Pain control for pets

[Catherine]

Quote:It's not so very long ago that it was thought that human babies didn't feel pain after surgery etc.
Some surgeries were done without anaesthetic for this reason. It's hard to imagine now.
Of course all animals feel pain and if we can alleviate that, then of course we should.

We humans are great for assuming that nobody feels pain except us. I can remember reading the idea in a Dickens novel(put forward by a rich person)that the poor didn't feel, because they are not like the rich. Dickens then goes on to show how deeply the poor man felt, much more so than the rich woman.

You are right, children were given nothing for pain. After serious foot surgery when I was ten (I did have to be given full anesthetic) I was given no post surgical pain killers. That first night after the surgery was desperately painful. I was not even shown how to call a nurse. I was on an adult ward because I needed a surgical bed, but the nurses ignored me. I was just a small child(at ten I was very tiny).

We have barely come to see that animals feel pain. Now that we have, our pets can expect help.
What about farm animals? Could it be that they feel pain too and some of our practices are very cruel.