Palliative and hospice care for dogs with terminal conditions focuses on comfort, pain management, and quality of life rather than cure. This approach is growing in veterinary medicine.
Palliative care represents a welfare-centred approach to terminal illness in dogs: it prioritises the animal's comfort and daily experience over aggressive intervention aimed at extending life regardless of quality. Dogs with cancer, organ failure, or neurological disease can have weeks or months of good quality life with appropriate palliative support — pain management, appetite stimulation, mobility aids, and emotional support for the dog-owner bond. The transition to euthanasia is part of palliative care, not a failure of it: recognising when suffering outweighs quality of life and acting compassionately is the final welfare decision.