When is it time to euthanize?

Part Two: My Personal Decision

As the pet parent to six beloved dogs and cats over the last 18 years, the most heart-wrenching decisions I’ve had to make revolved around my cat Eliot and my dog Hans.

Eliot suffered a stroke almost five years ago due to a careless medication error on the part of a new vet. Another vet was able to get him past the worst of it, and a few days in a large university animal hospital brought him around.

I was pressured to euthanize, and I was shocked. The rehearsed words of several veterinarians still echo in my brain:

He has less than 1% chance of surviving

He’s going to be different

He won’t be the same

He’ll need a lot of care

Death at home is messy

When I picked him up, he was soaking wet, reeking of urine, and tangled up in IV tubes as he twirled around in frantic circles in a tiny wire cage. While removing his tubes and needles, the attendant hurriedly explained that she had just bathed him and that he’d peed once again.

Eliot cried pitifully as I gathered him up in my arms and wrapped him in a huge fluffy bath towel. His little paws were clutching at my neck as we stood in the corridor with the vet as he rehearsed the options like a recording. He kept repeating the same script, over and over, and I had no time to think.

I finally made a snap decision: “If Eliot’s going to die, he’s going to die at home. Where do I pay?”

He cried all the way home and hid his face under my chin as I rocked and cradled him against my chest. It took a few weeks of round-the-clock nursing and several visits to specialists, but it wasn’t long before he was hobbling around the house, getting stronger, enjoying his cuddles and his nummies again, nibbling on my house plants, and hanging around my feet wherever I went.

My dog Hans was diagnosed with cancer only a few months later. Once again, I was faced with decisions, only this time they were spread out over a much longer period of time.

How much time, energy, and money do I have to spend?

What can I do?

How will I know when it’s time to euthanize?

At that point, all I knew was that “everyone” puts a dog or cat to sleep at a certain point during an illness, but I had no reference points, no experience, nothing on which to base the decision. It was just an assumption, but something didn’t feel right. I had no solid belief about the matter, and I don’t like to make assumptions, so I investigated.

I spent many long hours reading and researching everything available about canine cancer, treatments, and options as well as end of life decisions. At the same time, I was still learning how to care for Eliot: reading lab reports, administering subcutaneous fluids, figuring out the best way to give him a pill.

Well-meaning friends on a support forum told me I would know when it’s time, and that my dog or cat would look at me in a special way and I’d just know. I gazed into Hans’ eyes every day, and all I saw was his will to live. I only saw life, not impending death. When I cuddled Eliot and his purrs vibrated through my chest, I got the same thing. They weren’t thinking about death. They weren’t feeling sorry for themselves. They were living in the moment, and their will to live was overriding discomfort or temporary pain or changes in their routines. Their assumption was that they were alive and that this was life but, like a fish in water, they didn’t question it.

Maybe my friends meant something more serious, I thought, like when an animal is writhing in pain, or something like that.

It didn’t take long for my beliefs to solidify. When I adopted each dog and cat in my animal family, I vowed to care for them to the best of my abilities, to keep them safe from harm, to love them, and to give them the happiest life that I possibly could. I hadn’t promised to spare them the normal process of life, growth, decline, and death. I wouldn’t ever let them suffer, but I wasn’t going to willfully take away their right to live their lives and get old or sick and die according to their terms.

My final decision is something like this: I will only euthanize if

• Bad days exceed good ones
• Pain or suffering cannot be relieved
• Happiness is no longer experienced regularly
• No interest in previous pleasures (toys, bones, walks, hugs, cuddles, kisses, car rides)
• No communication with me (with eyes, purrs, sounds, physical movements, licking, head-butting, etc)
• All resources for care have been exhausted in which case pain medication, if or as needed, will be given. If it’s ineffective or interferes with quality of life, and if the animal is in pain, euthanasia may be the right thing to do
• Sudden extreme situations, such as seizures that can’t be stopped or a bad accident, may require quick decisions to prevent suffering

My decision is largely based on my unwillingness to take the life of any living creature. It’s a personal, spiritually-based decision and, as a vegetarian for most of my adult life, I had some ideas already formed about my beliefs. It took a lot more reading and thinking, though, before I came up with a practical plan for my pets that I could work with and live with.

I know everyone’s different, and I’d never begrudge someone’s decision about their pet, as long as it’s made out of love and caring for the animal. And I wouldn’t hesitate to euthanize when an animal is suffering and there’s no other choice.

But I do have choices. It doesn’t seem like it, though, when vets assume that euthanasia is the next step. I’ve learned that, for many people, it is the next step, but what came first? Vets who don’t discuss viable options or people who want vets to euthanize? It’s hard to say, but there are options. Just like my animals have the right to live out their lives, I also have the right to support them in it, no matter what a veterinarian says. All I need to know is, what are my options?

Read more on what the options are and check out some guidelines for determining Quality of Life in Part One: How will I know when it’s time to euthanize my pet?

Comments are always welcome.

©Leah McClellan