A veterinary survey may help pet owners evaluate quality of life for their furry friends

Pet owners are often emphatic about the love they have for their companion, and these same people are later subject to intense feelings of loss when their pet passes away. Advances in veterinary medicine and the devotion to giving our pets the best toys and highest quality food are leading to longer, healthier lives for pets. The result for people with elderly pets is that they are tasked to decide if and when to euthanize, a heavy emotional responsibility that requires considering the pet’s quality of life and overall health. To help provide clarity and preparedness for such a difficult time, veterinary researchers at North Carolina State College of Veterinary Medicine developed a tool for predicting a dog’s short term health outcomes.

The assessment employed by these researchers asked many questions that were classified into five domains of “frailty”: nutritional status, mobility, exhaustion, muscle condition, and social engagement. One advantage of this methodology is that it requires very few resources, only the time of the owners answering questions and a brief physical evaluation from a veterinarian. After taking the survey, six-month health outcomes were tracked for the animals so that robustness of the survey’s predictions could be assessed. Dogs who were classified as “frail” in at least three of these categories were five times more likely to pass away in the following six months, demonstrating the predictive power of the survey. 

The authors acknowledge that there is room for improvement, and the questionnaire can be continually updated and evaluated to improve robustness. They hope that this tool will provide a predictive measure of health outcomes for canine companions. Perhaps in taking a more objective approach to evaluating a dog’s quality of life, we can improve decision making such that pets and people are both brought more peace.

This study was led by Katharine J. Russell with corresponding author Natasha J. Olby at North Carolina State College of Veterinary Medicine.

Managing Correspondent: Olivia Lavidor

Press Article: New Tool Reveals How Much Longer You Have With Your Beloved Dog (Science Alert)

Original Journal Article: Establishing a clinically applicable frailty phenotype screening tool for aging dogs (Frontiers in Veterinary Science)

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