How to navigate companion animal cancer treatment decisions with welfare as the primary guiding principle.
Companion animal cancer welfare requires holding two potentially competing values in balance — the desire to do everything possible for a beloved animal and the commitment to ensuring that treatment itself does not cause more suffering than the disease. Veterinary oncology calibrates treatment doses for quality of life rather than maximum tumor kill — a philosophically welfare-centered approach that differs from human medicine. This means that most companion animals receiving chemotherapy feel well during treatment. The central welfare question throughout is whether the animal being treated is having good days more than bad ones — assessed through validated quality of life tools that provide objective guidance alongside emotional judgment.