Is euthanasia of cats and dogs sometimes the most compassionate option?

Yes

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by Lisa Beach

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Sometimes, against an owner's own feelings of love and guilt, it is indeed the more compassionate thing to do. I understand the position of pet lovers who insist euthanasia is a terrible thing, but such people are missing the bigger picture. Euthanasia is the difference between "Life" and "quality of life".

I have owned 7 dogs over my lifetime, and the majority of those sweet creatures died of old age. For that I was glad: they were old, their eyebrows and white spots had gone gray, but to the end, they had a good life. So I can SEE how some people say euthanasia is wrong or cruel. Up to a certain point, I agreed. Until my last dog Coco came along.

I loved her more than ANY dog because she was the runt of her litter; at 6 weeks, she was the size of my hand, from wrist to fingertip outspread. When I picked her up, she scurried onto my shoulder with a sigh, and hid under my hair. A shoe box was three times larger than she, and she had scabs on her neck from her brothers and sisters biting her to get to mom's teat. Naturally, she was THE dog for me.

Anyway, she grew into a healthy, sweet dog, and time passed; and passed, and passed. When told she was now 13, people would gasp, and marvel she was still alive. When she turned EIGHTEEN, we moved to where I live now, and [subtly at first] her health went downhill. The first concern I had occurred when I found her running in circles and barking aggressively at NOTHING. Some nights I would hear her whimpering and crying, only to find there was nothing there to bother her.

Six months later, I found her standing facing a wall, with her head lowered like a horse at a feed bag, just STANDING there as if waiting for a bus or something. I picked her up, and put her back on her favorite blanket. At that point, I knew something was wrong, but not what.

Then, about a month later, my husband and I found her out on the lawn running in circles and barking at nothing again. I went to soothe her and she bolted across the street, still barking. My husband managed to corral her, and she peed and pooed all over him, still barking, and now trembling erratically as well. We took her to an emergency vet, thinking she was developing dementia.

She had calmed down by then, so all he did was take x-rays, that showed nothing. We took her home, and about a month later, after watching Coco's continuingly odd behavior, I told my husband I thought she might have a brain tumor. I thought it explained her behavior, but like always, he said "she doesn't have a brain tumor" the same way he told me I wasn't having a stroke when I actually was. Now she was NINETEEN years old.

One day I went to the garage [where she had a cushy, well-insulated dog house], and she was gone. I called hubby, and we searched the creek behind our house, and most of the neighborhood looking for her. After FOUR hours of searching, we gave up and my husband went back to work; I was starting to think she had wandered off to die, and was grief-stricken, but decided to try just one more street. I spotted her from the back of someone's yard, her 2 front paws on the top of a wooden riser that led with others down to the creek, and 2 back paws on the bottom rung. She heard me shouting, but didn't know where the noise was coming from. In retrospect, I think that she was partially deaf, but that didn't occur to me till much later. I went into that neighbor's backyard, had someone help lift her, and I carried her home as she barked almost as if terrified. She did not stop till I put her on her beloved blanket.

Months passed, but because she was still eating, I gave her doggie aspirin and Senior Dog vitamin supplements. I also made time to pet her and try and make her be more than a tired old dog.

Then she turned TWENTY. By now, I was keeping a very close eye on her: the barking at nothing increased. The standing in the corner increased, and she could no longer contain her urine or bowels. She lost a lot of weight till she looked like a skeleton with skin pulled taut over it. She no longer responded to my voice, and I was convinced that now she was deaf as well as blind. I was also 100% convinced it was due to a brain tumor, and nothing my husband said convinced me otherwise.

It was at this point that I started discussing with him whether or not to have her put to sleep. We agonized over it; didn't want to have any part of it; it was mean, it was cruel; we had every excuse in the book to fall back on.

Then came the day when she fell while merely standing still, and couldn't walk any more. I cried for hours, as my husband and I finally agreed the humane thing to do was put her to sleep. As much as we loved her, as much as she had been there for the better part of my life, we finally agreed.

We agreed that at this point, there WAS no quality-of-life. She was blind, deaf, couldn't control her bodily functions, and could no longer stand, and it was selfish on our part to keep her alive. I picked her up wrapped in her blanket, and off we went to the Vet's. As she sat huddled in my husband's lap, a yellowish discharge started to ooze out her nose; I told the vet when he saw her, that I had thought for quite a while now, that she had a brain tumor, and that I thought it had spread. He used an instrument to look up her nostrils, and said they were FULL of tumors.

Then, as we held her, he mentioned we would hear her sigh as the drugs kicked in, and she passed away: that it would only take a minute or two. Well less then a couple of DRIPS of the medicine made it into her system, I only heard a brief, quiet puff of air, and she was gone.

EVERY day I miss her; I feel guilty for having her put to sleep, guilty for letting things get as bad as they did; guilty for wanting her here with me still, and selfish for putting MY wants ahead of her welfare. The kindest thing I've ever done was have her old, tired, tumor-riddled body put to sleep. Euthanasia is an odd word that gives pet lovers mental images of cruelty, but all that really happens is the pet falls asleep one last time.

For my favorite dog, it was the best, most humane, loving thing I would ever do.

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