Man's best friend: When is it time?

We don't agree on much at SJ but no doubt we all love our pets.
Dick it sounds like you are working with the right vet that is not rushing
you into a decision but providing you with the right information to make one.

 

When they stop eating has been the signal for my my wife and me.

 

I will add that it was easier for us to be there in person with the dog when the shot is given. Us petting her and telling her was a good dog and we loved her very much I think helped everyone involved.

I'd rather it be us with her than someone she does not know.

 

You might want to ask her if she'll be fine with you having the plug pulled on her if that time does come.

 

She's genuinely being sympathetic to the dog, my mom is.

 

This is long, please bear with me. There's a point to this story.

I had both dogs and cats while growing up in a rural area. For the past 20 years, I've had just cats in suburbia. Three cats while married, which she kept after the divorce since they were originally hers before we got married. Still felt like I lost contact with our three little ones (no kids).

So, January 2000, divorce is final and I'm completely without pussy. Local shelter has an excellent website filled with pictures of adoptable dogs and cats. I see a cat named Twinkie that looks a lot like one of the cats that went away in the divorce.

So, I go to the shelter, but Twinkie has already been adopted. But, I look at a couple of other cats. No kittens were available, strangely enough. But one of the volunteers gets out an adult calico (calicos are female) who is very gentle, friendly, outgoing and purring up a storm. The cat basically selects me. I was smitten. Adopted her, and she was a great cat. Healing cat - gave me company after the divorce. And a bonus, I met my girlfriend a couple of weeks later, and she's a cat person too.

Fast forward 8 years. My calico came down with bladder cancer, and we had surgery to remove a mass, plus then did chemo. She did very well, and she made it another year and a half. Very good quality of life. Played and ate well. But then she stopped eating, and we knew it was time. August 2009.

Now, the point of why I am typing this up: what comes next. My girlfriend and I decide not to get another cat for awhile. We still had one other cat, and we took time to mourn the loss of my calico.

Then something magical happened. While my gf was out of town in October 2009, I went back to the shelter website, and there was a calico kitten, with very similar markings, AND the staff had provided the kitten with THE EXACT SAME NAME as my adult calico. I ran over to the shelter, played with the kitten, and put our name on the adoption list, but I was second on the list.

The people first on the list didn't follow through, so we got to adopt her.

Coincidence? Reincarnation? Whatever. To find a kitten with the same name was truly a magical experience. And my original calico was adopted as an adult, so I never got to experience her as a kitten. But this second adoption brought everything full circle and more.

So, again, closing one chapter is painful, and will hurt. Still hurts me to this day. But new chapters can also open up and help ease the pain and lead to more great memories of both a former and a new pet.

I wish you and your family the best, Dick.

 

Vom, I would have liked it for the "without pussy" line alone. But that's a fantastic story.

 

Thanks, Big Circus. I couldn't type it up earlier today. Reading all these stories - man, emotional, but I'm man enough to admit it. Our pets are like little people. They give and give, until they can't give any more.

It is all very worth it though. Even the bitter end. Time and perspective help you know you did the right thing.

 

As others have said, 15 is really old for a lab. Mine, which I got for my 13th birthday after wanting a dog for years, was 11 when we had to put him down. He basically let us know when the time had come.

He started having a liver condition and we tried a steroid treatment that worked briefly and perked him up for a couple of days. But the vet warned us that if it didn't work, that meant a chronic condition that would do the dog in before long, be very costly in the meantime, and would finally stop working in the not-too-distant future, anyway.

Sure enough, Teddy just...wilted, over the next week, and we could see it happening right before our eyes. He'd want to come with us and try to go out for a short walk, but we'd have to stop every few steps because he was so winded -- and unlike a lot of labs, he had always been the ideal weight of around 55 pounds and was never overweight. After a couple more days, he lost strength in his legs and could hardly get up; then, he started being unable to hold it or stand up to do anything about it and started peeing on himself (which we could see visibly upset him), and then he started not wanting to eat but was very thirsty. He would collapse whenever he did try to get up, and it wasn't a spinal or bone/arthritis problem. He was just too weak. Basically, quickly, in a span of about 10 days, his body was failing, and we knew it.

His last night with us still sticks with everyone in our family. We all lay awake in our beds as Teddy spent a strangely restless night wandering about the house. He, I kid you not, got himself up, despite all his struggles, and made a stop for a period of time in every room in our house, staying the longest in each of the kids' rooms.

At the time, we were amazed and all thought that Teddy must have known the end was near and that he'd been saying good-bye to us, because it was just so weird how he seemed to be making a point to come to everyone, in each person's room as we lay there, listening to him do it. Now, with time to look back on it, and to gain some distance and perspective, I think he'd just reached a point of being so sick and uncomfortable that he really kind of just didn't know what to do with himself. He might have been coming to us for some kind of help, but all we could give was some comfort, and we all did that, spending just as sleepless a night as Teddy did but also kind of a spooky one, too.

Our vet had told us to keep in touch and not hesitate to call, but we did hold off a little bit before calling him at the first at-least-somewhat-reasonable hour of about 6 a.m., and we told him we had to bring Teddy in as soon as the vet could meet us at his office to put him down.

We waited only until one of my brothers could get to the house, though, because we all agreed that we just couldn't put Teddy to sleep without this particular family member, especially, seeing him again and getting to say his good-byes if at all possible. This was one of my three older brothers -- the one closest to me, but also, more importantly, the one whose dog I knew Teddy really was at heart (despite the fact that he'd originally been given to me on my birthday) and the brother who, in all the years since has kind of become the Dog Whisperer of our family, as all the dogs have always gravitated to him and listened to him.

Well, my brother raced to the house, and by then, Teddy had made his last, eerie stop of the long night and terrible morning, collapsing in our family room but lifting his head once more in tortured greeting upon my brother's arrival. After talking to Teddy and petting him gently for a few minutes, my brother wrapped him in a blanket, put him in a pet carrier in the back of his work truck and, with all the rest of us along for the ride either in the truck cab or in the bed, too, we drove to the vet's office.

The vet met us at the door and took us all in, past other early-morning pet patients in the waiting room as my brother carried Teddy in. We were all together with the dog at the end, and all left the office in various stages of tearing up, choking up or outwardly crying.

But I think we all ended up being glad that Teddy's end-of-life descent was rapid and didn't go on very long, and that we all got to say our good-byes.

Maybe even Teddy...

 

Damn, Write. There are a lot of touching stories on this thread, including VB's just before yours, but that is one tough story. It's getting dusty in here. But thanks for sharing.

 

And Write's post reminds me of two things I believe need to be mentioned:
1. You are much better off taking your pet in to go peacefully in your presence than to find the pet dead in the yard. That can be even more traumatic, especially for the kids.
2. Don't spend a pile of money prolonging the inevitable. If the vet thinks it is worth it, by all means, but if you are just buying comfort for a short time, it's not worth it, no matter how much you love the pet.

 

Thank you, BDC99. I appreciate the opportunity to share it. It had that much impact on us. As VB and others have said, good pets are part of the family, or, ideally, they certainly should be, and they're bound to impact on our lives. It's great when you can know that that influence was good, even despite any sadness over their loss at the end.

It means they mattered, and what matters is worth remembering.