Everything that changes when your dog gets old

Where to start

Start with whichever question is live for you today. If your dog is simply getting older, begin with what senior means. If a specific behaviour has changed, go to dementia or arthritis. If you are already weighing an ending, the quality-of-life page and the two cost pages are built for that week and hold nothing back.

• What age is a senior dog?

  Why there is no single birthday that makes a dog senior, and what veterinary guidance uses instead of an age.

  Evidence: AAHA 2023 Senior Care Guidelines

• Dementia in dogs

  The six behaviour domains vets look at, how often cognitive impairment is reported, and why a checklist cannot make the call.

  Evidence: AAHA cognitive dysfunction guidance, Cornell

• Arthritis and mobility

  The signs of canine osteoarthritis, what weight has to do with it, and which home changes are support rather than treatment.

  Evidence: Cornell Riney Canine Health Center

• Signs a dog is dying

  The behavioural and physical changes PetMD documents, grouped and explained, and why none of them alone settles it.

  Evidence: PetMD

• Quality of life scale

  Score the seven HHHHHMM criteria, see which ones are lowest, and take the result to a vet. No verdict, ever.

  Evidence: Villalobos HHHHHMM scale, AAHA end-of-life tools

• Euthanasia cost

  State-by-state benchmark figures kept strictly apart from the prices named clinics and mobile vets post themselves.

  Evidence: 51 state benchmarks, 27 posted provider prices

• Cremation and aftercare cost

  Private, individually partitioned, communal and aquamation defined, with the prices real crematories publish for each.

  Evidence: 58 posted provider prices, service taxonomy

• How we source these prices

  The difference between a survey benchmark and an observed posted price, and why this site never averages the two together.

  Evidence: The dataset's own provenance rules

What is actually in this dataset

Behind these pages sits one file: 42 clinical facts from veterinary bodies and universities, euthanasia benchmark figures for 51 US states and territories, and 107 prices that 18 named clinics, mobile vets and crematories publish on their own websites. Every row carries its own source link and the date it was checked.

The two price layers are never mixed. A state benchmark comes from a national survey model and is labelled as one; a provider price is what a specific business posted on a specific page. Averaging the two would create a number nobody published, so this site does not do it. Direct provider observations currently cover 8 states — AZ, CA, CO, FL, NY, PA, TX, WA — and the pages say so plainly instead of implying national coverage.

Dataset version 2026.09, compiled 2026-09-07. The full rules are on the pricing methodology page.

What this guide deliberately does not do

It does not tell you when to put your dog down. No website can hold the information that decision needs, and a scored quiz that pretends otherwise is doing harm dressed up as help. The quality-of-life page will total a published scale for you and show you which parts are lowest, and then it will send you to a veterinarian, because that is where the decision belongs.

It also does not diagnose. Stiffness is not automatically arthritis, night pacing is not automatically dementia, and the same behaviour can come from pain, organ disease or something inside the skull. What these pages can do is describe what is worth writing down, so the appointment starts from observations rather than from a blank page.

The main sources behind this cluster

• AAHA 2023 Senior Care Guidelines — primary, checked 2026-09-07.
• Cornell Osteoarthritis — primary, checked 2026-09-07.
• AAHA Tools for End-of-Life Care — primary, checked 2026-09-07.
• CareCredit Dog Euthanasia Cost — primary commercial research, checked 2026-09-07.

Where the rest of our data comes from and how we write and correct these pages.