Ageing is not a diagnosis
Slowing down is the sentence owners use for a dozen treatable conditions. Professional guidance for senior animals is a medical workup once or twice a year — not an annual glance.
Editorial placeholder for an article about senior pet care
The most expensive sentence in veterinary medicine is "he's just getting old." Reduced appetite, stiffness, sleeping more, drinking more, becoming withdrawn — every one of those is compatible with ordinary ageing, and every one is also an early presentation of something that has a treatment.
The reason professional guidance moves to twice-yearly examinations in older animals is not thoroughness for its own sake. It is that a year is a long interval on the timescale over which an older animal changes, and half of what is worth catching is caught by comparison rather than by a single reading.
AAHA's 2023 senior care guidelines recommend a medical workup for senior pets once or twice a year, rather than the annual visit that suits a healthy adult.
Comparison is the diagnostic
A creatinine value inside the reference range tells you little. The same value having climbed steadily across three visits tells you a great deal. This is why the guidelines emphasise tracking — including photographs — rather than a pass/fail on any one number.
It is also why the first senior workup is worth doing while the animal is still well. A baseline taken from a healthy nine-year-old is what makes the eleven-year-old's numbers legible.
That workup may include a complete blood count, chemistry panel and urinalysis, along with screening biomarkers such as SDMA, NT-proBNP and C-reactive protein — and photographs or diagrams to track change over time.
Half of what is worth catching in an older animal is caught by comparison, not by any single reading.
What TIMOMAX will not do
TIMOMAX will not tell you whether your animal is ageing normally. That requires an examination, and any confident answer from a description alone — including a confident reassuring one — is worthless. Reassurance is the more dangerous error of the two, because it is the one that stops someone booking.
What TIMOMAX can do is tell you what a veterinary practice will want to know before you call, so the appointment starts from something better than "he seems off."
- Any change in water intake — the single most useful thing an owner can observe at home
- Weight now against weight a year ago, if you have it
- Appetite, and whether food is being approached and then refused
- Stairs, jumping onto furniture, getting up from lying down
- Sleeping pattern, night-time restlessness, or new disorientation
- Every medication and supplement, including doses
The register, in one place. Each claim is graded individually because a single article legitimately contains settled consensus and open questions in the same paragraph — the citations and the stated limits sit with each claim above.
AAHA's 2023 senior care guidelines recommend a medical workup for senior pets once or twice a year, rather than the annual visit that suits a healthy adult.
That workup may include a complete blood count, chemistry panel and urinalysis, along with screening biomarkers such as SDMA, NT-proBNP and C-reactive protein — and photographs or diagrams to track change over time.
TIMOMAX did not conduct this research. This article summarises the work below; the principal source is American Animal Hospital Association.
- 1Principal source2023 AAHA Senior Care Guidelines for Dogs and Cats — Evaluating the Healthy Senior PetAmerican Animal Hospital Association·2023·Professional guideline
- 22023 AAHA Senior Care Guidelines for Dogs and Cats (full guideline, PDF)American Animal Hospital Association·2023·Professional guideline
This is general education, not advice about your animal. TIMOMAX is not a veterinarian and cannot examine anything. If something has changed about your animal, that is a question for a veterinary practice — and most will answer it on the phone.