Geriatric Veterinary Patients

We know that caring for a geriatric pet is physically and emotionally difficult. All too often, care givers are unaware of the many options that can help their pets deal with aging symptoms, such as mobility issues, smelly skin, and panting and pacing at night, and they do not pursue veterinary treatment. In reality, veterinarians have many helpful tools, such as pain management therapies, anxiety medications, and ideas for environmental enrichment and safety.

Feel free to download and complete our geriatric questionnaire, and to share your findings with your veterinarian. This will help you evaluate your pet for aging symptoms you may not have recognized, or realized are affecting their quality of life.

Your geriatric pet requires special care and protection around your home. To help you, we assembled a list of products that families have found useful for their aging pets. A security camera, such as this type, can help you know what your pet is doing or where they are located when you are not home, and can also be helpful. If you have other ideas to keep your geriatric pet safe and comfortable, please feel free to share them on our Facebook page. 

Caregivers often reach out to us and say, "I don't think it's time." This usually means that their pet is struggling, but the situation is not yet not bad enough to say goodbye. If you are concerned about your geriatric pet’s quality of life, contact a Lap of Love veterinarian in your area to schedule a home-based consultation and quality of life evaluation. 

Consider this excerpt from a geriatric pet text book, written by Dr. Mary Gardner:

'My heart tightens as I watch her “spaghetti legs” quiver as she drinks happily at her bowl and washes down her dinner. The menu tonight was—whatever she wants. It’s only a matter of time when the chapter of my story with Serissa ends abruptly, and the companion that has acted as my shadow for 14.5 years will leave my world. The thought brings tears to my eyes and that pesky lump to my throat. 

“Hey baby girl, you want to go outside?” I say in the sweetest voice I can muster up, and she looks at me with adoration, wags her pathetically haired tail, and gives me a weak and croaky “BARK,” as if to say, “Heck yeah!” Serissa navigates the bathmats that I laid down for her and struts to the door like a runway model. At one time she was a majestic beauty of a Samoyed and even worked as a therapy dog in nursing homes—now she is a thin, patchy haired, skinny, old girl with hot garbage breath. She is a frail geriatric version of herself. 

But, before we can get to the door, she pops a squat, and urinates on the bathmat. In past years, this would be a naughty thing, but today, I could care less! Her legs quiver harder and she almost tumbles over. She finds her balance, quickly finishes, and Serissa's thoughts go back to being outside with mom. Nothing brings more joy to my face than seeing her sweet face turn to look at me as if to say, “You coming?”  

I was taught many things in veterinary school, but dealing with an aging and terminally ill pet was left out of the classroom lectures. In fact, most of the textbooks we read and lectures we sat through didn’t cover the process of aging and death. Instead, we were taught the mantra “Old age is not a disease.” But, aging does change quality of life for the pet and the owner. We did discuss senior wellness and preventive medicine, but really digging into why the body ages and what happens as things fall apart wasn’t covered in detail. 

Fourteen and a half years seem to have flown by as I lie next to Serissa and snuggle with her one last time while she drifts off to a peaceful sleep. Her presence in my heart will always remain. I will miss that smile, her smell, the scratching on the wall as she ran in her sleep, and even that whining in the middle of the night as her mind became more confused with cognitive impairments. How blessed I am to have such a wonderful companion who was with me through veterinary school, and would bring joy to me in a millisecond. Caring for her as she aged was extremely difficult on me financially, physically, and emotionally, but I would do it for 20 more years if possible. Although terribly missed, thoughts of her now only bring a smile to my face.  

Serissa's story lives on throughout my work, where her conditions and experiences helped me to further research and dig deeper into the body system. I'm sure she is smiling, too, with her geriatric cohorts, as they realize that their experiences will offer insight to the veterinary community and ease the distress of pet owners when dealing with their pet's twilight years.'