The Dog Mom Gazette
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The Rimadyl Trap: Easing The Pain on the Surface, While Wearing Down the Joint Underneath?
June 29th 2026 at 3:52 pm
The fix isn't pulling your dog off the meds. It's one overlooked ingredient the body already makes, missing from almost every joint chew on the market.
By Susan Elizabeth. Retired Vet Assistant & Senior Dog Mom | 9 Years in Clinic
There are two things on my counter right now.
The first is a bottle of Rimadyl I've been giving Gus for two years.
The second is a tub of powder I started adding to his dinner eight months ago.
Last month at his checkup, his vet looked up from the chart and said the words I’d been praying to hear.
“His bloodwork looks stable. And I’m happy to see him moving like his old self again.”
Gus had been one of her first patients out of vet school.
She added, "The Rimadyl is helping him."
And she wasn’t wrong.
It was helping him.
But that wasn't the whole story.
Gus, my Border Collie, is nine years old.
And just eight months ago, I was getting ready to lose him.
It started with the leash.
He used to skid across the tile when I grabbed it.
Then he'd lift his head, look at the leash, and lie back down.
The stairs went next.
He'd stand at the bottom and stare up.
You could see him doing the math, deciding if I was worth the climb.
Even getting off the floor became a struggle.
Some days, if I needed to get him to the car or into the clinic, I had to clip him into a harness or lift him myself.
I worked in a vet clinic for nine years. I should have caught it sooner.
But you're just another dog mom when it's your dog on the floor.
So how does a dog I had to lift off the floor myself end up walking into the vet with the kind of energy I thought I'd never see again?
It started with one natural ingredient dogs make on their own.
Now, before I share it with you, I want to tell you something about pain meds like Rimadyl, Metacam, or Galliprant that nobody at that clinic ever told me.
Those pills keep your dog comfortable while the problem underneath gets worse.
They call it the revolving door, and every lap he came back a little less himself.
Gus started on Rimadyl at seven, and it worked.
I won't pretend it didn't.
I started hearing his toenails on the hardwood in the morning.
The leash meant something again.
And I figured we'd bought ourselves years.
Then it started wearing off sooner.
The vet bumped the dose.
The good window got shorter.
He'd come up for a few weeks and sink back down.
But here's the part that still gets me: every time he sank back, he never climbed back to where he'd been before.
It became a cycle.
The pill works, then it fades, so you bump the dose. And it works again. Then it fades. Round and round, and he comes back a little worse each lap.
Dog parents have a name for this:
The revolving door.
But that wasn't the part that kept me up.
It was the bloodwork.
Every few months the vet wanted his liver and kidney numbers.
I'd sit in the clinic parking lot first, both hands on the wheel, talking myself into walking in.
Then one visit she sat me down.
And said his liver enzymes were "still in range, but moving."
She said it softly, the way a mechanic tells you the brakes will probably last a little longer.
I drove home doing the math I never thought I'd do about my own dog.
What did “still in range” even mean if my dog couldn’t get up on his own?.
The medicine keeping him comfortable was the same medicine I was scared of.
And I had nowhere left to put that fear.
I felt helpless.
And guilty too.
Watching him struggle and not knowing how to help drove me crazy.
So I went online and read everything I could find about arthritis and pain meds.
I drowned myself in forums.
Vet blogs.
Old studies.
Anything that might tell me what I was missing.
I was looking for a way to help Gus without making the bloodwork fear worse.
But what I found about NSAIDs turned my helplessness and guilt into anger.
The shocking truth about NSAIDs nobody tells you.
While I was down the rabbit hole, I found research going all the way back to the 1980s.
And the first thing I had to admit was this:
Rimadyl can work.
In fact, in one study of 805 dogs with osteoarthritis, carprofen helped a lot of them.
So no, I'm not here to pretend these pills do nothing.
But buried in that same study was the part nobody talks about.
Some dogs had to stop Rimadyl because of side effects. And some dogs relapsed when they exercised too much during treatment.
That’s when I understood feeling better doesn't always mean the joint is better. Sometimes it just means the pain was silenced enough for the dog to overdo it.
Then I found the older cartilage research in 1987 by Dr. Kenneth Brandt.
Know what?
Turns out when an NSAID builds up in a sore joint, it actually slows down the cells that are supposed to be repairing the cartilage.
I had to read it twice.
The pill calms the pain on the surface.
But underneath?
The research says it might be making the joint worse.
A newer cartilage-healing study found the NSAID group had fewer repair cells, less cushion-building material, and more signs of cartilage breakdown.
In plain English?
The pain may get lower while the joint’s repair crew gets weaker.
Newer papers are still asking the same uncomfortable question.
Then I found the gut study.
They put dogs that had been on NSAIDs long-term under a camera and looked inside their stomachs.
In one small but striking study, around 83% of them had erosions in the stomach lining.
Can you believe that?
Most of those dogs looked completely fine from the outside.
Their owners had no idea it was happening.
Their vets didn't either, unless they went in and looked.
Now, I wasn't angry at my vet.
She's a good vet. She was doing exactly what she was trained to do.
I was angry that I'd had a bottle on my counter for two years and nobody once mentioned the second cost.
So I started looking for anything that could help Gus.
And honestly?
I just kind of decided to throw the kitchen sink at him.
I picked out a few things that dog parents were swearing by.
The green-and-white one every clinic sells.
The vet-formulated jar that cost more than my own vitamins.
The turmeric that stained my fingers orange.
The omega-3s someone in a dog group swore by.
None of it seemed to make any difference.
That's when I came across something a holistic vet had written in a thread that stopped me cold.
The one thing nine years in a conventional clinic never taught me.
She was a holistic vet. You could tell she'd watched this play out a thousand times.
She wrote:
"The problem isn’t the dog. Every one of the solutions was aimed at the wrong part of the problem."
The wrong part??
I'd spent nine years thinking of dog pain as one thing.
You hurt, you get the pill, the pill helps or it doesn't.
But she was pointing at something I'd never had spelled out.
And once you see it you can't UNSEE it.
Your dog's pain isn't one problem.
It's four different ones, stacked, each running on its own system.
And almost everything on the shelf, prescription or chew, is built to touch one of them.
So what are the four parts?
The four layers behind your dog's mobility problems.
This is the layer your NSAID actually works on.
Rimadyl, Metacam, Previcox, they shut down one branch of inflammation, and they're good at it.
They give your dog real relief.
I'm not here to tell you the NSAIDs do nothing.
But here's what I didn't know.
Your dog's body runs inflammation down two separate pipes, not one.
The drugs clamp the first pipe, the one called COX.
But they leave the second pipe, called 5-LOX, wide open.
That second pipe keeps the joint irritated, swollen, and slowly breaking down from the inside. Day after day.
And almost nothing on the shelf was built to close it.
Until now.
Layer two is the cushion.
The cartilage itself.
This is the only layer that cheap glucosamine chew even goes after.
Glucosamine’s been the go-to for like thirty years.
So I always thought it was the proven one.
But I was wrong.
A 2022 systematic review that went through 72 clinical trials on dogs and cats with OA found that glucosamine and chondroitin, on their own, showed no meaningful reduction in pain.
Across nine separate trials, 88.9% of them found no improvement at all.
And the same review found something interesting.
When glucosamine was part of a multi-ingredient formula…
Combined with anti-inflammatory herbs, omega-3s, and other joint support, they effectively reduced pain in the trials that tested them.
So the problem was never really glucosamine itself.
It's that most joint chews treat glucosamine like it's the whole answer.
Give the dog some shellfish-derived powder.
Call it a joint supplement.
End of story.
But cartilage support is one layer of a four-layer problem.
Which is exactly why none of the solutions I tried worked.
Layer three is the spine.
Most joint chews are built like your dog's pain starts and ends at the hips and knees.
But the nerves that carry every pain signal don't start there. They travel down through the spine first, before they ever reach the back legs.
So if the spine and the nerves running through it aren't supported, you're treating the ends of the wire and ignoring the cable.
Almost nothing on the shelf was built with that in mind.
Layer four is the one no one had ever said to me, and it turned out to be where most of Gus's pain was coming from.
When a dog hesitates at the stairs, avoids the walk, or struggles to get off the floor…
That pain isn’t coming from the cartilage.
Because cartilage has no pain nerves.
The pain comes from the irritated tissues around the joint and the bone underneath it.
The nerves carry that signal back to the brain.
And when a joint stays sore long enough, those nerves can get more sensitive.
And more reactive.
Your dog has the same arthritic joint.
But now the pain signal feels bigger than the joint damage alone can explain.
And you're standing there wondering: Did I miss something? Is it getting worse?
The X-ray looks the same. The dose hasn't changed. But something feels different.
Trust me, I lived with that question for months.
Almost nothing on the shelf was built to reach this layer.
Except for one drug.
Librela.
But you might already know why people are scared of it.
The FDA sent vets a formal warning about it at the end of 2024, after thousands of owners reported things like neurological problems and dogs losing their lives.
That’s what made this layer so frustrating.
The NSAIDs don't directly touch it.
The cheap chew doesn't address it.
And the controversial drug that does has a warning letter stapled to it.
Again, I was back to square one.
Because I still didn’t have an answer to help Gus.
BUT at least now I knew something I hadn't known before. And I had a better question to ask.
So I messaged that holistic vet, thanking her for what she shared.
And I asked: Is there even a real solution to this?
For a couple of days, there was no response.
Then one evening a message popped up.
The one natural nerve-comfort ingredient that's missing from 99% of the chews on the shelf.
She messaged:
Check out PEA.
So I googled: 'What is PEA and how does it help dogs with joint pain?’
And I couldn’t believe what I discovered.
PEA is a naturally occurring fatty acid that helps support the body through chronic pain and inflammation.
The best part?
It’s produced naturally by your dog's body in response to inflammation or pain.
It works like a built-in protectant, helping bring the system back into balance.
So I did what I'd done with everything else by then.
I dug deeper.
And I was amazed.
Years of human pain research had already been published on it.
Also, a growing pile of animal studies was pointing in the same direction: dogs with chronic joint pain moving noticeably better within weeks of supplementation.
So I went looking for a chew that actually had it.
And I hit a wall.
Not one of them had PEA.
Most formulas on the shelf were built for cartilage and nothing else.
Then one morning I saw an ad mentioning PEA for dogs.
And it went after the whole problem at once: the inflammation, the cushion, the spine, and the nerve.
All in one formula.
They called it Good Stretch.
That's the thing I started putting in Gus's dinner.
Backed with a 90-day Money Back Guarantee
Now?
Gus, my dog who used to stand at the bottom of the stairs, staring up like it wasn't worth it….
The dog I had to lift off the floor myself….
Trots over and drops his slobbery tennis ball in my lap.
The one he hadn't touched in a year.
Six weeks.
That's all it took.
Because it had that one natural nerve-comfort ingredient that every dog produces on its own.
And not just that…
It came with 20 more carefully chosen ingredients to support the rest of the mobility picture.
But before I walk you through the formula, you need to know one of the scientists behind this natural ingredient.
The Nobel Prize winner who helped discover NGF also helped reveal how PEA works.
Her name was Rita Levi-Montalcini.
She won a Nobel Prize for discovering NGF( nerve growth factor) one of the key proteins that controls how sensitive your dog's pain system runs.
More NGF in the joint means the nerves around it become more reactive.
It's the same protein Librela targets, which is why so many dog parents report such dramatic relief from that injection.
Because it binds NGF completely, keeping it suppressed for a whole month.
Which is also exactly why it can go so wrong.
Blocking NGF entirely means the body loses a signal it still needs in other places. That's likely part of why the FDA warning exists.
Years after her Nobel work in her eighties, Levi-Montalcini helped uncover how PEA calms overactive pain signaling.
And it happened to be a much gentler answer to the same problem.
Instead of blocking NGF from the outside like Librela does, PEA works further upstream.
It calms the mast cells and glial cells that trigger NGF release in the first place.
The signal gets calmer without being cut off entirely.
The body keeps the protection it still needs, and loses the amplification it doesn't.
Your dog's body is already producing PEA to do this job.
It just can't make enough under long-term stress to keep up.
Topping it up helps the body do the thing it was already trying to do.
In 2026, there was a study out of Australia where they gave PEA to 50 dogs with chronic joint pain. And most of them were moving noticeably better within six weeks.
And the reason you've probably never heard of it?
Because until recently, almost no one had studied it in dogs.
That was the missing layer.
Once I understood it, the rest of the formula finally made sense.
What's actually in the scoop, and why it's built in four parts.
Once I understood the four layers behind the problem, the 21 ingredients stopped looking like a laundry list.
And started making total sense as how they addressed the four parts:
The nerves.
This is the whole reason I tried Good Stretch.
PEA helps calm the pain signal near the joint.
The spine.
The nerves that carry every pain signal travel down through the spine before they reach the back legs.
Support the spine, and you're supporting the whole cable, not just the ends.
That's why there's a full B-complex, the three vitamins nerve researchers call the neurotropic trio: B1, B6, and B12.
Together they do more for nerve health than any single one alone. And it's a food-sourced blend from organic quinoa sprouts, not the cheap synthetic kind.
And magnesium backs up the spine layer by supporting normal muscle relaxation around the spine and back.
Because getting up, climbing stairs, and walking steadily doesn't just take joints.
It takes the whole system working together.
The inflammation.
Remember the second pipe?
The 5-LOX inflammation nothing was closing?
Boswellia is what finally closes it.
It's one of the only things that reaches that pipe. But the active that does the work is called AKBA, and cheap Boswellia carries almost none.
Good Stretch is standardized to 60% AKBA.
Turmeric backs it up with the proper 95% curcumin extract. Not the raw kitchen-cabinet spice that's mostly filler.
Paired with BioPerine®, so your dog actually absorbs it instead of flushing it through.
The cushion.
Glucosamine, chondroitin, and MSM form the base, supporting the cartilage and the connective tissue around it.
NAG goes a step further, helping the body make hyaluronic acid, the fluid that keeps the joint gliding instead of grinding.
Then it’s rounded out with the premium stuff most chews skip.
Two kinds of collagen (Type II for the cartilage itself, Type I for the tendons and ligaments holding it together).
A real 400mg dose of New Zealand green-lipped mussel.
And hyaluronic acid, which a dog study confirmed actually reaches the joint when given orally.
The whole formula is carried across the finish line by sunflower lecithin. So the fat-soluble actives (the PEA, the curcumin, the Boswellia) actually absorb instead of passing through.
And then there are the bits you’d normally skim right past.
Bromelain supports another inflammatory-response pathway the others don't touch.
Acerola cherry brings natural vitamin C to help the collagen set, where most brands settle for synthetic ascorbic acid.
Vitamin E helps protect cartilage cells from daily oxidative wear.
Zinc helps power superoxide dismutase, your dog's own built-in antioxidant defense.
Natural VegD3® supports calcium absorption, so the bone under the joint gets support too.
And taurine backs the muscle side of mobility because getting up off the floor doesn’t just take joints. It takes legs with something left to push with.
That's 21 carefully selected actives. Four jobs. One scoop.
Week one nearly made me quit. But two weeks later…
I'll be straight about the start.
Because Good Stretch almost lost me.
The first two weeks, a couple of soft stools and not much else. I thought, "Great! Another tub of money down the drain."
And I almost binned the tub.
Then somewhere around week three, I'm standing at the counter waiting on the coffee and I hear it.
Nails on the hardwood.
The click.
He came down the hall and stepped into the kitchen without the usual pause at the bottom.
I just stood there with the kettle going.
Didn't move.
That's the first thing you notice, honestly.
The hesitation goes.
He stopped doing the math at the bottom of the stairs. Little stuff that makes you go, huh, that's better.
Then around week four, the mornings got easier.
Less of that stiff, creaky warm-up when he first got up.
And he started actually wanting the walk again instead of turning for home halfway down the street.
Week five is when it got me good.
He picked up the tennis ball he'd flat-out ignored for a year.
Brought it over, and dropped it in my lap, all slobbery and pleased with himself.
The toys came back.
That was the part I didn't see coming.
And now?
He’s moving like his younger self again.
Steadier on his feet, more himself day to day.
He started doing stuff he'd stopped doing.
Like hopping up on the couch on his own.
He started meeting me at the door again.
But what really convinced me was…
A few weeks in, I went away and forgot the tub for five days.
By day four off it, the stiffness was creeping back.
Put him back on it and within a few days he was right again.
You don't get that from a placebo.
A placebo doesn’t switch off when you stop, then switch back on when you restart.
Backed with a 90-day Money Back Guarantee
Let me be straight about the part everyone gets wrong.
I never took Gus off his Rimadyl.
I'd never tell you to take your dog off theirs.
Any product that tells you to bin the pills is one to run from.
What I did was walk into her office with the studies I'd found and ask her a different question.
A few months later, that same vet looked up from his chart and told me he looked like his old self again.
I'm not going to promise that's your dog.
Every dog is different, and that's a conversation for you and your vet, not a label and not a stranger on the internet.
What I'll tell you is this: medicine was never the only thing I could do.
I just didn't know anything else existed until I went looking.
How Good Stretch replaced the whole shelf.
Once I added it up, it was almost funny.
The hip and joint chews.
A multi-collagen blend.
A turmeric and boswellia inflammation pill.
A separate PEA.
The B-complex.
The odd vitamins and minerals.
Buying all that separately ran close to $180 a month.
Good Stretch comes out to about a dollar a scoop.
Less than a dollar on subscription.
Big dog or small, the math is the same. One scoop replaces the whole shelf.
My counter went from a row of bottles to a single tub.
Backed with a 90-day Money Back Guarantee
The real cost isn't the tub. It's the good days you don't get back.
We can't make our dogs live forever. God knows I've wanted to.
But we do get to decide what the time they have left looks like.
There's a version where they stop meeting you at the door.
Where you're lifting them into the car.
Where you hold your breath every time they go to jump off the couch.
And there's the version where the spark is still in their eyes.
Where they rush to greet you at the door.
Where even the slow days are good days again.
Gus carried me through a lot.
The least I could do was make his last few years worth having.
A senior dog's time is the one thing no refund will ever cover.
That's the real cost of waiting. Not the price of a tub.
Backed with a 90-day Money Back Guarantee
Who this isn't for.
Not for you if you want the cheapest tub on the shelf.
The ingredients are clean, bioavailable, and included at meaningful doses.
So Good Stretch does cost more to procure and manufacture.
But if you're comparing this to a $20 joint chew, that's like comparing a vet-grade mobility plan to a biscuit with a little joint-support powder hiding in it.
Not for you if you want a feel-good placebo so you can tell yourself you tried.
And not for you if you're after a reason to quit your dog's meds on your own.
Because that's a vet conversation, every time.
But if you've been like me…
Stuck on the revolving door…
Dreading the next bloodwork…
And even furious nobody told you about the layers your pills and chews were never built to reach…
Backed with a 90-day Money Back Guarantee
Get it with complete peace of mind: A 90-day money-back guarantee.
Get a 2-month supply of Good Stretch today.
That's a full 60 days to give it a fair shot. Because real change in an aging dog takes time and consistency.
And the guarantee runs a full 90 days. Longer than the tub itself.
So even after your dog has finished the supply, you've still got a month to decide whether it earned its place.
In those 90 days…
If your senior is still hesitating at the bottom of the stairs…
Still skipping the tennis ball…
Still taking the long way around the couch instead of jumping up…
Just email their customer care team, and you'll get your money back.
No need to return the tub.
You only keep paying if you feel it earned its place in your dog's routine.
Remember, most supplement guarantees give you 30 days.
That's barely enough time for the ingredients to build up in your dog's system, let alone for you to see real change.
But the founders of Good Stretch are so confident they're willing to back their promise for a full 90 days.
I gave it a shot.
And eight months later, his vet said he looked like his old self again.
I'm certain yours can get there too.
Backed with a 90-day Money Back Guarantee
References:
[1] Mansa S, et al. Long-term treatment with carprofen of 805 dogs with osteoarthritis. Vet Rec. 2007;160(13):427-430. PMID: 17400900.
[2] Brandt KD. Effects of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs on chondrocyte metabolism in vitro and in vivo. Am J Med. 1987;83(5A):29-34. PMID: 3120584. DOI: 10.1016/0002-9343(87)90848-5.
[3] Hauser RA. The acceleration of articular cartilage degeneration in osteoarthritis by nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. Journal of Prolotherapy. 2010;2(1):305-322.
[4] Mabry K, Hill T, Tolbert MK. Prevalence of gastrointestinal lesions in dogs chronically treated with nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. J Vet Intern Med. 2021;35(2):853-859. DOI: 10.1111/jvim.16057.
[5] Clegg DO, et al. Glucosamine, chondroitin sulfate, and the two in combination for painful knee osteoarthritis. N Engl J Med. 2006;354(8):795-808. DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa052771.
[6] FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine. Dear Veterinarian Letter notifying veterinarians about adverse events reported in dogs treated with Librela. December 16, 2024. https://www.fda.gov/animal-veterinary/product-safety-information/dear-veterinarian-letter-notifying-veterinarians-about-adverse-events-reported-dogs-treated-librela
[7] Briskey D, Craddock E, Rao A, Mills PC. Levagen+ (palmitoylethanolamide) alleviates joint pain and reduces the impact of joint pain in canines and felines. Front Vet Sci. 2026;13:1703143. DOI: 10.3389/fvets.2026.1703143.
[8] Lo Verme J, et al. The nuclear receptor PPAR-alpha mediates the anti-inflammatory actions of palmitoylethanolamide. Mol Pharmacol. 2005;67(1):15-19. PMID: 15465922. DOI: 10.1124/mol.104.006353. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15465922/
[9] De Filippis D, et al. Palmitoylethanolamide reduces granuloma-induced hyperalgesia by modulation of mast cell activation in rats. Molecular Pain. 2011;7:3. PMID: 21219627. DOI: 10.1186/1744-8069-7-3.
[10] Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1986; Aloe L, Leon A, Levi-Montalcini R. A proposed autacoid mechanism controlling mastocyte behaviour. Agents Actions. 1993;39(Spec No):C145-C147. PMID: 7505999. DOI: 10.1007/BF01972748.
[11] Reichling J, et al. Dietary support with Boswellia resin in canine inflammatory joint and spinal disease. Schweiz Arch Tierheilkd. 2004;146(2):71-79. PMID: 14994484.
[12] Serra Aguado CI, et al. Effects of oral hyaluronic acid administration in dogs following tibial tuberosity advancement surgery for cranial cruciate ligament injury. Animals. 2021;11(5):1264. DOI: 10.3390/ani11051264.
[13] Khawaja AS, et al. Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs influence cartilage healing. The Knee. 2025;52:121-130. PMID: 39577110. DOI: 10.1016/j.knee.2024.10.021.
[14] Barbeau-Grégoire M, et al. A systematic review and meta-analysis of enriched therapeutic diets and nutraceuticals in canine and feline osteoarthritis. Int J Mol Sci. 2022;23(18):10384.
This is an advertisement and not an actual news article, blog, or consumer protection update.
These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. Good Stretch is a nutritional supplement and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
Good Stretch is intended to support your dog's wellbeing alongside, not in place of, veterinary care. Always consult your veterinarian before changing your dog's treatment plan, and never stop a prescribed medication without veterinary guidance.
Results described are illustrative and individual results vary.