Preclinical animal models are a valuable, yet underutilised, tool in the field of cancer survivorship. Despite their ability to enhance our understanding of the causes and mechanisms of survivorship issues and to discover new treatments, animal models in cancer survivorship are often misunderstood as poor attempts to capture the entire human experience of living with a cancer diagnosis. I will present an overview of how animal models can be used to investigate symptoms commonly experienced by cancer survivors through the lens of studying cancer-related cognitive impairment (CRCI). In particular, I will focus on how animal models complement clinical studies through translational and reverse-translational pipelines. I will demonstrate how we have used mouse models of breast cancer to dissect challenging clinical questions such as the role of the cancer versus stress in contributing to cognitive and psychological symptoms prior to anti-cancer treatments, and how this has informed treatment strategies being developed for CRCI. I will also discuss how animal models have helped us to better understand how to best apply blood-based inflammatory biomarkers in the clinic, and to explain why inconsistency in the clinical findings has hampered their development and implementation.