How chronic pain in dogs is often unrecognized and what owners can do to identify and address it.
Chronic pain in dogs is a welfare crisis of scale: the most common cause, osteoarthritis, affects a majority of senior dogs, and dental disease causes ongoing pain in the majority of adult dogs who have not had dental treatment. Yet most cases go undiagnosed because dogs adapt behaviorally to chronic pain in ways that owners interpret as normal aging. The behavioral signs are real but subtle — a dog that was once playful and now rests more, a dog that hesitates at stairs, or a dog who seems irritable when touched — and owners who know their individual animal well are often the first to notice something has changed. Veterinary consultation with proper pain assessment tools converts this suspicion into diagnosis and treatment that dramatically improves quality of life.