When did you decide to euthanize your pet?

[Ferret_Herder]

@overlyverbose

Then if our son starts asking questions, I’ll have to come to a consensus with my husband (he prefers telling him she’s living with the vet now; I prefer the truth because I’m a terrible liar and prone to forget even half-truths).

I don’t know your son’s situation but I prefer your idea. It’ll hurt either way but finding out your parents lied isn’t nice, and I remember learning about my first dog’s euthanasia similarly. She couldn’t use her hind legs well any longer and would whimper when you touched the top of her head. (IIRC there was at least a tumor, maybe other problems.) As kids we were sad and shocked and kind of mad that she couldn’t just be “fixed” but we learned about the death of a pet and how sometimes doctors can’t fix problems, and as an adult I learned I had to be a responsible pet owner and do my best to gauge when things were too tough and a pet had to be released from suffering.

[Poysyn]

From this thread - I put my cat to sleep today - Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share - Straight Dope Message Board

I put my cat to sleep today

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As I held his noble head and scratched his battle-scarred ears, the vet put my once mighty warrior to sleep.

He used to be king of the neighborhood, taking on all comers and the bane of birds and rodents everywhere.

In recent years he has slowed down a lot, preferring a sunbeam to a fight, but he was always my little toughie.

I didn’t want to do it, kept thinking he’d get better, but the yowling from the basement and the obvious discomfort told o lies. You weren’t happy anymore. The lap that used to be yours alone was now taken up with a baby. The pillow you used to sleep beside was now used for nursing the new baby.

You let us know your unhappiness by peeing on our clothes adn I tried to overlook it, when it was dirty laundry. But when you began getting the clean clothes (including baby clothes) and started yearning to go back outside I knew it was time.

I tried to find you a new family, but at fourteen years old you were set in your ways. I held on, hoping you’d come around, but you started not grooming yourself, sleeping constantly and generally being miserable. You walked the halls all night, and threw up. The vet tested you for everything that would be simple to treat. Everything was negative.

So today I kissed your little nose, and told you it would be okay, even though I knew it wouldn’t. I’m so sorry I lied. One last meow, not quite the trumpeting war cry of yesterday and you were gone.

I wish I had been a better mom.

I love you.

Sleep well, sweet baby.

[interface2x]

I had to do this about a year and a half ago. One of the hardest things I’ve ever done.

@EmAnJ

I totally know what you mean. I can’t even look in her room right now, I just close the door. I don’t know if I should get rid of her stuff or if I’d regret it later.

After my girl was gone, I couldn’t bring myself to clean the little paw-prints off my coffee table for two weeks. I still have a tiny little ball of fur that I kept.

[maplekiwi]

@maladroit

overlyverbose I’m sorry about your cat. My old dog is 14, and if it was just me I’d have her put down now, but my husband says as long as she can still beg and wag her tail he can’t do it. Last summer when all the other pets (don’t ask) had fleas she was the only one not scratching or chewing at the base of her tail. I don’t think she can any more. She walks funny, and takes a really long time to go from standing to sitting. She’s no longer interested or able to be housebroken, I don’t know which. I think her back legs fall asleep or something because she’s pretty wobbly when she first gets up from sleeping. She’s weak, she can’t jump up on the furniture like she used to, it’s an awkward scramble. She also has those fatty lumps all over, a really big one in one of her front ‘armpits’. Anyway, I just keep trying to get DH to take her to the vet for a professional opinion but he’s resisting because he knows what they’re gonna say. Oh yeah, and her feet slide out from under her when she’s on slick (wood, tile) surfaces. Once I found her with all 4 legs splayed out, laying in a puddle of her own pee, bellowing like I’ve never heard a dog do. I had to pick her up, she couldn’t get up on her own. She’s also had a seizure, she was limp and motionless for over an hour, then gradually came out of it. He knows it’s time to let her go, he just can’t.

Hi Maladroit. Read my previous thread. I went behind my husband’s back in the end. He is never going to be able to put a pet down - your husband sounds the same. My only regret is not doing it 6 months sooner.

[EddyTeddyFreddy]

@EmAnJ

I have not yet washed her food bowl or put away her collar, which is sitting on the table next to her bed still, next to her favorite ball. I can’t bring myself to enter her room yet to pull off the sheets to wash them.

It’s been four and a half years since Nick died, and to this day his grooming box, with its curries and brushes and combs still flecked with the dust of primping him, sits on a shelf in my basement untouched since the day I took it home from New Hampshire, never to be used for another horse. The locks of mane and tail hair I cut from Nick’s empty husk when the soul departed sit coiled in it. For months I couldn’t even look at it without crying.

I have several bridles hanging on a rack nearby, some of them Nick’s. I keep thinking how this one or that one would look so fine on my Ben or Commander. But somehow, I just can’t do it; just can’t alter the fit for another horse, can’t swap out Nick’s bit for the kind that Ben or Commander prefers.