(Continued)
You remember that last week we began looking at quantifiable and measurable criteria that would assist the caring pet owner in making a well-considered decision on the question of putting the beloved pet to sleep. Today, we will continue with a text I found that absolutely helps an owner. Most of the text has already been covered by our discussions on euthanasia. However, I am reproducing these considerations because they nicely sum up that which we went into so much detail about. Let’s look at these observations that will help the pet owner to make the correct decision.
Your pet is now spending more time in the vet’s clinic than it is at home:
The significance of this obviously depends on the disease or condition the animal has. There are many curable diseases (albeit severe ones) that require a pet to spend a lot of time in vet’s clinic or going back and forth from hospital (eg, certain surgical conditions that might require frequent follow-ups or follow-up procedures). This point is directed more towards those
of you who have pets with chronic and/or terminal illnesses (eg advanced heart failure, renal failure, severe chronic pancreatitis, cancer). These pets often get to the end stage of their disease whereby they are so ill (all the time) that they keep on having to be admitted for hospital stays (often on a weekly basis) in order to receive fluids, treat vomiting or diarrhoea, manage pneumonia, manage pain, manage congestive heart failure symptoms and so on. Eventually these sick pets are staying in hospital more than they are staying at home and this is stressful and really not much of a life for a much loved pet. It is terribly emotional and distressing for the owners of the pet too, not to have the ailing animal at home.
The pet has a terminal illness and is admitted to the vet clinic because of acute, emergency deterioration:
It is not uncommon for pets with severe, chronic and/or terminal illnesses to experience an acute episode of disease-related deterioration necessitating a rapid trip to the nearest emergency centre or vet clinic. For example: animals with internal cancers are often presented to veterinary clinics in states of severe shock and collapse after having haemorrhaged severely from their large tumours; animals with congestive heart failure are often presented to emergency centres with signs of severe pulmonary oedema (fluid on the lungs) and distressed breathing; animals with renal failure may be presented with severe vomiting of blood and shock; cats with hyperthyroidism or cardiac disease may be presented with an acute thromboembolism (blood clots entering the hind legs or lungs and causing, respectively, sudden paralysis and pain in the hind legs or acute respiratory distress). When confronted with acute, severe deterioration of a pet’s terminal condition, it is often kinder for owners to let these pets go (put them down) rather than working on them intensively and putting them through aggressive medical treatment just to revive them and bring them back for the very short term.
The pet has no quality of life:
Quality of life is a subjective, tricky term that can apply to many facets of a pet’s life, not just its physical health. It also applies to the pet’s mental health as well. An animal that is sick all the time, barely eats any food, is losing weight severely, is in constant pain, can’t get to its feet and so on can easily be described as having poor quality of life. Likewise, an animal that is in constant mental anguish (eg, an animal that is suffering from severe, unmanageable separation anxiety or that is not coping at all well with blindness) may be considered to have a poor quality of life. Does the family wish to perpetuate this situation?
You are starting to feel that you are keeping the pet alive, more because you can’t say goodbye and not because the pet has a good quality of life:
Don’t feel ashamed or guilty if you are in this position. It is probably the most common reason why pets that should be euthanised are not. Pets are important members of the family, in many cases taking up a big portion of our own lives (a cat that lives to 25 has been with its owner a third of that owner’s life or more). We come to rely on their sure presence as much as on the presence of any human member of the family. We need them. It is hard to say goodbye. At the same time, an owner’s inability to let go should not be a reason why a suffering pet is made to go on living. Once you have come to the realisation that you are keeping your pet alive because you can’t live without it, it is time to let go. Putting down a pet is hard, but is also an act of extreme self-sacrifice and mercy. You don’t want a loved family member to suffer.
NB I know that some of TPC’s readers will say that the above text relates more to North American/European pet care systems. That may be so; but the thrust of the discourse remains the same, any place in the world.
Next week we will look at the options/methodologies used to put the animal to sleep; and also how to dispose of the body.
