Lying on the cold, steel floor, she slowly opens her eyes. Through the cage bars there are people in gowns and gloves, moving between benches, filling in paperwork. One of them glances over, sees her lying quietly, and records that she is recovering well.
Sound arrives all at once — instruments dropped into a sink, a vacuum in the next room — too loud and too close. Then she feels an intense burn across her belly, and underneath it something deeper that throbs when she moves. She turns her head to look but the cone around her neck stops her.
She is shivering. There is drool pooling under her jaw. She lies still, because moving hurts and because there is nothing else she can do. No one comes.
Imagine this was your dog. Same surgery, same moments after. You’d probably feel uneasy knowing nobody came to her. You would have questions about her pain and what more could be done for her.
This dog is owned, technically. She belongs to a research institution. But she has no name – she is just a number, with no one in her corner but an Animal Ethics Committee who will never meet her.
This is a conversation I’ve had often with caring and animal-loving people who believe that if an animal was anaesthetised, she didn’t suffer. In a veterinary clinic it usually does mean that, because there, anaesthesia comes packaged with pain relief, monitoring, aftercare and open communication. Yet in a research paper, it means only that the animal was unconscious for the procedure. It says nothing about how her pain was managed, or what she experienced before, during or after the procedure. That’s the gap I want to close here:
Anaesthesia does not equal pain relief.
Nor does it address anxiety or distress.
And there is no one-size-fits-all protocol – there are dozens.
In veterinary medicine, an animal can either be sedated or placed under general anaesthetic. These are not the same thing.
Sedation is used for non-invasive procedures where the animal needs to lie still, or for simple procedures that fearful, highly anxious or aggressive animals may not otherwise tolerate. It works by depressing the central nervous system, which can relax the muscles. A sedated animal becomes drowsy and is often less responsive to what is going on around her, but she is still conscious, still rousable and still able to feel everything. Most sedative drugs have no pain-relieving properties at all. So an animal can be lying completely still on a table and feeling every second of what is being done to her.
In contrast, a general anaesthetic places an animal into a state of unconsciousness. This means she is unaware of her surroundings and does not consciously experience what is happening to her. In some cases it can also induce amnesia. But unconsciousness is not the same as pain relief; even though the brain is not processing painful stimuli, the nerves and spinal cord carrying the signals are still firing. So she does not wake into a blank slate — she wakes into pain that is already well established, and anything that comes afterwards is stacked on top of it. She may also wake frightened and disoriented, with no understanding of where she is or what has been done to her.
Which of the two is used, and which drug combination, depends on how invasive and how painful the procedure is, how long it will take, and the individual animal’s temperament and health. For example, surgery and dental work require a general anaesthetic, whereas sedation may be appropriate for imaging, needle sampling, or an ear exam in a dog who won’t tolerate one awake. But when you read that an animal was sedated or “under anaesthetic,” it tells you nothing about her suffering — be it physical or mental.
This is why pain, fear and anxiety must always be addressed separately, and in addition to whatever anaesthetic is chosen. Without that, an animal may be immobilised on the outside and suffering on the inside, with no way to tell us — a “chemical straitjacket.” This is where a vet’s judgement matters most: advocating for what the individual animal needs, not simply what a protocol allows.
A dog placed under general anaesthetic:
A cat that has been sedated:
Best practice in veterinary medicine is to treat pain before it starts.
Anyone who has had surgery knows something strange happens afterwards; it’s not just the incision that’s sore,. Things that would never otherwise be painful suddenly hurt. A hand resting nearby can be enough to make you catch your breath; pressure that would not have registered a week ago is suddenly painful. Something changes in how the body reads pain signals – a process known as “windup.” The spinal cord keeps a running tally of all the pain signals coming in, and the more it receives, the easier it becomes to set off. The longer it goes on, the harder it is to bring the sensitivity back down. So pain that could have been prevented with a modest dose beforehand would now require far more.
This tally begins the moment the injury is made, not when the dog wakes up. By the time she opens her eyes, this has quietly been building in the background for some time. And if a procedure is invasive enough to require a general anaesthetic, it is almost certainly painful enough to hurt long after it’s over – surgical pain can continue for days or weeks. Now imagine an animal in a laboratory, who has this done to her again and again, for months or years on end.
This is why pain relief is needed before, during and after a procedure. Before, so the tally never gets a chance to climb. During, so it does not climb while she is unable to tell anyone. And after, for as long as the injury takes to heal.
Pain is not only physical. Fear and anxiety can make it worse — meaning a frightened animal feels more pain from the same injury than a calm one does.
And an animal has no way of understanding what is being done to her, or why. This is true in a veterinary clinic just as it is in a laboratory. Whilst we – the people involved – understand what we’re doing and why, the animals only know what they feel in the moment. She’s somewhere unfamiliar, held still by people she does not know, and hurt.
In a laboratory, there is no reprieve from fear. She lives in a cage. She is handled, restrained, injected, sampled and moved by people coming and going all day. The procedures do not happen once, they happen over and over. Eventually she doesn’t need to be touched to be frightened — the sound of the door is enough.
That fear deserves to be treated in its own right, with the same seriousness as the pain.
Remember that she is a dog, an animal who will show us when something is wrong. Most animals in laboratories are prey animals, who instinctively hide pain because in the wild, any sign of weakness attracts a predator. An animal sitting quietly in the corner of a cage is not necessarily an animal who is comfortable.
Freedom from pain is not a privilege we grant to some animals and withhold from others. It is a basic right, and it belongs to an animal regardless of who owns her or what she is being used for.
The dog on the steel floor is the same animal as the dog asleep on your couch. Same nervous system, same capacity to suffer, same inability to understand what is happening to her. This goes for all sentient beings – whether they can show us or not.
This is not a radical position. The Five Freedoms, recognised by the RSPCA and underpinning animal welfare policy across the developed world, include freedom from pain, injury and disease, and freedom from fear and distress. That is the minimum we have already agreed on, and the standard we meet every day for the animals who are somebody’s pet.
So the next time you read that an animal in a study was anaesthetised, you now know how little that sentence tells you.
And spare a thought for the dog on the steel floor, who was recorded as recovering well.
About the author
Dr. Dana Kolsky is an Australian veterinary surgeon who has been practising small animal medicine since 2018. A passionate advocate for animal rights, she is committed to a future where scientific progress no longer comes at the cost of animal suffering. Beyond the veterinary hospital, Dana draws on her background in communications to advocate for animals on a broader scale, using her clinical experience and understanding of science to help drive meaningful change. Whether it’s a beagle in a laboratory or a poodle with an allergy, her approach is grounded in the same principle: animal welfare comes first. Through her work, Dana hopes to help build a world where compassion and scientific progress go hand in hand—and where animals are treated not simply as subjects or patients, but as individuals whose lives and wellbeing matter.