Senior Pets guides
Practical, veterinary-led guidance on Senior Pets, following the journey stage by stage. Read in order, or jump to where you are. View all guides
1Is my pet a senior now?
4 guides
When is a dog "senior"? Ageing by breed and size
There is no birthday for it. A grey hair or two appears on the muzzle that you are fairly sure were not there last summer. A pause arrives at the bottom of the stairs that did not used to happen. The lie-ins get longer, the greeting at the door a touch slower, and the question...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 13 min read
When is a cat "senior"? The mature, senior and super-senior years
With cats it tends to creep up on you. There is no single moment, just a slow accumulation of small things. A few white hairs on the chin that you are fairly sure were black last year. The windowsill she now reaches by way of the chair, when she used to clear it in one...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 14 min read
Setting a senior baseline: the numbers and notes worth having now
One quiet afternoon you notice the grey has crept further up the muzzle than you remembered. Your dog is asleep in the low light, and the years have shown up all at once. Or your cat takes the long way down off the bed instead of her old flying leap, and lands a little softer...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 15 min read
The first signs your pet is getting older (normal vs not)
A few grey hairs around the muzzle that you are fairly sure were not there last year. A slower greeting at the door. A cat who used to pour herself onto the top of the wardrobe and now takes it in two careful stages, or skips it altogether. Notice enough of these and you reach...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 15 min read
2Keeping them thriving
7 guides
The senior wellness check: what your vet should do twice a year
When an older dog or cat seems perfectly well, the yearly check-up and booster can feel like plenty, and a second visit can look like fuss, or like a practice drumming up business. I want to argue the opposite, because the twice-yearly senior check is one of the genuinely high-value things you can do for...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 19 min read
Weight and body condition in the senior years
One number quietly tells you the truth about your older pet, and most of us only glance at it once a year at the vet's. Their weight. The figure itself isn't magic. What matters is everything it sits on top of: the joints that have to carry it, the muscle that is or isn't still...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 11 min read
Dental care for senior pets: why "too old for a dental" is a myth
Somewhere in an older pet's life, a quiet decision often gets made on their behalf. The vet mentions that the teeth need attention, perhaps a dental under anaesthetic, and a single thought arrives almost before they have finished the sentence: but he's old now. It feels like the responsible call, the loving one even. Why...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 12 min read
Senior blood tests explained: bloods, urine, blood pressure, SDMA, T4
"Senior bloods", your vet says, maybe a urine test and a blood-pressure check alongside, and you go home with a sheet of numbers you cannot quite read and a knot in your stomach. Is something wrong? Why now, when she seems perfectly well? Take the reassuring part first. In a well older pet, these tests...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 17 min read
Muscle loss in older pets (sarcopenia): spotting it and slowing it
Most owners feel it before they ever see it. You lift your old cat and she seems to have hollowed out under the fur, lighter than her cuddly outline suggests. Or you run a hand down your dog's back and the muscle over his hips, the solid haunch that used to power him up the...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 14 min read
Keeping an older pet moving: exercise, joints and staying strong
Somewhere in the middle of a pet's life, a kind instinct quietly takes over. The walks get a little shorter, the jumps a little more careful, and without quite deciding to, you begin to wrap them in cotton wool. Fewer stairs. A gentler game. Best not tire her out. It comes from love, and from...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 14 min read
Feeding an older pet: what changes, and what "senior diet" really means
The pet aisle has a particular bag of food: greying dog or softly lit cat on the front, the word "senior" in friendly letters, doing a lot of quiet emotional work. Your own pet's muzzle has frosted a little, and reaching for it feels like the responsible thing. I understand the pull, and I do...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 14 min read
3Something's changed
5 guides
Weight loss in an older pet: why it is never just old age
The thought usually creeps in sideways. You rest a hand on your dog's back and there's more spine under your palm than there used to be, or you lift your cat and she weighs almost nothing in your arms. The food bowl is emptying, more or less, so the comforting explanation suggests itself: she's just...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 17 min read
Is it pain, age, or disease? Reading the slowdown in an older pet
The slowdown usually arrives quietly. The walk that used to take in the whole park becomes a slow shuffle to the corner and back. He takes the stairs one careful step at a time now, or waits at the bottom for a lift. She sleeps through things she used to come running for. And at...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 16 min read
Lumps, bumps and the cancer conversation in senior pets
New lumps tend to turn up during an ordinary moment. Your hand is moving through your dog's coat on the sofa, or you're rubbing an old cat's chin the way you have a thousand times, and your fingers stop on something that wasn't there before. A small, soft swelling. A firmer pea under the skin....
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 14 min read
Hearing and sight loss in older pets: helping fading senses
You call her in from the garden and she does not turn round. You ring the doorbell yourself, almost as a test, and he sleeps through it the way he never used to. He pauses at the top of the stairs he used to fly down, or plants a paw squarely in the water bowl...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 15 min read
Is my dog losing his mind? First signs of canine cognitive dysfunction
It is usually something small and strange that sends an owner looking. A dog standing in the corner of a room he has lived in for a decade, facing the wall, as if he cannot quite work out how he got there. Or he walks up to the hinge side of a door and waits...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 16 min read
4Managing more than one thing
4 guides
The treatment tug-of-war: when managing one condition affects another
By the senior years, a lot of pets are running more than one problem at once. You are managing the sore joints and the kidneys and, since the spring, the heart as well. There is a tablet at breakfast and two at teatime and a syrup that has to go down somehow. And then your...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 16 min read
Juggling medications for a senior pet: the safe-polypharmacy guide
Somewhere in the senior years, the cupboard quietly becomes a small pharmacy. A tablet for the joints, a capsule for the kidneys, something for the heart that has to be split, a sachet stirred into food, drops, and a supplement a friend swore by. Some go with food, some on an empty stomach, some morning...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 15 min read
When your old pet has several things wrong at once: the whole-pet view
There is a particular kind of tired that comes with an old animal. You stand at the kitchen counter with three or four bottles in front of you, a folded printout from the last visit, and a feeling you cannot quite name. One tablet is for the stiff back legs. One is for the kidneys....
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 16 min read
The senior cat with kidney disease and an overactive thyroid
Two diagnoses for one small, ageing cat is a surprisingly ordinary place to end up. Perhaps the vet found an overactive thyroid first, started treating it, and a few weeks later the kidney numbers had crept the wrong way. Perhaps it ran the other way round. Either way you may now be holding a tablet...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 13 min read
5Comfort and quality of life
7 guides
Treatments and supplements for an ageing mind: help vs hype
Search "brain support" for an old dog or cat and you will find chews, "senior cognitive" diets, "neuro" capsules and confident promises, every one of them carrying a happy grey-muzzled pet on the packet. There is no easy way to tell the real thing from the hopeful marketing, and that is usually where an owner...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 14 min read
Living with canine cognitive dysfunction: a day-and-night plan
An old dog who paces a slow circle in the small hours, stares at the hinge side of a door he has walked through ten thousand times, or whimpers at nothing you can see, is showing you one of the hardest parts of growing old. You let him out, you check his water, you sit...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 15 min read
Incontinence and toileting accidents: dignity and practical help
A wet patch on the bed, a damp corner of the rug, a puddle by the back door where they used to scratch to be let out. It is one of the commonest things owners quietly worry about in an old pet, and it usually arrives with a flush of embarrassment, then a twist of...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 15 min read
Making your home work for an older pet: ramps, grip, warmth, access
The home your pet has lived in for years was, without anyone deciding it, built for a young animal. The leap onto the sofa, the dash down the stairs, the high-sided litter tray in the corner of the bathroom, the kitchen floor polished to a shine: all of it was easy once, and you stopped...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 14 min read
Feline cognitive dysfunction: the old cat who yowls and forgets
It usually starts in the small hours. A long, flat, oddly toneless yowl from the bottom of the stairs at three in the morning, from a cat who has lived with you for fifteen years and never once needed to announce herself like this. You go down. She is standing in a room she has...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 16 min read
The 3am pet: managing night-waking and sundowning
Of all the things that go wrong with an ageing pet's mind, the broken night is the one owners find hardest. When researchers asked owners of dogs with an ageing mind what wore them down most, the disrupted nights came out at the top of the list, ahead of every other behaviour. Maybe your old...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 16 min read
You are not a bad owner: caring for the carer of a senior pet
You have been up three times in the night: once to help her find her way back from the corner she got stuck in, once because she was pacing and panting, once to change bedding. And somewhere in the dark, a thought arrives that frightens you more than the tiredness does. Just for a second,...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 14 min read
6Cherishing the time left
4 guides
Tracking quality of life: good days, bad days and the bigger picture
Most evenings now, a quiet question arrives. Your old dog is asleep by the radiator, or your cat has finally settled after circling the bed for too long, and you find yourself asking: was that a good day? You go to answer it, and you cannot, quite. There was the lovely half-hour in the garden...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 14 min read
Knowing the road ahead: a gentle guide to what comes next
Once you know, deep down, that your dog or your cat is in the last chapter of a long life, a particular kind of fear tends to settle in. It is not the sharp fear of an emergency. It is quieter and more constant: the fear of the unknown road ahead. What is going to...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 13 min read
Making the most of the time you have left together
There comes a point with an old dog or cat when the question is no longer whether they are getting on in years, but how to make the time you still have a good one. It is a different sort of question from the ones the vet usually answers. It has nothing to do with...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 13 min read
Anticipatory grief: mourning a pet who is still here
There is a particular kind of crying that happens with an old dog or an old cat still warm beside you. They are right there, breathing softly against your leg, purring under your hand, and the tears come anyway, because some part of you has already started saying goodbye.
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 13 min read
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