How far would you go financially for a pet? I’m not talking dollar amounts, really, but how close to edge of ruin would you push yourself for your pets?
I just wonder because we had a guy in last night who was wanting to keep going with a dog with a really poor prognosis, despite the fact that he really couldn’t afford it. When the vet brought up the financial considerations, he said he’d declare bankruptcy to continue treating this dog that he’d already poured four grand into.
I understand the urge to do everything you can manage, but at the same time, I can’t imagine that putting himself in that sort of financial situation could possibly be good for his two small children.
Several months back, there was a guy who’d spent $5,000 on emergency surgeries on his dog over a period of four months…and was losing his house. (He was angry and verbally abusive because we wouldn’t treat his dog for free, and I started a Pit thread about him but that’s neither here nor there, really.)
Does the outlook make a difference in how far you’re willing to strain your finances? How bleak do things have to look before you decide the strain isn’t worth it?
The guy last night has a 2 year old sharpei mix with really, really intractable seizures. He’s on everything our neurologist can put him on, and he still seizes 2 or 3 times a month. Sometimes the seizures are so severe that they’re almost impossible to stop; two months ago we had to put him on a constant infusion of injectable anesthesia to stop them. If we let him wake up at all, he seized. Last night, we gave that dog so many meds that we were afraid he’d fall off the needle dead, and he was still tremoring for another half-hour.
This dog isn’t fixable; he’s epiliptic, and there’s no cure for epilepsy. All you can do is try to control it, and this dog’s never going to be well-controlled. He’s going to need expensive emergency treatment every month or two for the next ten years, assuming he doesn’t seizure himself to death one night while they’re sleeping. So where would you draw the line in a case like this?
I have limited resources right now, so if either cat developed anything serious, I’d have to think long and hard about what to do. I would never put my home in jeopardy - most animals don’t live as long as we do, and that’s something we have to accept when we take them in as part of our lives. But we also have a responsibility that we accept when we take a pet in to keep them healthy, happy and comfortable.
In the situation that you describe, I would say it’s past time for that dog to be let go. Not out of cruelty, because I think it’s creuler to keep it alive the way things are right now, but out of respect for the life it had. Continuing in this way doesn’t help the pet or the owner, from my point of view.
I think it depends on the circumstances. I spent over $6,000 in 18 months on orthopedic surgeries for my dog (total hip replacement and TPLO for torn cruciate ligament), but these were things that I felt would have a good chance at a lasting positive outcome. Alot of that went on the credit card, but I didn’t have children or other responsibilities to worry about.
But then the same dog developed cancer (hemangiosarcoma), and the vet gave a very poor prognosis even with aggressive treatment. We decided to euthanize rather than put her through something that didn’t promise a good chance at a successful outcome.
Well, I have spent thousands over the past 14 years on Dorothy, the Elizabeth Taylor of the cat world. She’s on two medications (for thyroid and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy) and has had two heart attacks, kidney failure, bladder-stone surgery and two hernias. But amazingly, she’s still happy and peppy and as evil as a Bond villain.
CrazyCatLady, a question: she had her first heart attack when she was less than a year old, and my vet says it is unheard of for a cat with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy to live this long. True? Shall I call the Guinness Book of Records?
I agree with Lsura. Prolonging a sick animals life for our own benefit is just so sad. Put them out of their misery so they don’t have to suffer. We want our pets to live happy lives!
I have been called Crazy Cat Lady by my friends too (I feed the feral cats at work…even on the weekends!)! I have a cat that I adopted from a shelter. After only a couple of weeks after getting him he stopped eating (I travelled alot and had never had a cat before and expected he would be fine for 2 or 3 days by himself with plenty of food and water - - I had a lot to learn!). I ended up paying $1000 for him to undergo surgery to put in a feeding tube. I then spent the next 6 weeks feeding him 3 times a day through the tube with a syringe of mushy, watered down food (I drove home on my lunch hour every day!). He had to wear a little sock around his belly to keep the tube covered up so he wouldn’t pull at it, it was awful. Anyway, we survived and he is a happy, healthy, 13 lb., spoiled rotten kitty!
So I would spend the money I could afford to spend (beg, borrow or steal!) if it made the animals quality of life better and wasn’t just prolonging the inevitable.
I definitely agree with your sentiment Yogini on not putting the animal through more suffering than necessary. There’s comes a point when you’ve just got to ask yourself if you’re keeping the animal alive for itself or for you.
It sounds like this dog is definitely beyond that point. Surgeries every couple months is very tough on that dog. Why would you want to put your loving animal through so much pain over and over again? Especially without a good chance for improvement.
A lot would depend on prognosis and quality of life. I had a dog who blew out both ACLs in her back legs. After surgeries for that, when she was about 12, she had a malignant tumor on her side. The vet said that if we removed it, there was a 50% chance it would return within two years. But since she was already 12, I figured two more years was well worth it. I babied her through surgeries, old age and the urinary incontinance that accompanied it, cooking special food for her when I didn’t even cook for myself. I don’t regret any of it. And when it came time to put her down, because of an inner-ear thing the vet said wouldn’t get better, and she was dazed and confused and couldn’t stand up, I was okay with it. Heart-broken, but I knew I’d done everything for her, had given her needs priority and gotten back from her the love and devotion that makes it all worthwhile. Money was never a consideration, fortunately. Yes, I’ve gone into debt for my animals, but never to the point where it could possibly ruin me financially.
I hope really to never have to find out. I think as long as the dog could still enjoy a good quality of life, I would move heaven and earth to find the cash. But I don’t have human kids who need braces and college funds yet, so the dynamic may change then.
We would go on a case-by-case basis. Our family pet is a Smooth Fox terrier named Max. He’s 5 years old and we all love him dearly. If he were to suffer an accident or an illness with a good prognosis we would spend as much as we could afford to cure him. We would not risk bankruptcy or losing our house, but we would certainly tighten our belts to a pretty severe degree. This would assume that by having him treated we would be restoring him to full health with a normal life-expectancy. If he were a much older dog, I would be less likely to allow very extensive treatment for him – both for his good and ours. Usually really expensive medical treatment for animals is pretty intrusive and you can’t explain to a pet why you’re putting him through painful or uncomfortable treatment while lodging him at the vet’s office instead of in his own comfy home. I would consider it worth putting a young, otherwise healthy animal through a difficult month or two if the payoff was likely to be 10 or 15 healthy, happy years. For a pet with only a few years left in his natural life expectancy, making him spend one or two nasty months seems pretty unkind. And, from a purely financial perspective, 10 or 15 years with a healthy, happy pet is a reasonable payoff for 5 or 6 grand, IMO, while 2 or 3 years with an old, ailing pet probably isn’t. And, even in a young pet, extensive treatment for a debilitating illness with a poor prognosis is probably cruel rather than kind.
Two examples: Years ago I had a friend who bought a Sheltie puppy which turned out to have parvo. He had had his first parvo shoot, so, with a lot of expensive medical care, he survived. My friend could barely afford the medical charges – she ended up getting a credit card and putting the $1500 or $2000 dollars on that and paying it off over the next year or two. But, as I said, the dog survived with no ill effects and was a much beloved family pet until his death from old age.
I knew another couple who poured thousands and thousands of dollars into a Mini Schnauzer with a rapid growing cancer. They authorized a number of extremely experimental treatments, but the poor dog never really had a chance. In the end, they spent a nice large chunk of money to essentially torture their sweet dog to death over a period of 6 weeks.
Depends on the situation. In grad school I put a ~$500 surgery on a credit card for my ferret - he was only a year old and had swallowed a thick rubber band, and would die without the surgery. But since then I’ve had other ferrets develop cancer (all too common unfortunately), and if the vet said ‘this will only prolong life for a few months, maybe a year, and I can’t guarantee a good quality of life during that time’ then it’s time to say goodbye, and allow the pet to pass away with some dignity and as little pain as possible.
I guess I see these as two very fundamentally different questions, but I’m going to try and answer them together.
I’m a vet, and I’m young, single, and unable to have children, not that I think I’d want them anyway. So, I suppose I can honestly say that my elderly burmese cat is my family. She is the only one who has been there for me through the crap that my life has turned into over the last couple of years, and I think the world of her.
So, how far would I go? Basically, as long as certain provisions were fulfilled, which I will explain shortly, I would spend everything I had, and ring all my friends and relatives and beg or borrow money. I would take as big a bank loan as I could get. I’d beg in the gutter.
People at work often come in with a critically ill pet and say “money is not the important thing, we just want him/her to get better”, which is a sentiment that I can understand… but these people are often shocked at exactly how big the bill can get (for example, a dog with snakebite envenomation on a ventilator with critical care around the clock usually makes a bill of over AU$1000 a day… and may be in hospital for two weeks). I guess I can claim that I honestly know how much treatment can and might cost, and I am prepared for that when I say “money is no object”. Bankrupcy, ruin, homelessness. I guess that’s the level I’d go to. Admittedly my cat wouldn’t have much of a life if I were homeless, so if that happened she’d have to go live with my parents But it would be worth it to me. And I expect I’d feel the same about any subsequent pets.
Now, those provisions: If the disease was terminal and was causing her to suffer, and palliative therapy had reached the end of its use (eg advanced stage cancer, advanced heart failure), I would most likely not opt to treat any further and would seek a kind death for her. However, that wouldn’t be a financially motivated decision.
If the disease was not terminal, but quality-of-life limiting (for example, severe arthritis, which is what she has), I would pursue palliative therapy until it was no longer effective at maintaining her quality of life, and then seek a kind death (once again, not a financially motivated decision).
If the disease was something that could be repaired (even if expensively, like a fractured femur requiring a bone plate or something like that) but would not impact on her quality of life, and treating her would not cause her to suffer, then the fact that she’s 11 and I don’t expect her to live more than another year, two at best, because of her arthritis, then I would still get it done. The investment of $2000 for a bone plate is more than worth the time to me.
So, that brings us to the uncontrolled epileptic dog. I guess the thing to consider for me in this situation is: how much has been done to try and control this dog’s seizures, and is it suffering?
If it were my dog, I’d have probably seen at least two specialist neurologists for opinions on how to manage it and would probably have it on a fairly sophisticated medication regime. I’d probably take it to work with me so that I could keep an eye on it, so if it were possible to control its seizures I would be doing so. However, I acknowledge that that’s beyond most people. I’d be hoping that if that were possible for this dog, then it would be better controlled. If, however, it weren’t, it would all come down to whether the dog was suffering from the effects of its seizures. Most seizuring dogs seem to be blissfully unaware of the effect of their seizures, even though they look dramatic, and if they are effectively controlled quickly then the physical side effects (on the kidneys, etc) can be minimised. From speaking to human friends with epilepsy, I seem to understand that people aren’t aware of what is happening while they are having a seizure, and if I could generalise this to the dog and decide that, despite its seizures, it wasn’t suffering, I would continue to treat it. Once the dog’s quality of life was being reduced by the frequency of seizures (and I guess I’d have to be living with the dog to work that out), I’d seek a kind death for it. It still wouldn’t be a financial decision, even if I was absolutely broke - but I always have the option of being able to treat my pets myself at cost of drugs and materials (and donating my time) if things get very difficult financially. I don’t currently treat my pets because I don’t feel I would be able to be objective enough.
I don’t think I can answer this question either. My heart says I would do ANYTHING to save my pets from illness, but I can’t afford “anything” and the prognosis really comes into play. It comes down to the individual situation, which I hope I’ll never be in.
Several years ago, when my first dog fell ill, my parents didn’t think twice about paying for whatever it would take to help him, though everything happened in the space of a day, and we didn’t know what we were up against. IIRC, nearly a thousand dollars were spent that day, just trying to stabilize a dog that was little more than a puppy (2.5 years) who had suddenly stopped walking, eating, hearing, had eyes rolled back into his head, tounge rolling out… We even drove him over an hour’s drive to the veterinary school, since our local vet was at a loss. In the end, we lost him to a heart attack, but I have no doubt that my parents would have paid more as long as he was alive, at least until we knew what was happening. The dog’s death devastated my sister, and my parents couldnt stand to see her suffer.
We never really did find out what killed him. A simple autopsy testing for rabies and common household poisons all turned up negative. We’d like to believe it was a stroke, but we’ll never know. My parents chose not to spend an additional 600$ on a more detailed autopsy. We adopted another dog 3 days later, as it was clear my sister needed the routine, the companionship, and as luck would have it, another kennel happened to have a puppy ready for adoption - that’s where the 600$ went instead! Turns out that new dog was full brother to my cousin’s dog, so the adoption was done really quickly since we could be vouched for.
I still miss that mutt (purebred Golden, actually, but I like to call them mutts!) Now I’m crying, and I can’t wait to see my dog when I go home!
It would depend on the prognosis for me, too. I have 3 pets- 2 cats, a 12-yr-old and a 19-yr-old. The 19-yr old is incredibly healthy, given her age, and hasn’t shown any of the usual ailments of old cats. Auggie, the Cutest Dog on the Planet ™, is only about 20 months old. I would happily go into debt, a lot of debt, if I could be assured that the procedure would help and that the quality of life would be maintained. I’d go so far as to mortgage the house if I had to.
I've never had to make the decision to put an animal to sleep, as I still have all of the pets I've acquired as an adult. I would likek to think that I would know when to give up, and not let one of my beloved pets suffer just because I'm not ready to let go.
During my first year of grad school, my cat took a fall from a window and broke lots and lots of bones. The doctor gave me the prognosis and I decided that I couldn’t afford treatment and I didn’t want to put Ziggy through all that pain.
The whole bill came out to be $300, including the x-rays and the Fatal-Plus they put into him. I was only making $12,000 a year, and having to pay that bill made my grief even worse. But I don’t know what else I could have done. I don’t think I could have killed Ziggy on my own.
i’d post in more detail, but i’d be crying my eyes out here at work, and i’d prefer not to do that.
suffice to say, after several thousand dollars over the past year, i still was faced with putting down 2 of my horses within about 6 months of each other (my two oldest). sometimes all the money you can muster still just isn’t enough.
i’m planning on getting that little memorial plaque i saw in a catalog… the one that says (possibly misquoted): “If love could have saved you, you would have lived forever.”
I am answering that question right now. My dog, Sasserfras, is a 3 yr old pound puppy who is a Rhodesian Ridgeback mix (I have had many different opinions from vets and dog experts of what the “mix” is). So my initial investment was only like $100 and she came fixed and with all her shots.
Since January of this year she has had 2 TPLO surgeries at over $3000/ea since she blew out both of her back knees. She is now going to an animal dermatologist for an infection and skin condition that is not responding to antibiotics, plus Sasser is hypotyroid. We just started ANOTHER type of antibiotic which only comes in injection form, so twice a day I give Sasser a shot. I have spent over $1000 and we are not even close to being finished in her treatment. Sasser has also been to the vet numerous times before I started taking her to this dermatologist.
Now I will admit to having a good enough job that these treatments are not anywhere sending me to bankruptcy, but it is causing me a budget carefully. Plus I have to take time off of work to take her to her doctors visits. Both her surgeon and dermatologist are over an hour away in good traffic, if we have an early morning appt during rush hour, we are in traffic for a couple of hours.
Sasser is a sweet, loving dog who when I take her on her walks the kids down the street run to her yelling “doggie” and hang onto her and Sasser gives kisses to each one of them. She just loves children. She is good with other dogs (but this is only since she started having to go to the vet so often). So as long as the prognosis is good for recovery I will do whatever it takes to get Sasser well. The good thing is that the injections seem to be working a bit since she doesn’t have alot of new sores coming up on her skin as she was, but we are still waiting for the biopsy results to come back to hopefully tell us more about what she has.
I’d go pretty damn far to save my cat - but not to total, abject poverty. Much as I love my cat, I’m not willing to give up shelter and have to live on friend’s couches, nor am I willing to end up on charity or food stamps - basically, the financial cut-off is that point where I could no longer sustain myself or provide food and shelter for my cat without massive financial assitance that I would be unable to repay within some well-defined period.
In other words, I’d be willing to endure considerable financial hardship, and perhaps temporarily depend on the kindness of family and friends - but if keeping my cat alive required making financial decisions so damaging that I couldn’t see a way out of them within the medium to long term - then I just couldn’t do it. Maybe that makes me a bad person, but I couldn’t.
But it would be worth it to me. And I expect I’d feel the same about any subsequent pets.