Quote:
Originally Posted by Iowa_Flames_Fan
I think one of the greatest gifts we can give our pets is a painless passing. They give us so much--and expect nothing in return--and in my view we owe it to them to spare them any suffering that we can. With that said, no-one but you knows if it's time--as someone said, you'll see it in your dog's eyes.
We're having similar discussions about one of our dogs. He's 11 years old, so not ancient (though he is a bigger dog--think lab-sized) and has really started to show his age recently. In addition to a fair bit of joint pain which we treat with anti-inflammatories, he's now lost a ton of weight in the last few months--like around 9 pounds, which when you only weighed 65 to begin with is a huge, huge amount. He gets frequent bouts of stomach upset, and last night I was up with him all night while he was suffering with that.
We're taking him to the vet on Tuesday to find out what's wrong, and I have this feeling of dread that he's really sick. If he is, we decided long ago that we would grant him a painless death. He's given us 11 years of awesome companionship, and I could not bear to watch him suffer just because I'm not ready to let him go. Hopefully he's okay, but I'm not super-hopeful. That much weight loss doesn't seem normal to me.
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Perfect way to put it. When we love and we lose what we love, we lose a bit of our heart as well. But we do have to let go, we can not keep our loved pets with us forever.
yes, we could let nature take its place, but the thing is, our pets are not living in a natural setting. Now if they were, and they became arthritic and unable to eat normally and the like, it would quickly become survival of the fittest. They would die of exposure or the illness would go untreated, or another animal would do them in. But living in our companionship, nature is quite often not able to take its course because we interfere and we interfere many times because we love them so much and find it so hard to let go.
But yeah, you will know when it is time. I knew my Jessie was going downhill for 2 years. But her mind was so good, her coat was so healthy, she had no other problems except a bit of arthritis... and then the seizures started....and then she had some kind of stroke or something and lost most of the mobility in her hind legs... and then I knew it was time.