Quote: (03-25-2018 01:48 PM)Ski pro Wrote:I’ve just about mastered the art of knowing when it’s time.
For those of you that has had to put a dog down.
The wisdom says when it’s time you will know but I struggle to see when one would see this.
How did you know it was time?
1. The animal is old. If they’ve exceeded the average life expectancy and at the high limit, you know they’re old.
2. Their hygiene falters.
3. They’re no longer themself, or a shell of what they were.
4. They piss/shit everywhere when they previously didn’t.
5. When dealing with the animal reduces your quality of life, and yet your actions do not improve the quality of the animal’s life.
I had a black lab I got as a puppy. He lived a charmed life on a farm with river access and a swimming pool. He went through a bout of heart worms which slowed him considerably, and he eventually decided he was going to be an inside dog. Not a problem. He did this for the last few years. He’d go out side to shit/piss. He reached 13. Congestive heart failure set in along with incontinence. I remembered the dog in his youth when he would jump off the end of the pier into the river. Those days were long past. He slowed down A LOT. I was moving to a new house and I was not going to have him pissing and shitting on the floor. He sometimes shit himself while asleep. I had him put down on the day I moved. He was old, diminished quality of life, and I wasn’t going to let an animal ruin my new house, pissing and shitting everywhere. He was not going to get better.
I had another dog who was 13/14 years old. She had 4-5 seizures over the course of a weekend. The final seizure was particularly bad. When she finally came around, you could see the lights were on, but no one was home. The other dogs stayed away from her because they knew something wasn’t right. She sat and barked at the wall all night. At 7AM I called the vet and told him I was bringing the dog to be put down. The dog was old. She clearly suffered a permanent brain injury from a stroke. There was no treatment. No bringing her back. I wasn’t t going to spend the money to diagnose a problem that couldn’t be fixed. I couldn’t be kept up at night by a dog barking at the wall in confusion.
I’ve done this several times and it always follows the same pattern. Old animal, no quality of life, no chance of improvement. Once you can see and accept it, it’s not a difficult call to make. You know you did right when any feelings of guilt are alleviated with a feeling of relief.