How to find out whether your pet has cognitive dysfunction syndrome?

Raff Long
2 min readJan 4, 2019

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CDS or cognitive dysfunction syndrome mostly affect the cats and dogs that are reaching the senior age. It is almost like elderly humans. It is a type of dementia that is referred to as cognitive dysfunction syndrome. It is connected with the brain aging. It can lead to modifications in the pet’s learning, memory, and responsiveness. It can also result in anxiety with age.

The symptoms of CDS or cognitive dysfunction is linked with the full form of DISHA.

Disorientation: It easily gets lost in well-known environments and remains confused.

Interactions: You can find changes in its interactions with other pets and humans. Such changes can cause irritability or change in affection.

Sleep: It can experience increased sleep in day time and remains aware during night. The wake cycle would slowly change.

House training: It can show deterioration in learned behaviors and house training.

Activity: The activity levels of the pet would change and also include compulsive disorders or aimless wandering like excessive licking.

It is found that the dogs can show decline in learning and memory by six years of age. Though neuropsychological testing is not performed in cats, clinical signs develop a bit later for felines. It will not be noticed by the owners for some years.

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