Cancer is the leading cause of death in dogs over 10 years, with pain management and palliative care central to maximizing welfare during treatment and end-of-life periods.
Cancer pain welfare in dogs requires proactive management rather than reactive response to obvious signs. Dogs stoically mask pain, making validated assessment tools essential for detecting and tracking cancer-related pain. The complexity of cancer pain - combining multiple pain types from tumor invasion, inflammation, and treatment effects - means that multimodal analgesia provides superior welfare outcomes to single-drug approaches. Quality-of-life monitoring through the disease trajectory enables informed decisions about treatment escalation and the transition to purely palliative care. The hospice and home euthanasia options increasingly available allow pets to experience end of life in their familiar, beloved environment rather than clinical settings.