That's a tricky one to answer. So I will simply say this. I'm going to focus on the literal act of dying. And I know that's grim, but if this question is intended to cover things such as maybe my cat is passing away at my home now with me, I would expect to see things like a cat that is no longer responsive, number one. They're usually laterally recumbent laying on their side, but you can't rouse them. They're breathing but you can't rouse them. They don't respond if you call their name. There may be what's called a palpebral reflex. You can touch by their eye and they should blink just like we should but they don’t. You start seeing a diminished or a lack of a palpebral reflex, things like that. Sometimes severe dehydration will be evident if can pick up their skin and they have a very prolonged skin tint. That's not an end of life sign, but most cats that are at that point usually are going to be severely dehydrated. And then I would think the last, and I mean the very last that you may see (hopefully you won't see it at home) would be what we call agonal breathing. That is anytime an animal passes, whether they're passing on their own or if that’s something that we've assisted them with, oftentimes they will take to take these very, very deep breaths right at the end as they're passing. Again, a grim topic but these are some of the things that you would be looking for at the absolute in stages of life.

So Mr. Mowgli with his shiny coat goes once a month. We actually use two different groomers in town. The dogs prefer different people just like we go to different hairdressers or barbers for our haircuts— Mowgli has his favorite. If you have a dog with a long coat you might need to go every two or three weeks. If you have a ranch dog that lives outside and jumps in the river like I used to, I never took him to a groomer because he would go straight in the river as soon as he got home.

Most likely your dog has an issue with their anal glands. There can be other causes. Such as if they've had an upset tummy, GI disease, or intestinal parasites, but for the vast majority of dogs when you see them dragging themself with their front feet and scooting their butt, it's because they have an impaction of the anal gland. Momo here is an unwilling volunteer again, but you can see by the side of the dog's anus is a small sack. Anal glands are filled with a liquid that scent marks the feces, similar to a skunk when they lift their tail and spray that scent as a defense mechanism. Dogs have a scent that may have some form of signaling others through their feces. We can remove that gland when there's a problem and it doesn't create any issues, so it may be vestigial. It may not have a function these days. It certainly creates issues for dogs when the glands fill up if the liquid becomes thick. Like toothpaste, it can be hard to express, and they can rupture. We can see draining fistulas coming through the skin where it's all infected under the tissue and it's very painful. As veterinarians, we don't necessarily automatically go and press on a dog’s anal glands. There are dogs, however, that have frequent infections and issues that we will schedule for a monthly visit to check on them. Your groomer will usually express them from the outside. If we look down here, they'll squeeze the gland through the skin. At the vet office, the vet will actually put a glove on and put a finger inside the rectum and squeeze right around the gland and get a bit more material out. This helps to check that they're not infected or full and to keep the material down, so we recommend different things on a case-by-case basis.

That's one of the reasons I became a vet was so that I could help dogs with anal glands issues. I'm joking on that one. That's one of my least favorite areas, but it's a really common problem.