Neither. It was a “there’s not a damn thing else we can do to help her feel better” line.
I had a 15 year old Boston terrorist. She had a seizure disorder, was in congestive heart failure, and had a blown cervical disk in her back. We were managing the CHF and seizures with meds, but when she jumped off the bed in the middle of the night and blew the disk, the pain meds for that overloaded her kidneys, which started shutting down. The last time I took her in to the vet, he listened to her heart, started rattling off treatment options and asked me to flip her over so he could listen to her other lung. As I picked her up (she couldn’t even stand on the exam table anymore) to flip her over, she simultaneously started projectile vomiting while throwing down a doozy of a grand mal seizure. She was on phenobarbitol at the time; breakthrough seizures are definitely a sign that it’s time. That was her third seizure in 48 hours.
I looked over at the vet. He looked shocked and dismayed, like, “Now I’ve gotta tell her we’ve gotta whack her dog.” I said, “It’s time, isn’t it?” Vet said, “I’m afraid so.” “It’s not too soon? We can’t do a damn thing for her anymore, right?” He said, “Right. You’ve done absolutely everything you could. It’s not too soon.”
I left her in his care for the afternoon because I had to get back to work. After work, I went over there and held her while my vet killed my dog. At least he apologized to her first. It was the first time she’d gotten really restful sleep in months. It was the right thing to do and it was just the right timing. A week prior would have been too soon and even another day later and she would have just suffered too much. That was on a Monday and I still wish I’d done it Friday night. Would have made for a crappy weekend for me, but we both had a horrible weekend. By Monday morning I knew neither one of us should have to go through another 24 hours of that and I feel badly about just the two days. She was doped up on Valium for most of the weekend, which gave me and my friends a chance to say our goodbyes. So if anything, it was a smidge after when it should have been, but 3-4 days before, she was still wobbling (her perky trot long gone) around the yard sniffing for squirrels.
I must respectfully disagree with this - sometimes you do, but you don’t always know until afterwards, when you’ve kept your pet alive too long. If it’s not obvious (like it was in your case), using an objective list is a very good idea, since we get used to our pets and we get used to their foibles and weaknesses, and we don’t always see them as they are. My sister kept her old cat alive much too long - he had some strokes, and had no quality of life, but she just adapted and didn’t do what she should have.
With one of ours, we didn’t know. The dog simply started to lose muscle mass until he could barely walk - but did not seem to be in pain or have any other quality of life issues. He was completely fine just lying around, but couldn’t get around on his own. He had only one good leg left when we made the decision. We still never found out what the cause was. He was only 10. We spent over $6,000 trying to find out and 3 days after we put him down my boss laid me off, knowing how much I’d just spent.
With our second, it was easier, stomach cancer, and she definitely wasn’t having a very good life.
Our third one now, has had 3 seizures in 3 years, and a worrisome head twitch, and it scares me.
One of my cats recently had breast cancer. We weren’t sure if surgery was going to be effective. I asked the vet that question. She said it was when the cat stopped eating. If we account for the fact that sometimes pets and people are off their stomach for a few days, this seems sensible.
I’ve been lucky in having amazing, incredible vets who were so good about end of life issues. My favorite vet back in Ohio said, “You pretty much never see people do it too soon. It’s always too late.”
I’ve had a lot of cats euthanized. God. I’ve never really tried to tally them up and I don’t think I’ll start. I’ve felt like I made the right decision the vast majority of the time. There were two that continue to bother me. One was Albert, who suffered from prolonged, extensive depression and misery after my first husband died. The other was my little Cosmo who developed extremely rapid weightloss and cold intolerance and perpetual digestive upsets. We didn’t have a cause for it, though we had ruled out everything treatable. She was down to just over three pounds when I decided it was time. I still feel like I should have maybe done more with both of them. My rational mind disagrees, but my gut says I went too soon some days, and made the right decision other days.
ETA: I forgot to say that this is a difficult and stressful decision and you have to trust yourself and your vet and know that it’s a kind thing and a good thing to do.
I don’t really have an answer to the original question that adds anything beyond what has already been posted. What I came in to post was that it’s well worth asking around for a vet that will come to your house. We’ve had to arrange that twice in the last couple of years and it’s so much easier, especially for a cat.
We’re lucky in that our regular vet already does house calls for normal visits, so it’s a natural extension of his services. But he was out of town when our middle cat was diagnosed with cancer. He gave us a list of backup home visit vets to call, so I would assume most places will have someone available for a home visit.
That was one of the saddest days of my life. My 15-year-old cat had bad kidneys, and for a long time she was doing fine with a special diet, but then one day everything went downhill fast. I probably did far more than I should have to try to bring her back to health, including new food (that she wouldn’t eat) IV medicine and other things, but eventually it became obvious that she wasn’t going to recover. I remember the last time she crawled into my lap. She was so thin and weak that I knew that it was going to be the last time, and took her in for her final visit to the vet the next day.
This decision is so hard. I have had to make it more than once, and it seems I have never come to terms (with any of my choices) as to when it is the right time. One beloved pet was diagnosed with cancer, and clearly in pain, but I lamented not getting him pain medications, and keeping him longer. Another pet had kidney problems, and other age related hardships ( a cat past 20), yet I still felt that I could have waited longer. Two other aged pets I feel I kept around too long, for what they were going through-healthwise, and felt guilty for not being brave enough to move faster on it. So, I still have yet to experience the right time, and situation for this decision. It has been that difficult for me.
It’s just a year since we had to make the decision to euthanise our 8 1/2 year old Labrador. I’m still so sad we had to do it, and I went to the list, I guess looking for validation of our decision. Not whether to do it; that was never an issue, but when to do it. Unfortunately I couldn’t read the list. I started reading the verse about the Rainbow Bridge and just teared up.
I think about our dog frequently and that last day with her. I took her and our other dog for their morning walk. By this time she could only manage to the end of the street and back but she still looked forward to it so much. Her tail wagging as I got the pooh bags and their leads off the hook by the door and how she used to do a little hop in her eagerness to get underway are constant memories.
My partner had arranged a get together of our friends for a barbeque the Sunday before and everyone had a chance to farewell her. Arno still tells people that she spent the day staring at angels. She had a brain tumour that had affected her sight and she would lie on the grass just looking up into the sky. This had started during the previous week while we were away and friends were dog sitting for us. When we got home on the Saturday, we could see it was time. Her balance was pretty shaky, her sight was going and her movements were staggery as she lost control of her body. She still had her normal Lab appetite though. She also snored really loudly and drank a lot of water because of the Prednisone she was on to try to control her symptoms.
Perhaps we should have acted before we went away for a week, but when we went the symptoms were well controlled and we thought she could have had a month or more before needing to act. One of the vets we had seen in the previous weeks had told us that it was only matter of time, but another wasn’t willing to say anything, but had left the consulting room so we could discuss whether to do it then or not. That was two days before Christmas. How horrible it would have been then and every year after? Just unthinkable. I guess she thought we would decide to do it because we weren’t going to be at home for a week but there just didn’t seem to be the urgency at that time.
Anyway, my 2 cents worth, and here’s a picture of our two girls in very happy times a couple of years ago.
We have lost two cats, both very suddenly while I was away at college. The first cat was 5 years old and my dad came home from work and noticed that he was suddenly acting very sick (extremely lethargic, drooling, labored breathing, etc.). He rushed the cat immediately to the vet. The cat lived just long enough for the rushed bloodwork to come back showing massive kidney failure, then died on the table in the vet’s office. Since he was only 5 and had seemed perfectly healthy up until that afternoon, they were going to try emergency dialysis to see if they could get him at least through the acute crisis and then figure out where to go from there, but he died so fast there wasn’t even time for a decision to put him down or anything else. It was literally minutes. I am sure he suffered in his last day and for that I am terribly sorry, but I don’t know what else we could have done. An autopsy later showed he had a hidden birth defect and had essentially been a ticking time bomb.
Our other cat was 14, had been diagnosed with cancer, and was staying at the vet for a couple of days to get some more tests and see if it would be treatable without too much pain for her. Her condition suddenly got much worse and the overnight vet at the pet hospital called my parents at about 2:00 AM, told them she was in severe distress and that he thought she was really suffering, and what did they want to do? They wound up giving consent over the phone in the middle of the night for her to be put down immediately. They wanted to be there to say good-bye but they didn’t want to torture her for the extra 20 minutes it would take to drive over there.
Just writing this has me welling up in tears thinking of when the time will come for my chubby little sweetie asleep on the couch in the next room. I think it’s a horrible decision to have to make even when it’s obvious. Owning a pet is a blessing, but this part is the curse.
For my kitty, Frizzle, it was when he was so weak he had to be carried everywhere, and started peeing where he sat. By that point he was so thin, and had lost so much muscle mass, that he would shiver whenever we’d take him outside, even wrapped in a blanket.
I don’t think for a moment that we made the wrong decision. If anything we should have let him go sooner. What I do regret is that we didn’t find someone who could come to our house and do it. He was always very calm and sweet at the vet, but it was clear he didn’t like it. Whenever we’d stick him in the carrier and bundle him into the car, he would meow pitifully all the way there. In earlier years this was cute and funny–but the last time we took him, it was horrible and sad. It just felt shitty to be taking him to The Bad Place to have The Ultimate Bad Thing to be done to him.
About a week after he died, there was an article in the newspaper about a local service that did home euthanasia, and I felt guilty all over again. If only we’d thought to look into it, Frizzle’s last moments could have been spent in peace with familiar surroundings.
Lots of great info here, thanks! I’, going to be more direct with the vet next time we are in (which seems to be at least once a week).
The other issue is making sure my wife and I are on the same page when the time comes. I don’t want her to feel pushed into anything, I know she would resent that.
There’s an inflection point in quality of life the animal gets to.
My current cat will be 22 this spring. She’s completely blind, mostly deaf, and thin as a rail.
But a couple years ago she’d gotten down to 5 pounds from a norm of 10 and wouldn’t take meds. The vets said she wouldn’t get better. I didn’t like that answer and scoured the internet and found a few approaches. It took 6 months of intense care including sub-q fluids and a lot of “recovery” cat food, but she got back to 6.5 pounds and more of her old self.
This morning she climbed on top of my head and sat there pawing at the sheet I’d defensively deployed over my head and meowed for breakfast. As long as she works at it, that tells me quality of life is there.
I recognized it. I put my dog to sleep today. She was 11 years old, had arthritis, cataracts, urinating in the house. Going to the vet she always shivered; not this time… In the room, after walking around, listening to sounds of cats, other dogs, she finally sat down while we waited for the veternarian. Looking at her, she was smiling; however, I was reminded of why I was there. I remembered the bad shape she’s in. When the vet shaved the fur on her arm, she growled, showing her teeth. Don’t you dare hurt me, she was saying to the veternarian. Then, the veternarian gave her the injection. I will always remember that grunt whimper she let out.
When did I know? Gradually, over time.
How did I know? I looked at her and petted her afterwards, and I thought, if there were some injection with which to revive her, I would say no to it. Reviving her would still leave the arthritis, the cataracts, the urinating in the house.
If we did not love our pets, the decision would be easy. I’ve had to euthanize a few pets over the years. Some have been a more clearly ‘now is the time’ moment than others. A sudden turn for the worse in an existing health condition, easier decision. But watching a dog in a long, slow decline has to be the hardest to know when to draw the line.
For me, the pets were mine and I was the only one who had to make the decision. I had no one else to blame if I had second thoughts. You and your wife both have to support each other in the decision about your pets.
I think that if you have considered the medical options that were available and affordable, and you see your dogs getting worse or suffering more, then it’s time.
I think there is an unconscious thought in pet lovers (or maybe just me) that if they don’t do everything they possibly can medically, or just decide before things get really bad to euthanize, that they are bad pet owners and do not love their pets. I struggled with this before I made the decision to euthanize my severely dysplastic and suddenly suffering, but otherwise healthy labx last spring. I was afraid to tell my best friend because I was worried that she would think I had not done enough to try to save him.
My parents-in-law’s cat is very similar - she’s over 20, thin as a rail, too, but she doesn’t have any conditions, and she doesn’t seem to be in any pain, and she still enjoys sitting on a warm lap and napping. She stopped grooming a while ago so they brush her all the time now, but she still eats enthusiastically - I think when she goes off her food or stops wanting any attention, they’ll know it’s time for her.
I’ve been thinking about what I posted before and wanted to add this: The temperament of the animal matters a lot. Some will take to the life of the pampered invalid some won’t. One of my favourite cats just hated being ill. Following a successful operation when she was thirteen I confined her to one room for the convalesence and she simply refused to eat. We got over that but two years later her kidneys were failing. She was being medicated, she could still get around but she wasn’t able to carry out her usual outdoor routine any more. Again she wasn’t eating. I knew that cat and I knew that she could eat if she wanted too but she didn’t. I knew it was time, she wasn’t going to get better and she’d had enough. Still miss her actually, best cat I ever had.
