by Lisa Beach

Created on: November 17, 2008

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

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