Based on the recent Noem incident but I don’t want any discussion of the politics here.
Let’s say a dog or cat owner brings a healthy young pet into the vet’s office and asks to have it euthanized because they’re unhappy with it.
Will the vet do it without question? Will the vet try to talk them out of it but comply if the owner is insistent? Will the vet refuse and turn the owner away? Will the vet take the animal away from the owner? Does the vet have the right to take away a pet?
Are these decisions up to the vet’s discretion? Are there guidelines that vets follow? Are there laws that vets are required to follow?
I just called my vet’s office to ask about this, and the bottom line is (paraphrasing) hell no.
My vets would not do it; they’re in their line of work to help animals, not kill them at someone’s whim. My vet’s practice would try to talk them out of it, refer them to one of the shelters in the area, try to help them rehome it if possible. But unless euthanasia were justifiable, such as incurable illness degrading the animal’s quality of life, they would refuse.
But say the animal bit a child, causing serious injury? That would be a tough call for them, and I suspect they’d have the owner turn it over to animal control and let that authority decide the critter’s fate. Even then it wouldn’t be a black and white decision, given a child can unknowingly, if not properly supervised, goad a dog into defending itself.
As my friend at the vet’s office pointed out, everyone in the practice is in that often hard and thankless job for the love of animals. They deal with enough sadness doing euthanasia when it’s necessary.
Heck, I get a sympathy card signed by vets and techs whenever I have to put an animal down, and one vet always makes a donation in my critter’s name to an animal welfare charity.
I’m in Massachusetts, by the way, in a semi-rural, semi-suburban area. I watch the Dr. Jeff, Rocky Mountain Vet TV show, and they will try to get owners to sign over to them animals they don’t want/can’t afford treatment for so that the practice can adopt them out.
I think it’s up to the vet involved, and nowadays most small animal practices would not.
This is what the British Veterinary Association (of which my dad is a senior; but retired member) says:
The BSAVA supports the autonomy of the practitioner to refuse euthanasia for mere convenience when there are alternative options such as the owner signing the animal over to the veterinary surgeon or a rescue organisation. However, the decision to euthanise the animal should be appropriate to the actual situation and realistic prospects of the animal. This may include the limitations of the owner to provide further treatment, and the limitations of rescue centres to rehome animals.
They will not do anything unethical. I want to say, “Of course,” but in the context of the Hippocratic Oath it is important to realize that modern veterinary schools only date to the 18th century, and in countries like America, institutionalized veterinary medicine developed comparatively late, and the American Veterinary Medical Association was founded in 1863, talking about regulatory bodies. Professional oaths are mandatory in many countries (e.g., the UK) but this has not been the case in the United States and Canada.
I don’t think euthanizing someones pet on request would be considered immoral by the veterinary authorities in either the UK or US. Nowadays individual vets may decide they can’t countenance it and refuse, but no vet who did so would be sanctioned (in my dad’s day, 40-50 years ago, it would 100% considered the professional duty of a vet to euthanize an unwanted pet)
Someone in that other thread on Noem mentioned in Germany they have laws about unnecessary killing (not just unnecessary suffering) of animals. So maybe they would there.
I cannot deny that (despite the fact that I, personally, have never encountered a professional who would do such a thing) the written codes of professional conduct are not unequivocal. Compared to Europe, both historically and now, and you are correct that European law concerning animals protect the animal for the sake of the animal— animals are not seen as mere property— and that in Germany killing a healthy vertebrate for no good reason is a crime punishable by three years in prison.
IANAV.
But I volunteered at a shelter for enough hours they gave me a plaque as a reward.
I’ve also rescued, fostered and rehomed 100s of animals.
The Vet I use would not. The animal would have to be very ill with no hope of surviving.
We had folks trying to give up dogs and cats and a baby goat once, at the shelter. They almost always said “you’ll have to put it to sleep, no one will want it”
We told them it was a no-kill shelter.
They signed a worthless paper saying they voluntarily gave up the animal and would not purchase or adopt another for an arbitrary 3yr time period.
And then we rehabbed, fostered and re-homed.
We had a few who had become lifelong residents of the shelter. And we all adopted some.
I know a couple vets who worked at the shelter. They claimed they would never kill on request or because of a dumb reason.
There’s a county shelter that euthanized, usually bully/pit type breeds or the ones court ordered to be euthanized.
I don’t think they used a vet for it.
We had an elderly cat that we were quite fond of. She started having a series of health issues that affected her quality of life as well as ours. We went to the vet to suggest euthanizing her, and they basically refused, recommending instead a lot of expensive and invasive treatments. We went to another vet, and they agreed it was time for her to go.
I’ll just add, there was less debate when my mother had an inoperable hip fracture. They don’t call it euthanasia, of course, but they drugged her up and stopped feeding her, resulting in the inevitable.
There is “behavioral euthanasia,” for dogs with severe aggression issues, but are otherwise healthy. Now, whether or not an individual vet is going to just take your word that the dog is a danger and that’s the option is another question.
Agree that that is unethical, as griffin1977 said. I am happy to say that all the vets in the practice I use put quality of life over quantity. When my relatively young cat Schooner developed lymphoma in the neck, we did discuss chemo but quickly ruled it out – costly, would have to take my vet-averse cat to a distant specialist, would likely buy only a few more months than treating symptomatically with steroids.
So Schooner got to live a few more happy months with some alleviation from the steroids, then when his breathing, especially when eating, got too labored, he made his last vet visit. He was still enjoying his life right up to the end.