In the End of Life Section, you will learn to understand your pet in his last days or weeks of life and find out how to best help him or her experience a comfortable end of life.  It is very important for you, the owner of an aged pet, to recognize symptoms of pain and to learn how to assess Quality of Life and make educated decisions regarding your senior pet's health care during his End of Life phase. 

In the Pet Hospice section, you will learn about Pet Hospice and how it can be beneficial to your pet once you have made that decision that the trips to the vet’s were too stressful for your old companion.

The Quality of Life page with its very useful Quality of Life Scale will be of tremendous use in monitoring your pet’s progress and decline and in not letting it go so far that your pet has been very unhappy for a long time before letting him go.  It will reassure you while your pet is still doing OK and it will give you that extra encouragement in taking that final decision when all evidence leads to the conclusion that your pet is suffering and that it’s time to let him go.

Understanding pain:  it is very important for you, the owner of an aged pet, to recognize symptoms of pain.  It is even more important for you to recognize this than for your veterinarian to be able to recognize it by physical exam.  That way, you can observe EARLY symptoms of discomfort and ask your veterinarian for help.  You will learn how to avoid a common and unfortunate situation where your pet is suffering unbeknownst to you. 

In the “Natural Death” section, I have written an article going over the pros and cons of this sometimes confusing term.  Is “Natural Death” right for your pet?  What help will you need in order to provide a peaceful and relatively pain free “Natural Death”?  Will Euthanasia be a better option?  We will help you to see more clearly into this difficult choice.