Pancreatitis in dogs is increasingly common and linked to high-fat diets and dietary indiscretion, making prevention through appropriate nutrition and household management an important welfare priority.
Pancreatitis causes genuine and often severe abdominal pain in affected dogs. The hunched, reluctant posture of a dog with acute pancreatitis reflects visceral pain that may persist for days without adequate analgesia. Vomiting and diarrhoea cause dehydration that worsens systemic wellbeing. In severe cases, systemic inflammation causes fever, shock, and multi-organ compromise that is life-threatening. Chronic pancreatitis causes recurrent pain episodes that may be subtle in presentation, leading to years of intermittent suffering that owners and veterinarians may not attribute to pancreatic disease. Dietary management is both curative (enabling recovery) and preventive. The most important prevention strategy — keeping fatty human foods, garbage, and high-fat treats away from dogs — costs nothing and would prevent the majority of pancreatitis cases. This is a welfare problem where owner behaviour is the primary determinant of animal suffering.