Pain After Surgery at Home: What Owners Noticed, and Where Vets Disagreed
In a Dutch study, owners most often noticed changes in walking and play after their dog's surgery. Their pain scores barely matched vets' scores.
Written by thecanineledger
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If you think your dog is in pain after surgery, call the practice that did the operation. Don’t give any medicine, including human painkillers, unless your vet tells you to.
Our note: This advice is ours. The study gives no owner guidance, and we added the warning on human painkillers ourselves.
In a Dutch study, owners recorded how their dog behaved in the first days home after surgery (Gardeweg et al., PLoS One 2026). The changes they reported most were in walking (72.1%), playing with toys (70.5%) and playing with the owner (68.9%).
While owners clearly noticed changes, their pain scores didn’t match the vets’. Three vets scored videos the owners took at home. Two of them showed no significant link with the owners’ scores.
→ When Behaviour Change Is Really Pain
1. The study
The dogs. Owners of 51 dogs treated at a Dutch university animal hospital took part, out of 398 invited. Most had soft tissue or orthopaedic surgery.
What owners did. They filled in online questionnaires, scored their dog’s pain from 0 to 10 and sent short videos.
Funding. The authors received no specific funding.
2. What owners noticed
| Change in the first three days home | Share of questionnaires |
|---|---|
| Walking | 72.1% |
| Playing with a toy | 70.5% |
| Playing with the owner | 68.9% |
| Urinating | 65.6% |
| Exploring | 62.3% |
| Sleeping | 60.7% |
| Eating | 49.2% |
In their own words. Owners described dogs playing less, eating less and sniffing or wandering less.
Higher scores, more change. Each point higher on the owner’s pain score raised the odds of a change in walking, being petted and greeting the owner.
Our note: Some of these changes, like sleeping more, may come from the hospital stay or the medicines rather than pain. The authors dropped some terms for this reason.
3. Where owners and vets differed
Three vets, three views. An anaesthesia specialist, an emergency specialist and a general vet scored the videos. Only the anaesthesia specialist’s scores were weakly but significantly linked to the owners’.
Vets agreed more with each other. Agreement was higher among the three vets alone than when owners’ scores were added.
Why it matters. The authors say an owner-directed pain scale “is needed to help owners recognize and correctly interpret pain-induced behavioural changes”. They drafted eleven questions as a starting point.
Our note: The authors drafted some questions for owners, but they aren’t tested yet, so we’ve left them out.
→ How Risky Is Anaesthesia for My Dog?
4. What the study can’t tell you
Small and selective. The authors note the sample was small and “non-random”. Owners knew the study was about pain, which may have made them watch more closely.
Translation. The survey was in Dutch, so owners’ exact words may not carry over.
Some reporting problems. The abstract says no link was found between vet and owner scores, but one vet’s scores were linked. The paper also gives video length as a mean of 51 seconds with a spread of 0.4 seconds, across videos of 2 to 150 seconds.
Our note: Filming your dog to show the vet is our suggestion. The study used videos but didn’t test this as advice.
5. What we could not verify
| Commonly said | What we found |
|---|---|
| “You’ll know if your dog is in pain” | Not reliably. Owner and vet scores barely matched. |
| “A dog that’s eating is fine” | Not shown. Eating changed in about half of questionnaires. Walking and play changed more often. |
| “Pain scales for owners exist for surgery” | Not yet. The authors say one is needed. |
Sources
- Gardeweg S, Valtolina C, Calero Rodriguez A, van Herwijnen I. Acute pain sign recognition by dog owners in a home setting. PLoS One 2026: 51 dogs after treatment at a Dutch university hospital. No specific funding
Always confirm with your vet before acting on anything on this page.