Plea for vets to discuss ageing issue sooner as pandemic pets hit midlife

Vets have been advised to “change the narrative” around ageing to help cat and dog owners prepare against health issues ahead of pets’ later years.

Sessions across a two-day symposium in southern France stressed that discussions about how disease risks for senior pets could be modified needed to happen much sooner.

Conducting new research with 19,000 pet owners globally, Royal Canin revealed 44% only thought about ageing when health issues arose and 38% believed nothing could be done about ageing.

In the UK, where 2,000 were polled, the figures were 49% and 35% respectively.

Improved outcomes

Last year, the company was involved in research – published as a paper in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association (JAVMA) – that added to growing evidence that early, science-led intervention improved health outcomes in ageing pets.

With millions of pets worldwide bought during the pandemic now reaching their midlife stage, an overriding message at the Royal Canin Vet Symposium 2026 in Montpellier was why and how vet teams should have earlier ageing discussions with clients.

Speaking in a panel session in front of 700 delegates from 80 countries, Tanya Schoeman, veterinary specialist physician and Royal Canin feline health specialist and a co-author on the 2025 JAVMA paper, said: “Ageing is a normal biological process where we see a very gradual decline in form and function of cellular level, over time, and as this decline progresses, it eventually gets into a stage where an animal could enter a stage of disability or disease.

“But we now know that ageing itself starts much sooner than that, and that gives us a really important point as scientists to say ‘let’s change the narrative. Let’s talk about this a little bit differently’. Let’s change that narrative from a lifespan to healthspan.”

‘It’s positive, it’s beautiful’

Dr Schoeman added: “The most important thing is for us as veterinarians to not picture ageing as something sad. it’s positive, it’s beautiful, and it’s just the new or the next life stage.

“And it’s our responsibility to bring our clients in during midlife and really have the conversations with them that we can modify this.”

Brennen McKenzie, director of veterinary medicine at animal health company Loyal, emphasised ageing was modifiable through nutrition, physical activity and, increasingly in the future, new medications.

He said: “Helping our clients to maintain a healthy body condition in our patients is a preventive medicine strategy that directly slows the ageing process and preserves health.”

Collaboration

In a session in the communications stream, Georgia Woods-Lee, RVN and clinical lead at the University of Liverpool’s obesity care clinic, stressed vets and owners needed to collaborate over ageing pets.

She said: “This is about working together, rather than pointing the finger, telling them that they are doing it wrong. And it’s for this reason that I really want to get away from this concept of compliance.

“If we are expecting an owner to be complying with something, it kind of suggests that we’ve told them that they can only do it in one way.”

Royal Canin launched “Healthy Ageing Conversations”, a practical guide for veterinary teams about starting conversations on ageing, during the event.