When it comes to managing your pet’s pain, Parker & Ace offers the highest quality of care utilizing compassion and the most effective medical treatments available.

We develop a unique pain management plan to best serve the individual needs of your pet. This plan may include medication, complementary treatment or a combination of both.

Parker & Ace pain management services can significantly improve the quality of life for many pets who are experiencing pain associated with a wide variety of conditions.

Our pet health pain management plans may include one or more of the following modalities:
The sooner we can assess your pet, and regularly monitor them, the better. Because, proactive treatment is likely to be most effective—and less costly–over time.

Determining whether your pet’s pain is acute or chronic is the first step to identifying the cause. Acute pain is often sudden and triggered by a specific event. For example, if your pet receives a recent injury, they may experience acute pain.

However, chronic pain persists over the long term and causes may include conditions such as joint inflammation, arthritis, or unattended tooth decay.

What to look out for
‍Early intervention is important when it comes to managing your pet’s pain. While animals often hide their pain, some common signs of pain in your pet may include:

If or when a life-limiting disease is diagnosed, it is important to talk to your Parker & Ace vet team about treatment options and next steps.
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Rest assured, your Parker & Ace vet team will meet with you to discuss specific appropriate treatments, the schedule for medication delivery, a recommended schedule for reassessment, and the costs associated with all aspects of the recommended therapies and recheck—and will be available to you every step of the way.

As veterinary medicine has advanced, treatment options for chronic, incurable diseases have advanced as well. Many life-limiting diseases or illnesses that cannot be cured can be treated aggressively and managed well in some pets, sometimes for many years. 

We recommend talking to your Parker & Ace vet team as soon as possible to understand how to manage chronic diseases and if or when you’ll need to transition from chronic disease management to hospice care.

It’s not easy to make the decision to transition to hospice care for your pet as they approach their end of life. At Parker & Ace, it’s our goal to always make sure that your pets can live as fully and comfortably as possible—below we will explore some options that are available to you and review ways in which you can comfortably make a decision.
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What it is
Hospice care is supportive care for pets in the final phases of terminal disease. It focuses on maximizing the quality of life during whatever time remains, and typically avoids aggressive intervention—although no specific therapies are excluded from consideration.
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It is important to understand that hospice is a philosophy of caring. Contact your vet team at Parker & Ace to further discuss your treatment and palliative care options at home and what works best for your family.
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How it works
In general, pet hospice care is very similar to human hospice care. Your vet team will coordinate and oversee medical procedures, medication prescription and delivery, and comfort care, but the day-to-day hospice care happens in the home. 

The single biggest difference between human and pet hospice care is that veterinarians are able to provide humane euthanasia when the quality of life for the pet becomes unacceptable.

1. When a pet enters hospice, palliative, and end-of-life care, your vet team will identify the benchmarks by which they will measure the quality of day-to-day life for that animal
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2. Once a baseline quality-of-life measurement is in place, it is important for your family to partner with the Parker & Ace vet team to determine when and how often to re-evaluate the condition of your pet
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3. Should there be changes to the quality of life your pet is experiencing, your Parker & Ace vet team will work with you to analyze how to define declining quality of life and what steps need to be taken
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4. You know your pet best; don’t be afraid to ask questions in order to feel confident in the way in which you will care for them

Important considerations
Overall, the goal of hospice care is to allow your pet to be comfortable and peaceful at home, while surrounded by loved ones..With proper planning and honest communication with your Parker & Ace vet team, it is possible to provide your pet with a very reasonable and acceptable quality of life as the end of life approaches.