I am once again dumping my raw thoughts on Lemmy and asking your opinion on them.
My first dog (and pet in general) is nowhere near the age of me needing to think about putting her down, but having a dog has introduced me to the world of opinions on whether they should be put down when they get too old.
I’ve read a lot of very strong pro-euthanasia pet owner opinions, even going as far as accusing people refusing to put down their pets as “cruel” or actively wanting their pets to suffer. It really seems like a majority of pet owners, at least in the English speaking world, think putting their pets down is something you should always do when their bodies deteriorate past a certain point, and every time this is brought up you get a lot of emotional comments shaming anyone who doesn’t subscribe to that philosophy.
The core argument being made seems to be that when their health conditions pile up past a point, it’s not “worth” letting the pet live anymore, supposedly for their sake. But when I think about it further, I ask how can you be sure? All animals want to keep living, that’s literally why animals evolved brains in the first place, to keep their bodies alive for as long as possible. How can you, who is not the pet, say for sure they would prefer to die than keep living? You can’t ask them, and you can’t get in their mind to determine how much they still appreciate being alive. Even the oldest, sickest pet will still make an effort to keep themselves alive however they can: eating, drinking water, moving out of the way of danger, etc. As far as I know, no animal (at least the animals we keep as pets) have an instinct to just give up and stop going through the motions of life past a certain age. Doesn’t that imply they always want to live?
I consider the decision to no longer live past a certain age and certain number of health problems to be a uniquely human thing, and it doesn’t feel right to impose that on a pet who probably doesn’t have those thoughts. Even with humans, we refrain from making that decision for them. Someone who’s in a coma isn’t eligible for euthanasia just because they haven’t expressed a desire to live, and the most their family can legally do is to stop actively keeping them alive with technology and let them die naturally. But if they don’t die right after taking them off life support, you can’t just straight up kill them, they need to die by themselves. Why isn’t this philosophy applied to pets, who can never consent to euthanasia? You don’t have to keep subjecting your pet to more and more invasive treatments just to extend their lives by a small amount, but at the same time, what gives you the moral right to unilaterally decide when they’re done with living? Why is letting your pet die naturally in the comfort of their own home seen as cruel, while choosing for them when they should die is considered humane?
What do you think? I genuinely don’t know how I feel about this but want to understand the problem and where I stand on it before my dog gets old enough for these things to apply.
Let me share my personal story. Trigger warning for anybody reading this, there’s a lot of details.
My spouse and I had a beloved cat who was amazing. Rescued her as a kitten, the runt of her litter. She was born sickly and got worse for a while, we thought she wouldn’t make it for several weeks.
But we nursed her back to health and she started to thrive. She never got big, even fully grown, she was 6.5 lbs. Most people thought she was still a kitten, but she had 60 lbs of attitude lol.
She was a wonderful cat, full of life, playful, fierce, super smart, my spouse and I were totally in love with her.
Then one day, she stopped eating and started acting really lethargic. We went through all the typical potential causes. Tooth pain, upset stomach, constipation, UTI, etc.
Took her to the vet several times. After almost 2 weeks of us barely able to get her to eat more than a few bites of her usual favorite treats per day, we had them scan her for potential blockages or other stomach issues.
Vet came back with the results, it was cancer, her entire abdomen was filled with large tumors. 100% terminal, the vet said that there was no way to remove it all without killing her from the internal trauma because the cancer had spread so far and was completely surrounding many of her organs.
We were absolutely devastated. She was only about 3 and a half years old. The vet said it was just bad luck, it was rare to see this kind of cancer in a young otherwise healthy cat, but it did sometimes happen.
Even still, we asked about chemotherapy, (yes they do that for pets sometimes). The vet said that at best, it would only give us 1-3 more months if we were lucky, and she would be drugged up so much that she would basically be in a state of dillusion the whole time. Plus it would have cost between $4,000- and $8,000. Which was far beyond anything we could afford.
My spouse and I went home, cried our eyes out for the next 2 days, and talked about end of life care. Our primary vet had given us a pamphlet about in-home euthanasia. They come to your home, you can lay down and cuddle with your pet, play music or talk to them. The vet administers a shot, and after about 10-15 minutes, they fall asleep and then…they’re gone.
We chose that option and it was as positive of an experience as it can be, when doing something so sad.
We laid down on both sides of her, placed her on her favorite blanket, and just gently pet her, kissed her, and quietly told her what a brave girl she was and how much we loved her. Our vet was super calm and respectful. After she administered the shot, she let us be with her, and checked her pulse every 5 minutes or so. After the third time, she quietly told us, “Alright, she’s passed. Take all the time you need. When you’re ready, I’ll take her back with me.”
The vet handled the cremation and a week or two later my spouse and I got our cat’s ashes delivered to us in a little urn, with a clipping of her hair and a little paw print in clay. There was a hand-written note from the vet with her condolences, signed by a bunch of the vet techs, it was very sweet.
It’s a brutally hard choice to make, but I think it’s the right one. Our cat was in so much pain, she was malnourished, exhausted, dehydrated, she had lost all the joy that a healthy life provided her. Looking into her eyes and seeing her in so much pain, that’s what convinced me and my spouse to do it. I think it would have been selfish for us to keep her alive in that state waiting for her to die “naturally” or forcing a massive cocktail of drugs into her just so we could get a few more days or weeks with her.
I don’t condemn people for putting it off, I get it, it was one of the hardest decicions I’ve had to make as an adult. I wept like a baby before and after it for many days. If you haven’t seen it before, I can’t describe it. But there is a certain “look” an animal gets when it’s near the end. They know, they are smart, they have a soul of some kind I think, they can sense it. As somebody who is an animal lover and has had pets all my life, you learn what it looks like. It’s a look of pain and pleading, a look that says, “I’m in pain, and I’m tired, it’s time for me to go.”
Some people say that pets can’t tell you if they want to be done, but I think they can, it’s that look in their eyes of desperation, and when you’re my age and you’ve had to say goodbye to numerous pets over the years, you learn what it looks like.
That’s how we learned that our girl had liver cancer. She was getting sick most days but looked like she was gaining weight. Imaging at the vet showed the tumors and fluid and she said we had a few weeks, maybe a month.
I’m so sorry for your loss.
That’s rough, I’m sorry too, it never gets easier. 💔 stay strong, the important thing is that they feel safe and loved 💙