Animals do feel pain. Here's how to help them through it.

If you've ever accidentally stepped on your dog's paw or leaned back in your rocking chair only to realize your cat's tail was beneath the rails, you know from their vocalizations that pets feel pain.

Yet for centuries some people have believed that animals don't experience pain. That may be because they are so good at hiding it, says Dr. Tamara Grubb, a veterinary anesthesiologist and assistant clinical professor at Washington State University College of Veterinary Medicine. But research shows that animal pain travels the same neurological pathways as human pain.

Recognizing pet pain is important to ensure that they get the care they need, but the signs that an animal is hurting are often so subtle that they go unnoticed until pain is advanced. Look for changes in behavior, even if they seem trivial or even normal, such as dogs slowing down on walks or cats no longer jumping on the kitchen counter.

The pain relief now available to pets is increasingly effective. A soon-to-be-available treatment for cats and dogs is monoclonal antibody therapy. Sounds like science fiction, right? Happily for pets — and humans — it's science reality.

"Our body already has antibodies that fight disease," Grubb says, "and this is just a scientific enhancement of those antibodies. Antibodies can be targeted to fight specific problems or conditions."

One such condition is pain. Nerve growth factor (NGF) is a potent generator of inflammatory and neuropathic pain. Elevated levels of NGF are associated with many acute and chronic pain conditions.

Monoclonal antibodies that work against NGF have been developed for both dogs and cats. Use of monoclonal antibodies in this way has two advantages, Grubb says. They are targeted specifically against NGF so pets experience fewer side effects than they might from other types of medications. And monoclonal antibody medications are usually injectable and have long duration.

"It's a very safe platform for drugs because monoclonal antibodies are just proteins," Grubb says. "The body already has antibodies, it knows what to do with them, so the proteins are just broken down and recycled versus drugs that require kidney or liver excretion. Monoclonal antibodies don't damage the kidney or liver, and they don't need the kidneys or liver to be eliminated from the body."

Multimodal management — the use of different types of medications and techniques — is also effective. A single medication may work at only one part of the pain pathway, but with chronic pain, changes can occur in the pain pathway that affect a medication's ability to treat that pain. Adding other treatments allows the body to attack pain through different pathways.

"It doesn't even have to be drugs," Grubb says. "It could be anti-inflammatories and acupuncture."

Beyond acupuncture, nonpharmaceutical treatments that can help include physical rehab, laser (photobiomodulation) and pulsed electromagnetic field (PEMF) therapy. All have good scientific evidence behind them to support their effectiveness, Grubb says.