Animal alzheimer's?????

You did not say if your dog was neutered or spayed. Dogs do have cognitive disoreders,, and this is one of the inceased, long term,health risks in neutered (and prorbably spayed) dogs.

From a medical research paper

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On the negative side, neutering male dogs

increases the risk of progressive geriatric cognitive impairment

Geriatric Cognitive Impairment

Neutered male dogs and spayed female dogs are at increased risk of progressing from mild to severe

geriatric cognitive impairment compared to intact male dogs55. There weren’t enough intact geriatric

females available for the study to determine their risk.

Geriatric cognitive impairment includes disorientation in the house or outdoors, changes in social

interactions with human family members, loss of house training, and changes in the sleep-wake cycle55.

The investigators state “This finding is in line with current research on the neuro-protective roles of

testosterone and estrogen at the cellular level and the role of estrogen in preventing Alzheimer’s disease in

human females. One would predict that estrogens would have a similar protective role in the sexually intact

female dogs; unfortunately too few sexually intact female dogs were available for inclusion in the present

study to test the hypothesis”55

http://www.naiaonline.org/pdfs/LongTermHealthEffec...

Yes, dogs (not sure about cats) can get a form of alzheimers. It's called Canine Cognative Dysfunction (CCD). They forget where their food bowl is, sleep in the day and are up at night, make housebreakign mistakes in the house, can get lost in the home, stares at the wall.

I have lived with 2 dogs, that passed on at 17 years old, both had CCD. The dachshund, was most severe and was a medication called Anipryl for it. It helped her for a good year. The other dog, a mixbreed, did not have CCD as severe at the Dachshund, she was also on Anipryl, but it didn't help her much so I took her off of the meds.

If your senior dog does indeed have CCD, give the meds a try. You can get a prescription and order them from Foster and Smith or

1-800-Pet-Meds to get a better price. You will either see and improvement or nothing.

Good luck to you.

Developing a useful animal model to learn about the pathology of Alzheimer's disease and then to test potential treatments for it is critical. Fortunately, mice can be bred that carry many of the abnormal genes that cause the various problems associated with Alzheimer's disease. These mice, called transgenic mice, have been bred to manifest the signs and symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. These include age-related memory and learning impairment, loss of brain cells, deposition of protein called amyloid in the brain, and tangles of nerve fibers composed of a protein called tau (the latter two are among the hallmarks of the human autopsy findings in Alzheimer's disease).

My old dog had dimentia. She was about 13. Sometimes she would look very confused like she didnt know where she was and sometimes she would bark at the door and no one would be there. I felt really bad for her. She was also not as affectionate with us. Im not sure if she really knew who we were towards the end.

They don't get Alzheimer's specifically, but the can and do get a from of dementia