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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