As many of you may know, I also have an interest in canine health and sport. Around 4 months ago my older Labrador went onto Librela. The change was quite obvious. She went from only walking and trotting on walks to cantering within a few weeks and is now a different dog. I saw various comments on Librela on social media, so decided to try and get some crude insight into dog owners’ perceptions. How many dog owners with dogs with arthritis had heard of Librela? How many had tried it? What did they think?
I posted a poll. We had over 500 responses. The results are shown in the images below. It appears that in the first 1-3 months that around 1 in 5 owners perceived that their dog had got worse – either arthritis and movement or that there had been side effects. These dogs almost certainly would not have continued with more than 1,2 or 3 injections and so won’t appear in the four or more injections categories. It should also be remembered that dogs do become ill, and as many of the dogs with arthritis may be older, some of the side effects may not have been related to Librela, i.e. they would have occurred in any case. But we can’t know. Many people become ill in trials when given a placebo.
Bottom Line – As already mentioned, this is a crude and small poll, but potentially an improvement on trying to wade through hundreds of unstructured comments on social media. For owners who persisted beyond three injections, 89-94% perceived some degree of improvement, with 82% (4-6 Injections), 78% (7-12 Injections) and 89% (12 or more injections) perceiving moderate or much improvement in their dogs.
For transparency, this poll was totally independent, and I have no affiliation with Zoetis or any other pharmaceutical company.
