Eons ago, I worked part time in my dad’s office and rode to work with him. One of the ladies in his carpool had a poodle. Even at the tender age of 16, I recognized that the way she talked about her dog and the way she talked about her husband said a lot about how I assume she treated them both. I could be wrong…
Face it, there are whack-a-doodles all over the place.
And even then, for behavior issues, people are certainly justified in giving up on their children/spouses/parents if that’s what it takes to protect other members of the household.
I gave up on a dog. I had a 3-year-old child at the time. The dog had never been at all aggressive toward the baby, and in fact had exhibited protective behavior toward him. But during a very short period (like, 3 weeks), he had bitten everyone else in the family and it was just a matter of time. Could not take that chance.
I did feel the dog could be worked with, and when I took him back to the pound where I’d adopted him 6 years before, I explained all this and gave them one hell of a donation. I don’t know if it saved him. I do think someone could have worked with him, but not someone who had a small child.
We had a similar attitude with our dogs when we were first married. We spend close to 5K, maybe more, on cancer treatment for our beloved malamute until we were told there was nothing more the vet oncologist could do. At the time were were also taking care of my mother, so finances were stretched to the limit.
Our second malamute developed bone cancer not two years after we’d rescued him. We’d wanted him treated as aggressively as the first malamute, but we simply couldn’t afford it. He wasn’t a candidate for amputation because of his size, so we made the decision to put him down before he could no longer walk. Was he in pain in the meantime? We’ll never know.
We lost my Ember Dog (border collie cross) to a phenomenon common in older dogs where the larynx collapses upon itself, thereby closing off the throat. It’s typically cause for euthanasia because the dog would never be able to withstand treatment. The emergency vet was able to clear Ember’s throat long enough for us to say goodbye. We had to completely revise our budget to pay the bill.
We love our dogs but we’re also mindful of the practicalities of their care. We, of course, didn’t want to put them down, but we always have to consider the economics of the situation too.
I agree 100% on this and it’s a travesty. But that’s another topic, I believe in this same forum.
Absolutely, and very common in animal rescue. I could tell you stories… What I object to is when people stereotype all rescue volunteers into the same wack-a-doo category.
I don’t think the Tough Love approach includes euthanasia.
“Uncle Billy’s just too mean a drunk. It’s time to put him down.” :eek:
This for me as well.
Which isn’t what Velocity did above. So to recap - you asked for a cite about behavior that you yourself have seen, that you claim is common in animal rescue, and could tell us stories about?
I spent a lot of money trying to keep a gerbil alive. He got an abscess in his side and I took him to the vet three times to get it drained. The last time I was taking him to the vet and my boyfriend at the time noticed the scab fell off and what was underneath was clearly cancerous so that was his last trip. 
I had just moved and this was my first visit to the new vet, so they didn’t charge me for the euthanasia. (They felt sorry for me.)
Sorry, I might have a knee jerk on this. Too many times I’ve participated in discussions about animal welfare and had people who self-identify as not caring about animals pop in to marvel at all of us nutjobs who put animals ahead of humans. Not one person said they put animal welfare ahead of human welfare, but inevitably someone accuses us of it. I apologize to Velocity if I misunderstood his comment.
Okay, right now, I don’t know what to do. I have just spent $600 to get my cat looked at/tested. Just talked to the vet. I don’t like this vet–well, I like her, she’s a nice, caring person, but I can’t talk to her. She cuts loose with a string of medical gobbledy-gook and I don’t know what it means.
TLDR version: My cat, 13.5 years old (educated guess) is obviously hungry, but will only eat a little. A year and a half ago when he had dental work done he had normal labs and weighed 11 pounds. Now he weighs under 7 lbs. and has anemia and [something to do with kidney function] although his kidneys are normal size.
I don’t know what to do. What the vet seems to be saying is, we can do some more tests, an unltrasound with maybe a needle biopsy to determine if he has lymphoma and what kind.
Or we could do palliative care, which to me means: Your cat is dying, but we can make him comfortable.
I know the thread title is “Never give up on a DOG.” Is palliative care giving up?
If he is dying, I don’t want him to spend his last days doing something that he really hates, i.e., being put into a cat cage and taken to the vet and poked. But if I can get a few more years out of him…I don’t even know.
My cats typically have lived 16-18 years, so this one seems to be going down a bit early. I really wish I could communicate a little better with this vet. I almost want to ask them if one of the other doctors (specifically one other dr.) could talk to me about these lab results and x-rays, instead of the one I talked to. Would that be rude?
I agree, my cat is allowed to defend herself against my 2 and 5 year old kids. We also spent time to train her out of biting as a kitten. It’s normal for kittens to play bite each other, sometimes a little too hard.
It’s also almost unheard of for a housecat to actually kill a human. The only documented cat fatality I have ever found is this one from 2001 in the UK. The cat got off a one in a million scratch right on a varicose vein, and it sounds like they did not realize how serious it was right away and delayed calling the paramedics. There have probably been a few fatal rabies cases or runaway bite infections over the past hundred years, but overall it seems like less than a 1 in a Billion shot.
In terms of giving up due to medical issues, I think potential pet owners should ask themselves if they can come up with $500 in an emergency before they adopt. On the other hand, millions of healthy cats and dogs are euthanized in shelters every year, so it seems silly to scold one individual for not being able to come up with the money for treatment. Unwanted pets are a huge problem that is not going to be solved by one person.
I’m sorry about your kitty’s difficulties. It’s possible he’s at the end of his natural life. While it’s common for indoor-only cats to live to 18 - 20 years, it’s very much an individual thing. Giving him palliative care is the opposite of giving up. It just means giving him pain meds to make him comfortable so that you can enjoy him a little longer.
You should be able to ask someone for a better explanation. Perhaps if you post some of the keywords of his diagnosis here we can tell you what they mean.
We were on the verge of having to put our dog Lexi to sleep when she died of a stroke. She was always somewhat feisty, but she had been getting downright mean for a few months. Like she’d just all of a sudden snap at you when you walked past her, or she wouldn’t let you put her leash on her when I had to take her outside. Then once she almost bit our cat Piper who rubbed up against her – and she and Piper had always been very close. I’ve heard dogs can suffer dementia, so I’m wondering if it was some kind of brain thing because she was getting older, or what. She wouldn’t let us groom her without getting really nasty – and she once bit our neighbor. (He was cool about it, but she absolutely hated him for some reason).
As far as animals that get old and sick, I don’t think it’s right to make them suffer – if you can keep them comfortable and painfree, that’s one thing. But when it gets to the point that they’re in more pain than can be dealt with – animals aren’t like humans. They don’t understand it the way we do. It’s cruel to make them suffer like that.
(My Gypsy had a stroke just one day, and the vet didn’t even give us the few minutes to spend with her before they put her down. She was that bad.)
We keep our pets going as long as they’re comfortable, even if that means spending significant amounts of money. If the pet can’t be made comfortable, that’s another story.
We have given up on two foster dogs for behavioral issues. One dog had a strong prey drive and could not be trained to leave the cats alone. We asked the rescue to find her a more appropriate foster home. The other was doing well but became increasingly aggressive toward our resident dog and visitors. The rescue trainer agreed that she couldn’t be trained out of this behavior. The vet suggested that the dog might simply have canine dementia and recommended euthanasia as preferable to 24x7 crating.
I’ve loved my dogs, but I have two rules.
NO chemo for dogs. I’ve been through cancer in a dog and unless it’s surgically removable with good margins I won’t go to chemo. There is a sad lesson of misery for myself and the dog, and I learned my lesson from that.
The age of the dog counts. I would do major surgery for a young dog, but no for an old one for example.
I have three dogs, they are the first dogs I have ever owned. I love them all. They are now 11 and 10, and when their time comes, I will be the first one to haul them to the vet to have their suffering ended. I only hope someone will do the same for me when my time comes.
In a special interest group people tend to gain status by having the most extreme position. Especially on the internet where you can bullshit.
If a dog related group generally agrees that you should look after your dog well, then if I say I would do almost anything to keep my dog alive, you can trump me by saying you’d do *anything *to keep your dog alive.
Sorry, “treat” wasn’t the best choice of words for me to use…maybe a better one would be animal-lovers who don’t just love animals, but are downright misanthropic about it.
I’m reminded of a Post Secret where someone wrote that the more time they spent at the animal shelter the more they loved animals and despised humanity, and also about a section in David Brenner’s book,* I Think There’s a Terrorist in My Soup*, where he described how he once went to watch a movie in a theater, and the opening scene of the movie showed a battlefield littered with many dead human bodies, and the audience didn’t bat an eye, but then the camera panned to show a dog tied to a tank with a leash, and the audience gasped loudly.
Okay, for anyone reading this who might know. His liver function was fine. His kidney function numbers were off, way off. But his kidneys are the appropriate size. He is anemic. At the time of the blood test he was also somewhat dehydrated, which may have made the numbers look better.
Here are his symptoms: He wants to eat, he meows for food, he only takes a couple of bites, then he meows again. We have tried feeding him canned food, his regular food is dry food (Science Diet for sensitive stomach, which is what our other cat had to eat so we fed it to both of them). We have tried feeding him tuna, and he licks the juice. He also licks the gravy off canned food.
In the last month he has lost A LOT of weight.
My question to the vet was, what if this is about his teeth? He had his teeth worked on a year and a half ago.
She said yeah, his teeth are bad, but he’s got more serious problems.
So my question is, could these symptoms be caused by malnutrition, and could the malnutrition be because of his teeth? Like, he tries to eat–and he does try–but it hurts, so he stops. (He stops, we don’t know why. But tooth problems seem kind of likely, at least to me.)
She talked, but she did not actually answer the question. She seems to feel he should have an ultrasound, and possibly a biopsy, to determine if there is lymphoma and what kind.
But the thing is, other than the food issue, he’s normal. He’s not acting sick. He’s drinking water, using his litterbox–regular stools, although fewer of them. He’s a clingy cat and is always hanging about with people, walking on the keyboard, sitting on the printer. Jumping into a lap. He plays. He runs up the stairs. He jumps onto things, although this, not so much, because I think he is very weak and obviously he’s lost a lot of muscle.
He has been sick in the past, and he behaved differently. He stayed away from us. Hid out.
I am really kind of angry about trying to talk to this vet and not really getting an answer. But I have to ask if it’s just that I’m not getting an answer I like. And I think that’s not it.