Same as everybody else is saying better too early than too late.
If your dog is grunting getting up, then I’d suggest pain meds. My old girl was on metacam/tramadol.
Agree with lots of advice here. I learnt how to do doggy massage, and I really think it helped her arthritis, plus she loved it. I learnt from you tube.
Id always planned on getting the vet to come to our home to PTS. I felt this was the last thing we could do so she didn’t have the stress of going to the vets.
As it turned out, she went downhill quickly and by Monday morning we knew it was time. The vet came out very quickly. My Dd came home as well to be with her.
I spent the last hour of her life giving her doggy massage around her hips and back. Even though she was laying down every time I stopped, she would look back over her shoulder at me as if to say “why have you stopped, I was enjoying that”
One last thing which I think is probably the most important. Check your vets out of hours emergency service. Our wasn’t great, so I was lucky it happened Monday morning.
But ideally you need a service at best will come to you out of hours (probably unlikely), but the emergency vet for your practice might be a long way from your local vet, so you have to take an extended ride with a sick dog.
In hindsight, I think a checkin on the life assessment chart is worth doing just before the weekend. So if the vet is likely to be needed, do it before the weekend. It’s not a case of saving money, it’s about not prolonging the suffering.
It’s also worth discussing what you want to do with the body after. My dog was a big breed so we thought it better to do cremation.
However that meant the vet taking her away almost immediately after being PTS. When I went to the vets later to pay, I asked to see her again, but they said I needed to make an appointment to arrange this. I don’t know why but that left a bad feeling in me.