The Senior Pet Visits We’re Missing — And Why They Matter

I recently saw a cat who hadn’t been to a veterinarian in the last two years of his life.

By the time I examined him, he had arthritis he’d likely been living with silently for a long time. He had infected teeth. He had skin infections. And based on everything I found, he most likely had severe kidney disease that led to his euthanasia.

None of that had to happen the way it did. He had something that, in a lot of cases, we can catch early and manage for years with the right monitoring and can keep with comfortable in their final years.

This isn’t rare — and that’s the problem

Research on end-of-life care in pets has found that as many as half of our senior patients don’t see a veterinarian at all in the time leading up to their euthanasia. Half. That means for a huge number of dogs and cats, their last documented visit isn’t a wellness check or a chance to catch something treatable — it’s the final one.

I understand how this happens. Senior pets slow down. They sleep more. They’re less interested in play. It’s easy to write those changes off as “just getting old,” especially when your pet isn’t crying out in obvious pain. Most people think they need to cry out in pain but they don’t. It is more of a slow insidious pain that creeps up on them without the ability to take an ibuprofen if they got up on the wrong side of the bed.

Cats are especially good at this — they’re wired to hide illness and discomfort, which is a survival instinct in the wild but works against them at home. A cat with arthritis doesn’t limp and yelp. He just… stops jumping onto the counter. Stops using the litter box as consistently. Sleeps a little more. It’s quiet, and it’s easy to miss.

“Old” isn’t a diagnosis

Here’s the thing I want every pet owner to hear: aging itself isn’t a disease, and it isn’t a reason to skip the vet. Arthritis is treatable. Dental disease is treatable — and left alone, it’s not just bad breath, it’s a chronic infection your pet is carrying around in their mouth every single day. Skin infections are treatable. Kidney disease, caught early through routine bloodwork, can often be managed for a long time with diet and medication, giving pets meaningfully more comfortable years.

None of these things get better by not looking at them. They get quieter, and they get worse.

What a senior wellness visit actually catches

For senior dogs and cats, I’m looking for the stuff that doesn’t show up as a limp or a dramatic symptom:

• Joint pain and mobility changes — often mistaken for “just slowing down”
• Dental disease — frequently missed because pets rarely stop eating even with painful teeth
• Kidney and liver function — only detectable through bloodwork, well before a pet looks or acts sick
• Weight and muscle loss — easy to miss gradually, obvious in hindsight
• Skin, coat, and thyroid changes
• Pain in general, since so many senior pets are quietly, chronically uncomfortable and never show it the way we expect

A senior wellness visit isn’t about finding something wrong for the sake of it. It’s about catching the things that are treatable while they’re still treatable, and giving you real options instead of finding out too late.

What I’d ask you to take from this

If your dog or cat is getting up there in years and it’s been a while since their last visit, that’s not a judgment — it happens. But I’d ask you to bring them in, even if they seem “fine.” Especially if they seem fine, honestly, because fine is exactly what a lot of serious conditions look like in their early stages.

That cat deserved better from his vet than the two years he had with no vet care. So does every senior pet quietly getting older in someone’s living room right now, waiting for someone to notice and realize they are in pain.

— Dr. Kuhn