This thread is going to the dogs...

When I met the lady who was to become Wife (#3) I had two cats (Damn Pussies) and she had three dogs. In the 8 years we have been together one cat and a total of four dogs have passed on. We have one cat and two dogs now. Wife is a two-dog person. I expect we will always have two dogs. We just found out our top dog, a 11 year old beagle, has an enlarged heart that we now expect will end her life in the near future - or not so near future, it is a crapshoot.

So here I want to celebrate dogs. All sorts of dogs. Good Dogs and Good Dogs (they are all Good Dogs).

Feel free to jump in as you wish...

Any time I've had to put down one of our animals, I've always sent them off with a request.

"Save a place in heaven for me."


It hurts. EVERY DAMN TIME.

Ooohhh - such a heartache, Shankara! Sending good thoughts for you, wife and beagle.

I might've posted this before - we got a little rescue schnauzer last August. She's now 7 and she's a poster child for resting bitch face.
When husband was able to sit in a lift chair, she snuggled up next to him.



Eventually, husband could only stay in wheelchair and the dog couldn't find a comfy spot. So she was his protector underneath his feet.




When husband went to the nursing home in December, she was pretty bummed out she couldn't find him. She'd lay down in empty wheelchair spot.

I finally got her down to the nursing home a few weeks ago and the reunion was so sweet.

We got my first dog back when my partner bought a house and we didn't have to worry about landlords. English Cocker, maybe not the brightest but such a gentle friendly fellow. I caught a look at the vet's notes once and they'd written "lovely dog" on his record. He got cancer when he was seven and took a long time to recover from the surgery, but he made it to fourteen.

He probably could've kept going a bit longer, but by the end he was just so frail. Blind, deaf, no sense of direction (middle ear problem). He'd wander into a shower cubicle and be unable to find his way out again. It was a long gradual decline so it was hard to know when to call it a day. It felt like a betrayal making that final appointment with the vet, but looking back I think it was a kindness.

Second Dog came to us from the pound. He was supposed to be a buddy to First Dog but they didn't really get along. Nobody knew his history before the pound but I think he'd had a pretty rough life; he was sort of the doggy equivalent of the PTSD vet who sleeps with a gun under the pillow and freaks out at certain sounds. We all got bitten a couple of times, but he was a sweetie when he wasn't scared. After three years with us he was really starting to mellow out. Then one day we took him in to the vet for a persistent cough, thinking it was some sort of infection, and it turned out to be lymphoma. We spoiled him for two months, most of that time you wouldn't have known he was ill, and then just on the last day his throat swelled up and he couldn't breathe. So back to the vet.

We lost both dogs within a few months. That was hard. We had a couple of years off, and then we were planning to get a new puppy or two... but instead a litter of kittens wandered into our yard.

Bramblethorn - how good it was that dog #2 had a safe place in his last years.

And now.. the kittens! Funny how things work out.

RubiDia said:

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Top beagle, that Snoopy....

HisArpy said:

Any time I've had to put down one of our animals, I've always sent them off with a request.

"Save a place in heaven for me."


It hurts. EVERY DAMN TIME.

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cookiecat said:

I finally got her down to the nursing home a few weeks ago and the reunion was so sweet.

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I could almost cry...

Bramblethorn said:

but instead a litter of kittens wandered into our yard.

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And it can be such an adventure introducing new dogs to a home with cats.

My first cat was a little like Bramblethorn's 2nd dog. Even more emotionless and unaffectionate than the current one, she had been abandoned by unknown owners (ovaries had been removed and had a ring of bleached hair around her neck from a cheap flea collar) when she was still a kitten and had been living rough for a few years before being picked up so maybe that had something to do with it.

Eventually at roughly age twenty-something we found she had a large and extremely malignant mouth tumor, and by then we think she was completely deaf so my parents had her put down.

HisArpy said:

Any time I've had to put down one of our animals, I've always sent them off with a request.

"Save a place in heaven for me."


It hurts. EVERY DAMN TIME.

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Why do you even have to put them down? And it sounds like it's happened multiple times.

Just let them live their life and die in their own time.
No offense, but I'm at a loss, how is this post positive?

"Ok, I've decided I'm killing you now, so save a place in heaven for me!"
"WTF?!"

Or do I miss some very important point here?

Nezhul said:

Or do I miss some very important point here?

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You're missing the entire point of morality. Which is generally thought of as 'do no harm'. Letting them die 'in their own time' generally means letting them mentally and physically decline into a state of utter defectiveness, pain and confusion, probably all 3. Which necessarily causes more suffering to the animal than euthanizing them. Animals don't have a concept of euthanasia, so we do it for them.

If animals understood the ramifications of dying, understood their illnesses and could communicate intent then I'd support giving them a choice to euthanize themselves just like we should/do give humans.

Consilience said:

You're missing the entire point of morality. Which is generally thought of as 'do no harm'. Letting them die 'in their own time' generally means letting them mentally and physically decline into a state of utter defectiveness, pain and confusion, probably all 3. Which necessarily causes more suffering to the animal than euthanizing them. Animals don't have a concept of euthanasia, so we do it for them.

If animals understood the ramifications of dying, understood their illnesses and could communicate intent then I'd support giving them a choice to euthanize themselves just like we should/do give humans.

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OK so now bear with me for a moment. What you describe is old age. Old age sucks, for both animals and people - and I daresay it sucks equally, if not more to people who can actually analyze and understand the degree of their downfall.

Now, let's not argue about euthanasia here. How it should or should not be allowed (for people or animals - no matter).

Tell me this: How many old people want to actually be euthanized? You will find that not many. Even among those who suffer terminal illnesses and go through a lot of pain - the majority of them want to keep living as long as they can.
Sure, there are those who want the easy way out - and again, let's not discuss them. The overwhelming MAJORITY of old people want to keep living and do anything to live as long as possible.

They suffer pain and they want to keep living.
They suffer from being tired all the time and lack of energy, and still want to keep living.
They suffer from confusion when their memory and mind starts to abandon them, and they want to keep living.
They can't take care of themselves as good as before, and they want to keep living.
Old age sucks. But you don't propose to put them out of their misery! And they wouldn't agree in the first place.

How are animals not the same? Do you think they somehow lack this crucial survival instinct that humans have and it's preferable for them to die rather than keep living as an old animal with health problems?

Let me tell you this: Animals do commit suicide when they want. Even healthy ones. There are cases where dogs stop eating and drinking when their owner dies - and die as well in the end.

But somehow an old dog in its state of "confusion and suffering" does not make this choice. They WANT to keep living.

And the fact that you own them and that you have absolute power over them, the fact that you don't want to be bothered taking care of an old and sick dog, the fact that it makes YOU emotionally hurting and delude yourself into thinking that it's better for your dog to be put down - does not change the fact.

Your dog wants to keep living.
And you are murdering it so you can take a fresh lively and healthy puppy in a few months, which will not have health problems and will bring you joy, not sadness.

I support putting dogs down when they are on their deathbed. Wounded terminally, poisoned so they slowly decay, or maybe refuse food and slowly starve themselves.

But when your dog just gets very old, moves around slowly and starts to smell bad and shit on your carpet - that's not any reason to do that.

[readers of sensitive disposition may want to skip this]

Nezhul said:

Why do you even have to put them down? And it sounds like it's happened multiple times.

Just let them live their life and die in their own time.

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Dog #1 was badly bitten by flies because he was too old and frail to shake them off. He couldn't do any of the things he used to enjoy, except eating, and even that was a challenge; he was completely lost without a human to pick up up and carry him to his food/water/bed. At night he'd wander around for hours, looking for something he clearly wasn't capable of finding. He had joint soreness that meant he could barely walk.

Dog #2 was diagnosed with lymphoma, which is generally terminal in about 1-3 months. (There are treatments that can extend that a bit, but he was not the sort of dog who would have dealt with going to the vet for an IV every week, so we just went with palliative treatment.)

One morning I noticed he had a bit of a swelling on one side of his neck. A few hours later it was big enough to be obstructing his airways. He was gasping for air and he was terrified, and there was no prospect of him getting better.

In both cases "die in their own time" would have been needlessly cruel. Sometimes euthanasia is the kindest thing you can do, but it still feels awful.

Nezhul said:

Tell me this: How many old people want to actually be euthanized? You will find that not many. Even among those who suffer terminal illnesses and go through a lot of pain - the majority of them want to keep living as long as they can.

Sure, there are those who want the easy way out - and again, let's not discuss them. The overwhelming MAJORITY of old people want to keep living and do anything to live as long as possible.

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This is false.

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0150686

Study on 42 people aged 95-101 found: "Death was a part of life: these very old people mainly live day-to-day. Most were ready to die, reflecting their concerns regarding quality of life, being a nuisance, having nothing to live for and having lived long enough. Contrasting views were rare exceptions but voiced firmly. Most were not worried about death itself, but concerned more about the dying process and impacts on those left behind; a peaceful and pain-free death was a common ideal."

As far as I'm aware, other research on this subject has produced similar results.

One of my great-aunts lived to 103. She had a razor-sharp mind right until the end, but she was very frail, and she was getting quite impatient waiting to die. Another is in her late nineties, and frequently tells me that she's "lived too long". My mother was very clear that she wanted the option of euthanasia.

With humans there's a distinction between "ready to die" and "actively seeking death", which has a lot to do with religion. Catholicism says you've got to wait until God decides it's time, but there are plenty of elderly Catholics wishing God would hurry up with it.

I think we're safe in assuming that dogs don't have a religious proscription against euthanasia.

Your dog wants to keep living.
And you are murdering it so you can take a fresh lively and healthy puppy in a few months, which will not have health problems and will bring you joy, not sadness.

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It's getting late and I don't have the time for a more articulate response to this just now, so I'm just going to say: fuck off, and take that guilt-trip bullshit with you.

Nezhul said:

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Nobody is advocating for killing pets just because they're old and slower than they used to be. I don't know about the others but I'm for it when they've become essentially a living husk.

Right now euthanasia is already a widespread practice in the west in everything but name. DNACPR forms, physician assisted suicide and certain methods of palliative care (e.g indefinite sedation) could all be considered 'passive' euthanasia or suicide. And actually, people with hellish terminal illness don't decide to keep on living, the data shows that even though a minority tend to be actively suicidal or wanted to die, the desire to die sooner rather than later will be held by half of studied patients. And that's only applicable to the ones that aren't too cognitively impaired or too ill to actually be capable of querying. I think they could have quite different perspectives on the matter.

Nezhul said:

Sure, there are those who want the easy way out-

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Because of course, if wasting away in a painful and undignified fashion doesn't appeal to you then you're a yellow-bellied sissy and need to be denigrated further.

Nezhul said:

Why do you even have to put them down? And it sounds like it's happened multiple times.

Just let them live their life and die in their own time.
No offense, but I'm at a loss, how is this post positive?

"Ok, I've decided I'm killing you now, so save a place in heaven for me!"
"WTF?!"

Or do I miss some very important point here?

Click to expand...

In the last 8 years we have put down 5 pets, 1 cat and 4 dogs. Each had reached a point where they would not eat, could not walk, two were blind, would pee and poop in the place they slept, were in pain and had no way to take pain meds, and the Vet had done all possible. From my point of view it is the loving thing to do to ease those last few days.

Left to right: Abby (top dog), Cowboy (guest dog who visits every several weeks for a few days), Toby (new dog about a month in to his new home). All are rescue dogs.

Nezhul said:

<snip>

Tell me this: How many old people want to actually be euthanized? You will find that not many. Even among those who suffer terminal illnesses and go through a lot of pain - the majority of them want to keep living as long as they can.
Sure, there are those who want the easy way out - and again, let's not discuss them. The overwhelming MAJORITY of old people want to keep living and do anything to live as long as possible.

They suffer pain and they want to keep living.
They suffer from being tired all the time and lack of energy, and still want to keep living.
They suffer from confusion when their memory and mind starts to abandon them, and they want to keep living.
They can't take care of themselves as good as before, and they want to keep living.
Old age sucks. But you don't propose to put them out of their misery! And they wouldn't agree in the first place.

How are animals not the same? Do you think they somehow lack this crucial survival instinct that humans have and it's preferable for them to die rather than keep living as an old animal with health problems?

<snip>

And you are murdering it so you can take a fresh lively and healthy puppy in a few months, which will not have health problems and will bring you joy, not sadness.

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You've made quite the flying leap. To assume any of of us have "murdered" a pet - a family member - in order to avoid sadness and take on a "fresh lively and healthy puppy" is insanely arrogant on your part. You've taken a flip attitude toward a very personal event. You have NO idea what any one of us has dealt with.

It's one thing to come here and offer up an opinion. Talk about your personal experience. It's another thing to fly in here and throw around comments like we're murdering our pets out of laziness.

As to "old" people wanting to be euthanized - how do you know? Again - another gigantic generalization on your part. Feel free to offer it up as your opinion. Have you dealt with this personally? Then state that. Who are "they" in your comment above??

Tired today...