It's so important. I tell my clients it is the most important thing you can do for them to have the longest life possible. You have total control over keeping them thin and giving them moderate daily exercise. A healthy diet is essential too. Those are three of the most important things. I highly recommend daily exercise for your senior pet, but it has to be regular and moderate.

Every dog is different, but I will tell you, I have dogs that are as old as 14, and my own personal dog was a standard poodle that lived to be 15 and a half, and he had a daily walk. Of course, he ran four miles a day with me when he was younger, but dogs that are kept thin and healthy and have a daily or every other day exercise routine can exercise well into their senior years. What we do not want to do with a senior dog is have the kid come home from college, and you have a 12-year-old lab, and he takes them out for a run. That is going to be terrible for this dog. We see it all the time, and it's well-meaning, but this dog's joints will wind up severely inflamed the next day. I have seen dogs die from heat exhaustion because someone came home and said, "I'm going to take the dog for a run." This dog does not have the fitness to do that. With an older dog, we need to be gradual or regular and moderate regarding fitness. That's what I tell my clients. They need a regular moderate exercise routine. If you're going to be gone for two weeks and the dog's not getting the exercise, when you come back, slowly build back up to where you were before.

You want to see someone that isn't yanking a dog around, being aggressive with them. If they're punishing the dog a lot, that's not where I would want my dogs to go. You want to put them in a loving environment. How would you pick a school for your child? You don't want the teachers to be mean to your child for no reason. There are rules that they have to follow, but you want your dog to be in a safe environment to learn.

That would depend a lot on the individual dog. Every dog is going to act a little bit differently. Typically, or traditionally, if they're younger and have no underlying health concerns, they're going to recover faster than our pets that might have some underlying conditions or are a little older. But in general, I tell most people that the next 12 to 24 hours, they might not quite be themselves, and then after that, they usually bounce back pretty quickly.