RFI: euthanizing a pet

I can't exactly speak first-hand about this, but my mom had to make the decision to do this with one of our dogs who had been declining gradually for years. In the end the decision came down to his quality of life. He could no longer sit up without help, much less get up stairs, had little control left over his digestive system, and couldn't really communicate with us anymore. She doubted he would make it through the winter, and thought he would only suffer more. Whatever the circumstances it's such a hard thing to do--I know she still feels guilty about it even though logically we knew he had lived a long life and been loved.

(Our other dog lived longer, but one day became violently ill and had to be put to sleep right away--the vet thought he had a tumor that burst. Whatever it was it had been undiagnosed--try to avoid putting your pet and yourself through that kind of sudden pain if you can. I know this kind of thing is so hard.)

Ask your vet for advice. Ask him when you know the pain is too much for the dog.

And thanks to everyone else also for your stories...

Some thoughts, a year on. I think if you have begun to consider it, especially if your pet is obviously struggling, then it's time.
I can't give much advice about how to handle it, as there's no way to avoid the upset. We agonised for a couple of days about whether we should hang on to see if he improved, setting little targets like 'if he eats this bowl of food, then maybe it means he's feeling better'. This is obv pointless and just a strategy to avoid the call to the vet. We asked if the vet would come and do it at home, but for some reason that wasn't possible for a couple of days, so we took him in. The vet was really considerate, just little things like arranging a time when there was no-one else around. (Just as well, as we blubbed a fair bit.) Anyway, sad as it is, I haven't regretted deciding to have him put down rather than prolong things for a few weeks/months. It was kinder, and although he was very ill in the last couple of days, he at least was able to have some happiness on those days - lying in the sun in the garden, managing to haul himself onto the sofa to watch telly with kids on his last evening. I think this is better than eking out every last breath.

The only thing I can say: don't postpone your sadness. Don't put your dog through misery and pain just because you can't bear the thought of saying goodbye. It's hard, I know, but you get through it.

Thanks. I wasn't sure if it could be done at home (because of lethal substances & control & laws & stuff...) That might be an option, if I can find a vet who will do it...

Get a friend to drive you, if you can't get it done at home. I had to drive myself to the vet the day our cat was put down and almost had an accident coming home because i was so upset.

Bring something that smells like you, so that if you can't manage to be in the room when the vet is injecting your pet (and it's hard, because you don't want your dog to see you upset. That causes them more pain than anything), at least you can wrap him in a jumper or something that will be comforting.

You'll kind of know when it's time. In the meantime, always feed him the yummiest food you can afford and let him sleep with you at night and make every day a brilliant day.

Now I'm upset too. You have a cute looking dog.

The vet told us that a dog can sense if another animal is sick/dying

But we would never apply this theory to humans. Why is it different for animals?

How much animals understand about their own death I do not know, but dogs do seem to know when they're dying. I've heard many reports of older dogs uncharacteristically taking themselves off out for a little walk and never coming back.

Your dog looksa lot like one of my dogs who we had put down when I was about 13, and a little like Pete, who I took to be put down myself when I was 20.

It's fucking horrible. I just knew it had to be done though, and so did it. And if you have kids then be totally honest with them and let them come with you if you can when it's done and if they want to. I think it helps them if they know what's going on.

My golden retriever lapped Caffrey's moments before she was put to sleep, loving her last trip to the vet as much as every other.

Afterwards my father, who I think misses her most, told me a story that still haunts him, of the barbaric demise of his his pet mastiff.

I think when he was around twelve, his father, probably drunk, filled the dog's bowl with gin and once the dog was drunk as well he pushed it down the staircase.

Your compassion is what stays, the love and care with which you've treated this creature through his life remains, and you should use that bond to carry out a great act of mercy.

:-((((((((((((( That's so sad.

When our family dog had to be put to sleep, my dad would wake up in the middle of the night for weeks afterwards, convinced she was at the foot of the bed. This was unlikely even when she was alive, because she was afraid of stairs.

Grover had a great life. He loved everyone he met. He was great little knucklehead.

Aw, B.L.A.M., what heartbreaking news. I don't think anyone can argue for intelligent design in a world where a sweet, loving dog (with the same name as me! whoa.) lives only 16 years while Ronald Reagan dies at age 93.

My dog died in November of last year...thinking about it still makes me sad, but it helped that I had lots of nice people to talk to, on ILX and IRL. Your dog was lucky to have owners as nice and loving as you and your wife. I hope you are able to comfort each other. Losing a dog is very, very tough. Give Abby an extra hug for me.

My best. Thinking about Lexie still gets me.

I just read a lorrie moore story that deals with this - 'four calling birds, three french hens' - and it was heartfelt and graceful. I recommend it

I'm so sorry, B.L.A.M.

Hey - just an update.

Abby is doing better - on some meds and a prescription diet, which seem to have improved her health and mood. At 16, the second is really the most important, since its the best indicator of how much pain/discomfort she's in. All the same, its a maintenance game from here on out.

So, no immediate bad news. For now.

Aw, B.L.A.M., what heartbreaking news. I don't think anyone can argue for intelligent design in a world where a sweet, loving dog (with the same name as me! whoa.) lives only 16 years while Ronald Reagan dies at age 93.

Except 16 dog years is roughly equivalent to 83!

Our beloved family dog Jake died last July in his sleep, after two years of cortisone injections for his hips. My parents had to carry him outside to do his business. On the night before his death I visited and knew it was the end; he wouldn't even wag his tail anymore, just lay there, panting and obviously in pain.

My sympathies.

Oh -- he was a month over his fifteenth birthday.

Let me express my sympathies, too.

:( BLAM

It was hard to do, but not a hard decision to make.

I feel guilty for even looking this thread up while he's still upstairs in the bathroom, but this post put a lot of things in perspective and made me feel better (somewhat.)

And I'm talking about my cat, not my dad or anything.

We had to put down one of my wife's cats on Wednesday morning. He had been wasting away for a few months, not eating, losing all of his weight. It took a while for a diagnosis but eventually they found some cancer near his stomach :(

It's still a really awful and sad thing to have to do, but I do believe that it's better than letting an animal live in pain--almost seems selfish in some respects to keep a miserable animal alive by forced hydration, invasive surgeries etc.

So sorry, both of you. It's so hard to deal with.

One of our guys is on a downhill slope, and we just keep watching him for signs of suffering. They hate, absolutely, going in the crate/in the car/to the vet, so I found one that will come to us and do palliative care until the time comes for the end. I don't think we can do better for our decrepit old guys than to give them peaceful last days.

I knew when I got him into the crate to go the vet's without a fight that something was imminent.

He's very dehydrated. Right now, he's laying about in the shower. 18 years, and he's never even come close to showing such a desire.

We've got our weekend together and then we go back to the vet on Monday. It's weird knowing what time his clock will toll, but I'm glad we get to hang out one last time.

At work today, I was looking at old flickr pics and thought, "Oh, if only I could see him one last time." And then I remembered, hey wait. He's probably back at the house laying across the tiles! So there's that.

Take pictures!!! We took tons of pictures of Strindberg in the last few weeks--even though he was a skinny shell of his former self it's so good to have them.

I'll try to get a pic of him this weekend holding a newspaper with a Hurricane Irene headline.

He's very dehydrated. Right now, he's laying about in the shower.

does this mean he's in the bathtub? because my dog, who is also getting pretty old (and has dementia), has been doing this - sleeping in the bathtub - for almost a year now. it's the funniest thing

He's in the shower stall. It's like he's still trying new things right up to the very end.

I used to fall asleep in the bath tub back in the days of when I'd get home and not trust myself to sleep in a real bed. Not sure if that's his MO or not.

T- 24 hours.

We've had a good weekend. He's still not eating anything, but he's resting and when he does move, it's to lean up against our leg or something. The other two cats are ignoring him, which is a bit surprising, at least since he's been roomies with one of them for the past 12 or 13 years. He doesn't seem to care.

Haven't told the kids anything more than that Mikhail is very sick. I think they get the idea though. What Monday will be like after we tell them should be interesting.

I go in waves. It's embarrassing, really. I picked this guy up at some girls' apartment in St. Paul on Aug. 30, 1994, because one of them was going to Europe and the other was getting a roommate with allergies. We went through that apartment off of Columbus Street in Minneapolis, to two years back in Little Rock with a guy named Steve, two years in our own apartment, moving into a house in 2001 and then this bigger house in 2008. Along the way, I adopted another cat, fell in love and married sunny who brought her cat here from Australia. We got a dog together within six weeks of our wedding. Beeps and Hammer have come along and now, in 2011, we're losing our first charter member.

Yesterday, I took him outside. He's been an indoor cat all of his life and with no claws (thanks to the St. Paul girls), he would've lasted a lot less in the wilds. I was worried that he'd try to get underneath the porch and die (the trick my pets from childhood would pull up in the country), but instead, he just chilled while the kids zoomed by him on their tricycles and play-cars.

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I've always talked the talk about putting your animals down before it gets ugly and painful, but I've never walked the walk before.

It's hard to do, but not a hard decision to make

I've been thinking about this all weekend and it's so dead-on. I'm still going to be a mess tomorrow over a damn cat.

dude i'm nearly a mess just reading about it

Sorry about your cat, PP.

Oh man, I was reading your post while sitting here with our Alfred on my lap and, just, wow, very sorry to hear what you are going through.

Ach PP, I see youre in about the same place I am with my Yampy, tho she's still reasonably active (but is wasting away really alarmingly). I also dont know when to "know" is the right time, and it's been depressing me for months.

I definitely waited too long with my childhood cat, and I still get mad at myself for not realizing it at the time. You don't want the prevailing memories and emotions tied to your pet to be sadness and pity. My guy couldn't even move when I finally did take him to the vet, I carried him there in a cardboard box, and that's what I first think about when I think of him.

Just to follow up.

We took my cat in to the vet yesterday morning. She closed the door and quietly explained what was going to happen: That they would administer a shot and he would likely die in 30 seconds. He wasn't worried or anxious at all. I put the carrier up on the table and he walked out on his own before settling down on the towel.

She gave him the shot in one of his back legs, and sunny and I stood there, petting him, talking to him and staying in his field of vision. After a minute or so, his heart was still beating, his eyes were open and his tail was flicking lazily. He seemed very relaxed, and as the vet moved him to the other side for an additional shot, he just looked up like "what up, dudes?"

The second shot did it though. The last thing he saw was sunny and me. He didn't seem scared or jumpy or uncomfortable at all. He just went.

I'm going to post this as a SPOILER. Just something that happened that was natural, but might break the mood of more sensitive readers.

Anyway, we took him home. We buried him in the backyard. It was a very peaceful transition and as emotional as I still am about it, I know 100% that we did the right thing. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind.

My grandmother loved animals and kept pets. Toward the end though, her animals were getting sick to the point where they couldn't walk anymore. ("Rambo" crawled underneath a sofa and died, undetected for a couple of days.) To prolong an animal's life when it's clearly past its expiration date is the more inhumane option. These are domesticated animals, spoonfed in some cases and housed indoors. Waiting for nature to take its course after a lifetime of sleeping on a people couch isn't right.

RIP Mikhail. Sounds like he had a nice, long life. And good to hear that you seem to be doing well, PP, all things considered.

It's been a month, and though it's different for everybody, I just wanted to say that time does ease the pain a bit. I know it seems like we've had a rash of sick pets meet their makers lately.

In the first few days, I'd jump a little after seeing one of the other cats laying in his spot, thinking it was him at first. One of the kids left a stuffed bunny on the couch once and from a distance to my near-sighted eyes, I had to do a triple take. I think I saw a thousand different things on TV, in magazines, on the grocery aisle of orange tabby cats that looked like him. Kind of like learning a new word and then seeing it everywhere.

I did two things that seemed opposite of each other that helped. One was to clear out the stuff in the house that was his. I got rid of his stuffed toys. Put his food bowl up in the cabinet. Gave myself a couple of days to feel sad and then just got started with moving on.

Contrary to that though, was I buried him in the backyard. I really thought I'd let the vet take care of the remains right up until we decided his time had come. And then, from somewhere inside me that I didn't think had much influence on me, I dug a hole that final weekend and buried him the morning he left us. Since then, I've been collecting these pretty igneous rocks that show up whenever it rains and building a nice pile on the grave whenever the kids and I are playing in the backyard. I'm looking forward to seeing grass grow around the rocks and the spot fitting in a bit more naturally with the rest of the yard.

I miss the little shit, but it's been a bit liberating for both of us. He was so obviously sick and I feel so good about having done the right thing. I look at pictures of him now, not just from that last week, but from 2011 in general, and I know that it's better he's gone than feeling sick and in any pain from that mass that was growing inside of him.

And for me. Kinda relieved I outlived the bastard. And he was one of those last living ties to a time that seems almost imaginary now, a 20-year-old me, living alone as a college dropout in a single bedroom apartment just south of the 35W/94 interchange in Minneapolis. That dude's been long gone for some time as well, but it's been hard to reconcile that in my head sometimes, especially with that little orange face staring at me from across the room.

But a month later, and it does get better. For us, at least.

We're about to go through this again. FOURTH pet in less than a year.

I feel funny talking about it since it's Sunny's cat whose time has come. But Pyewackette – Pye, Packet, Pickers, Missy, Bunny, Wackette, P.W. – has really grown on me. The first time I saw her was in Sunny's kitchen in Penshurst. The last time was this morning outside of our bathroom, as the new kitten kept trying to play with her.

In between, I've met her at the DFW airport before Sunny even got off the plane. She'd sleep with me when I was sick that one time. One time she bit my nose, striking me like a cobra. I've watched her watch over both of our children with protection in her eyes.

And now she's about to go, also at Age 18 like Mikhail did last year. Sunny's going to go in there with her alone today with the vet while I get the kids. Those two girls have been through so much together since Sunny adopted her in 1994.

It's hard to do, but not a hard decision to make

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The gang all together, circa. 2005

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I took this right around the time Beeps was born so it comes up each time I open the folder for her baby pictures. It's unladylike, but I love it.

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On the backporch, back home in Australia.

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Sad news. Such a pretty cat.

yeah, sorry pp. hope you get a respite from this kind of thing.

There's one more cat born in the 90s we've got. Adopted from an ex, she's never been quite as special as the other two cats. We love her and she's a good cat, but.. you know.

Beeps got a kitten of her own a little more than a week ago. It's been messing with my head that, should it go the way of its predecessors, it'll be around until 2030. The kids will be old enough to be in college. I'll be 56 years old. We'll be eight years away from paying off the house.

It seems like so far away, but man, the cat that we put down last year, it seems like yesterday I picked him up in St. Paul.

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I think putting a pet down when it's obviously time is one of the most difficult, noble sacrifices we can make for a pet, an incredible act of love and compassion.

But a few weeks ago I had to put my dog down, unexpectedly, and I am still reeling. [Don't read this if this is sensitive, because this is bleak, but we were there for the injection, and there was a moment briefly after where he seemed to realize something was very wrong... up until the end he'd been a happy, peaceful dog, as oblivious to his terminal condition as I had been, but for a few seconds after the injection he was terrified and distressed, and I can't get that image out of my head. I know it was just a few fleeting moments, but they were his last ones, you know?]

Anyway, I'm still haunted by it. I wish I could think of something else. Meanwhile, I'm supposed to pick up his ashes from the vet, but I'm too heartbroken to make myself get there. I feel like I'm failing him again. He's just waiting there for me to pick him up, but I'm not strong enough to make myself do it.

I'm so sorry to hear about that, does sound extremely distressing and upsetting. I'd imagine your dog was hopefully just perturbed by having been poked with a needle, without understanding the further ramifications. Obviously a terrible way to say goodbye. You've done nothing wrong and shouldn't beat yourself up, although obviously it's easy to say that and less easy to hear it.

Thanks, Jim. I can't explain the emotion very well. It's not guilt, at least not rational guilt, because I know I did the right thing. It's just a sour final note that's compounding some already intense grief (I'd been through so much with that dog; he was a wonderful constant in my life even during a period where I seemed to be losing everything else around me).

Some of it might have been the way he was put down. My understanding, when I had my cats put down, is there was two shots: one that gently put them to sleep, then another that stopped their heart. With my dog, though, it was just one shot, and it didn't seem as peaceful as I would have wanted. Ugh, I'm probably just fixated on it because I'm still so shattered by the loss.

It's just a sour final note that's compounding some already intense grief

I hear you on that, and I'm so sorry. My wife inadvertently fucked up our cat's last day. We had a long hard sickness with months of medication. The vet had pretty much authorized me to give him the rest of the pain medicine that we had left. Just to ease his pain as much as we could and calm his anxiety. He hated going to the vet and anything we could do to take the edge off for him would have been great. Mrs. Life - not being the one who usually gave him the medicine - accidentally gave him the rest of his leftover steroids (prednizone). He hated taking his regular dose of predizone and I keep reflecting that the extra medication probably made him feel worse rather than better.

You should probably go pick up his ashes though. Give him a fitting tribute.

ugh, so sorry HL. Realistically the slip-up made very little, if any, difference. I think it's just natural to try to find a reason to kick ourselves when we're dealing with grief. If it wasn't the steroid snafu it'd probably be something else just as insignificant. It's a very hard situation to leave feeling good about.

Yeah I've determined to get the ashes today after work. Probably stupid of me to do it hours before a Julien Baker show, but fuck it, might as well just lean into the hurt and hope I get some relief out of it.

I didn't stay when I brought my kitty in, I just didn't think I could handle being there. I still don't think I could have. That was 1999, and I still second guess myself; it's one of the biggest guilts in my life. It's okay to be conflicted, imo. It's a huge ordeal.

Evan, I had a very similar experience with one of our dogs. She was definitely ready to go. Completely exhausted and incontinent by the end, capable only of lying on me and wheezing. She even had a canular in her leg already. Then, when the vet injected her, she suddenly cried out and bucked a little, clearly stung and distressed by something. I think it could be cold. I believe they keep the vials refrigerated, so it could be that.
For several weeks afterwards, I felt guilty about causing her pain in that final minute, when it had seemed like she would just slip away. But eventually that memory faded (except for now, obviously, because I am sharing it here).

That's a relief to hear, trishy. I do hope it fades. Big picture it's irrational to focus on a few seconds of discomfort if it spares a loved one weeks of real pain and distress. But yikes. It's so hard to shake.

All the hugs in the world, Dan. You did the right thing and there's no reason to feel guilty about it. Traumatic as it was, my experience doesn't shake my belief that we have a moral obligation to put our pets down when they're seriously suffering. We bear the burden and the pain so our animals don't have to.

Picked up the ashes. Thanks for the extra push, HL. It was neither as painful as I feared nor as comforting as I hoped, but it's nice to have him back and have that weight off of my shoulders.

Took my wife's elderly maltese to be put down yesterday. Although I took her for walks and groomed her and fed her and all that stuff, I never liked her much. She was a high-strung mess of a dog, but she was family so what can you do.

I took her to the vet by myself because my wife was chaperoning a field trip. It's the first time I was ever actually present for a pet's euthanasia. I stayed the entire time and comforted her and held her and made sure she had some nice outdoor time beforehand and everything. I was sadder about it than I thought I would be. I saw the doc give her the injection and pronounce her dead and then waited around for a little while afterward with her body. I brought her home in a box and buried her in the backyard, next to our cat who died last year.

But then later in the night, during a rainstorm, I started getting worried. "What if the doctor fucked up the dosage? What if she was just in a deep coma and barely breathing and she wakes up down there all alone in the dark?" Ugh, you guys. I know it's irrational, but I just keep having this low-temperature dread. I don't think I've ever felt this way about a death before and it's unsettling and stressful.

We lost one of our senior cats, Chrissy, on Friday. Chrissy was a rescue that we had actually gotten for my grandmother, back in 2009, and then after she could no longer care for the cat due to dementia we took her in in 2012. My wife really, really bonded with her and vice-versa. Over the last few years she'd started having many of the problems cats experience at advanced ages -- she had to have a complete dental removal due to tooth decay, then she started showing symptoms of renal failure and high blood pressure. We treated her for all of them for as long as we could but everything began to get worse.

Earlier this year, she went basically blind and deaf from the blood pressure problems, but seemed to do OK confining herself to limited spaces downstairs. She still used the litterbox, still ate, and still was responsive and affectionate. Over the last few weeks she ate less and less. Last Sunday, she started choking on some food, and we were able to clear it for her, but she didn't eat the rest of the day. We took her to the vet on Monday, and he thought maybe she had gotten something caught, and then scratched her esophagus from coughing, so he gave her some medication he thought would help her eat. But she had lost 2 pounds since her last visit in February. She ate a little Monday night, but didn't eat Tuesday or Wednesday, and barely drank. We got her an emergency appointment Thursday and they kept her all day, giving her subcutaneous fluids, syringe feeding her and giving her an anti-inflammatory. We took her home Thursday night with instructions to try syringe feeding her every three hours, but she just wasn't having it. She wouldn't eat or drink, could barely walk, and was urinating in the middle of the room.

So we decided not to let her suffer any more. We had already scheduled a follow-up appointment for Friday, and we spent all night Thursday and all morning Friday just holding her and loving her. There was one final little moment of joy -- she had taken to finding squares of sunlight in the kitchen and lying in them, and as we took her into the vet's office the sun shone right on her for a moment and she lifted her head up to feel it. She passed while being held by both of us. I hope we didn't let her go on too long and I hope she understood at the end.

I'm so sorry to see this, but glad for your poor old dear cat that she had you to care for her all the way down.

I'm sorry Eliza.

Sounds like you went about this the right way, but I feel what you are saying. Went through something similar a while back and still think about it often enough and feel like I am still processing it.

In any case, thanks for writing about that in such detail, it really describes what one goes through.

Hugs Eliza. So sad to lose a beloved pet.

i'm so sorry liz <3 <3 <3 <3