I know the wishes of Internet Guy #432 probably don’t mean much, but I hope for the best for you all.
Also, thanks for links in your earlier posts. I wasn’t reading QT3 when this thread was first started, but I’ve been listening to the vet in your link, and he’s chock full of good information.
You can’t beat yourself up over this. I don’t think you were even considering the possibility of the existence of dog B, and you did what was the right thing for dog A at the time. I don’t think she could have asked for more care, attention, and effort than you’ve put in. Things also could have worked out fine, so I don’t think there’s a lesson to be learned from this except that you care for her greatly and are willing to do anything in your power to give her the best possible chances for happiness.
Thanks. Another thing I wish I’d known about back in the day is the existence of “mobile vets” like thisone who came recommended to us. Our dog fears trips to the vet more than anything, to the point where the only residual memory she seems to have of back in the day that is really strong is that she should start shaking when the car harness comes on. Moving forward with the quality of life checkups and the like, this is probably going to be a lot better than more trips barring emergencies.
Thanks. I don’t think that I feel guilty about it, just sad and I’m trying to think about it in rational terms. Probably some kind of defense mechanism.
Bummer. Sorry dude.
Phenobarbitol sounds familiar to me. I used to have a dachshund who was epileptic and we ended up putting him on medication, think that was the stuff. Though I could be misremembering, it’s been quite a while.
The same dog did also start to suffer from dementia in advanced age. He would get up in the middle of the night to get get a drink of water and sometimes get lost. I remember one night waking up to hear him barking in a terribly pathetic manner, when we found him he was facing into a corner and for some reason couldn’t back out or turn around, confused him terribly.
Anyway, I guess the upside is that he lived long enough to suffer from loss of eyesight and dementia, he did make it to 19 after all. But it’s hard to watch your dog (let alone any other family member) go into decline like that. It hit my mom pretty hard – she hasn’t bought another pet since because of his loss, I think.
I wish you and her luck, LK. All I can add is that, to address your point about the distance between our selfish desires and her quality of life:
My wife and I have lost 4 cats over the past 5 years. The first we hung on to too long, and I still regret it today. The next two went in a flash, basically–one to a stroke, the other to a nasty internal bile duct breaking. The last one lingered with kidney failure for almost 3 years, with us giving her subcutaneous fluids every day. She was great for almost all of those 3 years–the water would pep her right up, and she’d have a great day. But during that period I also got the best advice I’ve ever found for dealing with this sort of situation: a discussion I heard on the radio with a pet expert said “All you can really do is watch the pet, and see which are the good days, and which are the bad days. When the bad days start to outnumber the good ones, you aren’t doing the pet any favors by forcing her to continue to live through those bad days.”
We applied that advice to Pepper, and I think we did it right that time. When the bad days were down to 4-5 out of 7, we let her go peacefully. My eyes fill with tears even now two years later thinking about it, but still I think we did it right.
Thanks for the anecdotes and the support. That’s useful advice, except that I have a difficult time being objective about good and bad days since the original tilt (the stroke, or period when the tumor really kicked in, or both). Since that day, I’m not sure what to use for parameters since all of the things she loved are pretty much out of her reach barring a miraculous recovery, and I’m not entirely sure she remembers all that well.
At the moment, though, she derives great pleasure from her fancy canned food, and seems happiest when she has one of us nearby in order to threaten putting an arm to sleep by lying right on top of it with one of her awkward “3 legs are working together but that last fucker is way out of line” moves. It is also the first time in my life I’ve heard her whimper, both at the vet and here when she can’t seem to get comfortable and isn’t groggy enough to pass out. Maybe that’s the indicator as a whole.
Either way, that’s why I’m bringing in an outside vet with a good reputation to do a quality of life eval. It won’t be the final say, but it (and a neurology consult, if the doctor feels anything is in doubt) will help me have some more objective criteria without making dog uncomfortable. If this session goes relatively well, then in a week or two we can see what things look like and I keep working on the small milestones (today! Team bowel movement after 3 days of drug induced constipation! Only marginal shrapnel was taken by me and none on dog! Team bowel movement is the worst euphemism I’ve come up with in a long time!) like her walking solo on the grassy lot.
Anyway, it helps to type about it and commiserate, so thanks.
Today was a good day, perhaps as a reward for me scheduling a neurology consult at Auburn University for next week (just the consult, not the MRI etc). I had a friend over and moved her into the living room, and that seemed to inspire a lot more walking. That’s when I realized…while there’s still a lot of turning that is indicative of recent blindness, there was also a surprising amount of object detection that could not be attributed to memory since there were a lot of changes since she’d last been there. I brought out the old laser pointer that we had for playing with her, and sure enough she was able to follow it especially with her left eye, her old good eye.
So there’s that, and then 4/5 successful bathroom breaks completely solo, although No. 2 still required some collaboration. Perhaps there are some more quality days ahead.
I’m sorry you’re going through this, but glad to hear about a good day. I’m leaving my bulldog with his mama (my ex) as I move from Oregon to Manhattan. It’s the first time he’s been without me (and vice-versa) since he was a pup. They get under your skin.
Thanks. Yeah, that has to be really difficult, although sometimes circumstances leave you with no choice. My wife’s childhood cat is still awesome and at home, and we’d love to have him, but the stress of moving him to a much smaller environment really far away from his homebase would be unlikely to balance out just because we’d enjoy his company that much more. It’s tough to say goodbye every time we visit.
So after the neurology consult we put her on a variety of drugs to try to see if some quality of life was salvageable, particularly with respect to vision and mobility. It seemed to accelerate her decline by adding a manic level of anxiety, where she was really only calm when she was circling incessantly in the lot across the street or unconscious.
At 2 am this morning I took her to the ER and asked for euthanasia. In the finest traditions of our relationship, she thanked me via explosive diarrhea at the moment of death. There’s not a whole lot else to it except rationalizations for the choice that ring hollow.
My sympathies for your loss.
It’s probably inappropriate of me to bring up my frustration with the sloppy practice of veterinary medicine free of consequences just now.
I appreciate it.
It’s probably inappropriate of me to bring up my frustration with the sloppy practice of veterinary medicine free of consequences just now.
I certainly have no objection to it, although I’m not sure what my case would offer as evidence there from what I’ve written here. What I came to realize on that topic (and the reason I went to Auburn) is that there are a lot of otherwise competent veterinarians who regard catering to the whims of the owners as at least as important as what is scientifically probable with the pet and what is the best choice for her welfare. I understand the impulse on their part, but was willing to go quite some distance to avoid it if possible.
Now I have to decide what do with ten cans of delicious gourmet dog food. Then again, I did skip breakfast.
Somehow, I managed to miss the last couple weeks of this thread. LK, I know how devastated you must be right now. It’s probably no consolation, but I think you had your dog’s best interests at heart every step of the way and did everything you possibly could for her.
I’m sorry LK.
It seems like you did everything you possibly could given the circumstances and got all the decisions right - there really was nothing further you could have done to optimise the dog’s happiness in the good times or minimise the suffering in the bad.
I went through a similar experience with my little dog. Her heart was giving out, and all I wanted to do was make her life a little easier before we inevitably had to put her down. The vet gave us three pills to have her take. After the first dose, she started panting heavily. She would not go to the bathroom outside and instead just slumped to the ground. She was unresponsive. She wouldn’t drink and by the next night began flailing wildly when I picked her up. The second dose had to be forced. A few hours later I tried to get her to drink, but she was too far gone and died that night. She went from a tired dog that had fainting spells to dying in a bad way in the two days after taking her to the vet.
I know what you’re going through and it sucks. Stay home from work for a day and try not to think about her when you’re vulnerable.
My condolences, LK. I still have a hole in my heart from my best (animal) friend’s death a few years ago, time will make it better.
You could find a rescue group to donate the food to, they always need and apreciate stuff like that.
Thanks everyone. I feel a little better after going through some photos and writing about it a bit. You know that’s what you’re signing up for when you accept an animal’s life into your own, but it’s still difficult when the moment of truth finally comes to make the big right decision as opposed to the many small ones that appear as viable alternatives when you’re in the midst of it.
I will look into the rescue group, there’s a number of them here. I may have to wait until I’m not on the rebound so that I can avoid rash decisions.
Sorry to hear it LK.
Going through the end-of-life cycle now with my cat Jackson.
I’ve made decisions that will make his life shorter but hopefully will keep his quality of life fairly high, but determining when to euthanize him is a decision that weighs very heavily on me and has for months now.
I have made arrangements with my vet to have someone come to my house when the time comes, and that makes me feel better. But I have a hard time even thinking about making that call, even though I know it can’t be too far off.
I also have some very mixed feelings about veterinary care. Given the short lifespan of pets in general and pets with terminal diseases in particular, the wide variety of options available can add an additional layer of guilt on top of grief for owners. After Jackson had had his spleen removed (a Mast cell tumor) and was recovering from that he had a growth develop on his foot. The oncologist told me it was probably lung cancer (lung cancer in cats apparently can manifest in foot tumors) and showed me a small dark spot on his lung (from the scan done to deterimine the Mast Cell tumor in his spleen). I could have, put him in for another scan and had the dark spot removed (the difference between a biopsy and removal on a cat lung is pretty small) and then put him on a second type of chemo. His life expectancy after all this would be 6 - 12 months. This is to say nothing of the cost, which would around 5K.
I decided not to put him though that. As it turns out, he doesn’t have lung cancer. His lung capacity is fine, and no other tumors have appeared. Unfortunately, the tumor on his foot is such that the only way to treat it would be to destroy his leg. He is 15 years old and has at least one kind of cancer (the Mast cell - which, with treatment gives him a life expectancy of 18 - 24 months) and a “heart murmur” (which cracks me up, as it is the least of his worries). Anyway, I decided not to destroy his leg and do whatever palliative care - keep the foot bandaged and give him pain killers when it bothers him - as long as is reasonable.
I didn’t mean to write all that. But I can’t imagine my situation is unique. I can see where someone could easily end up spending a lot of money and putting their pet though a lot of procedures that will ultimately not add much time to their life or quality of life.
LK, my condolences are belated because I start tearing up a little every time I start typing them. :( I’m so sorry for your loss. We have put down two little old dogs in the last five years, and I have a 15-year-old who’s in reasonably good health for her age, but I know things can go downhill quickly with a dog that old. Whenever I have to have a dog euthanized, I ruefully tell myself that pets exist just to break our hearts, but it doesn’t seem to stop me from welcoming a new one into the house from time to time. I guess it’s worth it.