In-laws (65+) won’t follow dog’s pain management routine

Me (F29) Fiance (M30)

In Laws (65)

Pupper (F1.5)

**TLDR:** Dog has a pain management routine to prevent arthritis at a young age. In Laws don’t think the routine is necessary because she “looks fine” when we leave her at their place for the weekend. How do we get them to take our routine seriously or do I just give up and let her do whatever she wants when she is at their place? We will generally visit once a month and spend 3 days away from “base” and leave the dog there.

**NOTE:** I am willing to pay for my dog to go somewhere where there will be proper treatment for the weekend if needed but the in laws love spending time with our dog and I don’t want to necessarily take that away from them since they live out of town and we really only visit when they are our “base camp” for backcountry sports. So generally once a month we will be at the in laws for a few days to a week depending on the plan and leave her alone with them while we are gone.

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Pupper was a rescue with no background information when we got her at 8 weeks and she started limping at around 12 weeks. First it was her elbows and the vets assumed potential growing pains (apparently bones hurt when they grow fast) but then her hips started deteriorating as well. By 6 months old we finally found out that she had both elbow and hip dysplasia and at this time I was heart broken assuming we would have to put her down before she was a year old because of the pain she was in.

Now it’s a year later, she has had surgery on both elbows to remove bone fragments and has a pretty aggressive regime that includes:

* 3 different supplements and metacam (NSAID like Advil) every day
* Gabapentin (mild sedative) on bad days (which we now rarely use)
* Physiotherapy for both her hips which includes daily exercises
* Exercise limits (3 short walks a day usually 30 min each totalling 2-3 km, on long days once or twice a week we try to do an hour/hour and a half long usually totalling 4 km)

She is doing a million times better than before! I know this has to do with us following her management routine but we are also not perfect at following it and we will let her be a dog and have fun playing with other dogs and running around knowing she might be sore the next day when we do.

The problem we are having is that they don’t seem to listen to us on the importance of following at least some of her routine. I KNOW our dog is a lot of work. We don’t ask them to do any physio exercises, we give them the supplements and pain meds with the required intake, and if they genuinely forgot it wouldn’t be a big deal. But every time we leave them with her they will feed her supplements but not her Metacam, take her on a 5 KM walk EVERY DAY through a wooded area where she can run as much as she wants.

When we try to talk to them about limiting the exercise and her needing her meds every day, they just scoff and say she is “doing great” and doesn’t look tired after the walks and loves running around and sniffing everything. OF COURSE SHE DOES. She’s a dog – still a puppy at that. If we weren’t there restricting her exercise she would quite literally play and run herself in to the ground. They also don’t see her the 3-4 days after we are home and she basically can’t do any of her previous exercise training because she is so sore.

I’ve tried telling them that we do this regime so she doesn’t get arthritis too young and we can keep her around as long as possible – because she WILL get arthritis in all of her limbs at some point. I think I stand up for her most because my Fiance isn’t great at standing up to his parents. It’ll usually be after we get back and they will say something like “we didn’t feed her Metacam because she didn’t need it” and I will get frustrated. I am sure they think I am overbearing at this point.

**How do we have this conversation with them? Should I just completely let go of any routine when we are out of town?** I’ve talked to my Fiance about it privately and he says he tries to talk to them and they won’t listen but we’ve also never had an awkward sit down conversation, it’s always felt heated after I am already frustrated with the lack of care. Also a weird sidetrack but I am also worried that if they treat this routine as overbearing and unneeded that if we were to ever have kids would they also ignore our instructions? I am allergic to penicillin and will probably have kids allergic too, do I have to worry about anaphylaxis if they don’t think it’s a big deal because our kid only had hives once?