Is Your Pet in Pain? How to Recognize the Signs and Know When to Get Help

Why Pain Hides in Plain Sight

In my practice, I often see pets whose families are stunned to learn how much discomfort had been building quietly in the background. A dog does not limp until the compensatory pattern around a sore joint has been in place for weeks. A cat does not stop jumping onto the counter until it has become genuinely difficult to get there.

The 2022 AAHA Pain Management Guidelines for Dogs and Cats, co-authored by veterinary behaviorist Dr. Margaret Gruen and colleagues, open with a line worth sitting with: recognizing pain is fundamental to successful treatment.^[1] Recognition has to come first, and recognition is exactly where most of us, myself included earlier in my career, fall short.

In Traditional Chinese Veterinary Medicine, persistent pain is often described as a kind of stagnation, a sign that flow, whether of blood, energy, or simple day-to-day movement, has been interrupted long enough to become a pattern the body adapts around. Western and TCVM frameworks agree on one point here: the body compensates quietly for a long time before it complains loudly.

Old Age Is Not a Disease, but Pain Deserves a Look

IVAPM built its Animal Pain Awareness Month campaign around a phrase I often repeat to clients: "old age is not a disease, but pain is."^[2] It is one of the more useful reframes in veterinary medicine, because it separates two things pet parents tend to lump together.

A twelve-year-old dog who moves more slowly than she did at three is not automatically sick. But if that slower movement comes with hesitation, stiffness, or a change in mood, something is actually happening in her body, and it deserves a look rather than an assumption.

Acute Pain Versus Chronic Pain

Acute pain from a fresh injury, a dental problem, or recent surgery tends to appear suddenly and clearly. Chronic pain, the kind associated with arthritis or a degenerative condition, usually builds over months or years, which is exactly why it blends into the background of daily life.

The distinction matters because chronic pain often calls for a broader, whole-body plan rather than a single fix, while acute pain usually needs prompt veterinary attention.

The Signs Dogs Show

Dogs mask pain, but usually not as completely as cats. Watch for:

• A reluctance to jump into the car, onto the couch, or up a flight of stairs, often one of the earliest signs.
• A change in gait, favoring one side, a shortened stride, or stiffness that eases after a few minutes of movement.
• Repeated licking or chewing at one spot, especially a joint, paw, or the same patch of skin.
• Decreased interest in walks or play, particularly in a dog who used to greet the leash with real enthusiasm.
• Guarding a body part, pulling away, growling softly, or freezing when touched in one specific area.
• Panting or restlessness at rest, when the room is not warm, and the dog has not been active.
• A shift in appetite or sleep, eating less, sleeping more, or struggling to get comfortable at night.

The Signs Cats Show

Cats hide pain even more effectively than dogs, which is part of why feline pain has historically been underrecognized in veterinary medicine. Researchers behind the Feline Grimace Scale addressed this directly, validating a scoring tool built around five facial features, ear position, orbital tightening, muzzle tension, whisker change, and head position, that reliably shift when a cat is in pain.^[3] The study found that the scale distinguished painful cats from comfortable ones with high accuracy, and it detected improvement once pain was addressed.

You will not be scoring your cat's face with a research tool at home, but the underlying lesson holds: a cat's face and posture often say more than her behavior does.

• Reduced grooming, or grooming one area more than the rest, leaving a coat that looks duller or more unkempt than usual.
• Hiding more than usual, spending more time under furniture or away from the family.
• Changes in litter box habits, straining, missing the box, or avoiding a box that requires a jump.
• Reluctance to jump onto a favorite perch, or noticeable hesitation before a jump that used to be effortless.
• A lower, tucked, or hunched posture, and narrowed or squinted eyes.
• More purring than usual, since purring can be a self-soothing response to pain and not only a sign of contentment.
• Less interest in interaction, or a shorter temper than usual during petting.

What This Looked Like for One Older Dog

A small mixed-breed dog, sixteen years old and spayed, came to me because her family had noticed occasional stiffness after long naps. On paper, that was the whole complaint. In conversation, more came out: she had a history of intermittent digestive flares that had never fully settled, and she had become noticeably more anxious in the two years since losing her lifelong companion animal. None of it seemed connected from where her family sat. She was eating, affectionate, and, by most measures, she looked like a dog simply getting older.

Looking at the whole picture, the stiffness, the gut history, and the anxiety were not three separate problems. They pointed toward one dog whose body had been managing more than it let on for longer than anyone realized. We worked alongside her regular veterinarian, added gut support, moved her onto a gentler, more consistent feeding routine, and built in a short, paced daily walk instead of the occasional longer one she had been getting.

Within a few weeks, her family reported she was rising from naps more easily and had stopped favoring that right front leg nearly as often. Nothing about her case called for one dramatic fix. It called for treating her body as a single connected story rather than three unrelated ones.

When Medication Matters, and When It's a Conversation

Some pets need medication to be comfortable, and there is nothing to apologize for in that. Pain relief that lets a dog move, eat, and rest normally is doing exactly what it is supposed to do. The question of when medication is the right tool, and when complementary support might carry more of the load, is a conversation to have with your veterinarian, built around your pet's specific case, not a decision to make by comparing lists online.

A Simple Weekly Check You Can Start Today

You do not need special training to notice change. A short, consistent weekly check is often enough to catch a pattern early.

• Run your hands slowly along your pet's body, shoulders to tail, noting any flinching, new lumps, or areas that feel different than last time.
• Watch how your pet rises from lying down, since stiffness or hesitation in the first few steps is worth mentioning at the next visit.
• Track appetite, water intake, and energy over the course of a week rather than day to day, since patterns are more telling than single days.
• Check gum color once a month in both dogs and cats; healthy gums are pink and moist, and pale, white, or blue gums warrant a same-day call.

If your pet's stiffness turns out to be arthritis-related, we go deeper into whole-body joint support next week in our piece on natural anti-inflammatory strategies, and later this month on movement and rehabilitation. Diet plays a real role here too; our earlier piece on an anti-inflammatory diet for dogs and cats with arthritis lays out that groundwork, and gut health shapes more than digestion, which we explored in Gut-Brain Axis in Pets, both worth a look if any of this sounds familiar in your own home.