How to Know When It's Time to Put Your Dog Down: A Quality of Life Guide

If you're asking "when is it time to put my dog down?" you've probably been managing your senior or terminally ill pet's decline for a while now. Your pet may be ageing, living with a chronic condition, or approaching the end of life following a serious diagnosis. Care routines become more complex, vet visits more frequent, and daily decisions more emotionally charged, which makes it increasingly difficult to tell whether treatment is still supporting comfort or whether it's simply delaying an outcome that already feels close.

The challenge is not recognising that something is wrong. The challenge is understanding whether your pet’s quality of life remains acceptable, and whether continuing treatment aligns with their wellbeing rather than your understandable desire to hold on.

Veterinary palliative care approaches consistently emphasise that end-of-life decisions should be guided by quality of life assessed over time, rather than by isolated moments, fear, or hope alone.

How do I know when it's time to put my dog or cat down?

This decision is difficult because decline is rarely linear. Your pet may experience periods of apparent improvement even as their overall health worsens, and symptoms can fluctuate from day to day. Medication adjustments may help temporarily while underlying disease continues to progress, which makes it hard to know which changes are meaningful and which are transient.

In clinical practice, vets do not rely on a single sign to guide euthanasia decisions. Instead, they look for sustained patterns that indicate whether comfort, function, and engagement can still be reliably maintained. When pain becomes increasingly difficult to control, when recovery from setbacks is incomplete, or when distress outweighs periods of ease, these patterns become more significant than any individual bad day.

What does quality of life mean for senior dogs and cats?

Pet quality-of-life assessment is how veterinarians determine whether an animal's daily experience is predominantly comfortable or distressing. In veterinary medicine, quality of life refers to your pet’s overall experience of comfort and distress, rather than the presence or absence of disease. For dogs and cats, this typically includes pain control, appetite and hydration, mobility, hygiene, behaviour, responsiveness, and the ability to engage with their environment in ways that are normal for them.

Quality of life is not assessed once. It's assessed repeatedly, because it changes over time. This is why structured quality-of-life frameworks are widely used in palliative and hospice care, as they help you and your vet interpret change longitudinally rather than relying on memory or emotion in the moment.

Learn more about how the More Good Days tracker works to monitor these domains at home.

Signs your senior pet's quality of life is declining

There's no single sign that it's time to euthanise a dog or cat. What matters is persistence, progression, and response to appropriate care. Veterinarians look for patterns rather than isolated bad days. What matters is persistence, progression, and response to appropriate care.

Signs that vets commonly consider clinically meaningful include pain that is no longer well controlled, ongoing loss of appetite or weight, increasing difficulty with mobility, persistent breathing distress, incontinence that affects hygiene and dignity, confusion or agitation, withdrawal from interaction, and loss of interest in activities that once mattered to your pet.

These signs become more concerning when they are occurring more frequently, lasting longer, or responding less effectively to treatment, particularly when multiple areas of functioning are affected at the same time.

One bad day vs. a pattern: When to consider euthanasia

One bad day on its own is not enough to decide euthanasia, and most vets would strongly caution against making an irreversible decision based on a single difficult period. What becomes relevant is the overall pattern.

When bad days begin to outnumber good days, when recovery from setbacks is slower or incomplete, and when comfort becomes unreliable even with appropriate care, these trends suggest that quality of life is declining in a sustained way. Looking at patterns rather than moments helps reduce reactive decision-making and supports choices grounded in your pet’s lived experience.

How vets assess quality of life in sick or ageing pets?

Your vet assesses quality of life by combining clinical findings with what you observe at home. They evaluate disease progression, response to treatment, pain levels, and the likelihood that comfort can be maintained over time. They may also discuss whether further interventions are likely to improve your pet’s experience or simply extend decline.

At the same time, vets only see snapshots. Much of what determines quality of life happens at home, outside the clinic. How your pet moves, rests, eats, responds, and copes day to day provides essential information that informs end-of-life decisions.

Questions to ask about your pet's quality of life

When assessing whether it's time, veterinarians recommend asking:

• Is my pet still able to do the things that make them who they are?

• Are they having more good days than bad days?

• Is their pain manageable with medication?

• Can they eat, drink, and move without significant distress?

• Are they still engaged with family, or have they withdrawn?

• When they recover from a setback, are they returning to their baseline, or is each recovery less complete?

  
  

If you're answering "no" to most of these questions, it may be time to have a serious conversation with your veterinarian about quality of life and end-of-life options.

Why tracking pet symptoms daily helps end-of-life decisions

Many pet owners find that using a pet quality-of-life tracker provides the objective data they need to see patterns clearly. When you are tired, stressed, or grieving, memory becomes unreliable. It can be difficult to accurately recall how often symptoms are occurring or whether things are improving or worsening, particularly when changes are gradual.

Tracking daily comfort, behaviour, and function creates a record that makes patterns visible. It allows you and your vet to move beyond impressions and focus on observable trends. This supports clearer conversations, reduces uncertainty, and helps ensure that decisions are based on evidence rather than fear or guesswork.

How More Good Days supports clearer end-of-life decisions

We created the More Good Days quality-of-life tracker while caring for our own dog, Luca, through terminal cancer. At the time, we needed a way to understand whether the changes we were seeing reflected temporary fluctuation or meaningful decline, and whether our decisions were truly supporting his wellbeing.

More Good Days is designed to help you track your pet’s quality of life in a structured but accessible way. It reflects how quality of life is assessed in veterinary palliative care, while being practical for use at home. The goal is not to tell you when it is time, but to give you the clarity needed to make that decision with confidence and compassion.

When it's time to say goodbye to your pet

There is no perfect moment to say goodbye to a pet. However, decisions grounded in an understanding of quality of life over time are consistently associated with greater confidence and less regret.

There is no perfect moment to say goodbye to a pet. If you are asking these questions, it is because you love your pet and are trying to make decisions based on how they are actually living, not just how hard it is to let go. That willingness to look closely at their comfort and quality of life is part of caring for them well, even when the decision itself is painful.