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Measuring Quality of Life in Your Pet

While I’ve been doing my due diligence and reading everything I can get my hands on about treating canine cancer, I’ve noticed the term “quality of life” comes up a lot. How do you define quality of life? How do you know when your pet’s quality of life has declined to the point that it is time to let them go?

dog cancer survival guide authors

Dr. Dressler & Dr. Ettinger from The Dog Cancer Survival Guide

In my pile of books I did find one (The Dog Cancer Survival Guide) that attempted to define and measure quality of life in dogs. It broke the “quality of life” concept down into bite-sized chunks of the things that we think our pets enjoy. When one or more of these things is compromised because of age, illness or injury, quality of life is diminished. It is up to the individual pawrent to decide when to when to pursue a treatment or euthanize a pet, but this broken down way to quantify the of the quality of life can be useful in making decisions by employing a more scientific and less emotional scale to measure your pet’s true quality of life. It is only intended as a tool to help with decision making, not as a definitive guide of when to help your pet move on.

Dr. Dressler breaks down quality of life into 6 sections: Read More »

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