase in anxiety (which is one of the main underlying factors of many

Managing CDS

Management of CDS includes dietary and pharmacological intervention. Additionally, changes in the environment may be extremely helpful and are dealt with in a different section of this article.

What Is Animal Welfare?

Before discussing whether and why CDS is an animal welfare problem, it is useful to provide a short overview of our current understanding of the basic principles of animal welfare.

Definitions of animal welfare can be grouped into 3 main approaches: a “feeling-based” approach, a “functioning-based approach,” and a third set of approaches in which welfare is measured by assessing whether the animal can live according to its inherent “nature.”18

According to the “feeling-based” approach, animal

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