This has been bothering me for a long time, and I'm not sure I should tell it, but I've been holding this in too long... A couple of years ago, shortly after my mother suddenly died, my disabled father (PTSD, hand/nerve injury, bad back, rhuematoid arthritis) and me found ourselves basically homeless, since we were barely making ends meet with my mother's income and my Dad's 800-something a month SSD check. (Veteran's Benefits? Hah! VA told us that even though SS doctors diagnosed him with PTSD, we couldn't prove it was the Vietnam War that caused it. Yeah, I'm sure that coma he went into for several weeks, almost getting killed by a kid with a blade, and watching his buddies die didn't affect him at all. To this day he refuses to step into a VA hospital.) I had been unemployed for about a year, and no one in the boonies where we lived would hire me.
Anyways, a few months later, while we were staying at his brother and sister's place, we notice our dog had worms and was losing a lot weight. I assume he caught the parasite from eating excrement. (Unusual behavior, from him. He never did it before.) He also had a lot of ticks we removed (We lived in the backwoods) Although he didn't react well to the medicine (vomiting) it got rid of most of the worms. A few nights later is when things went sour. He started... hmmm... how to describe it. Like there was incredible pain in his chest. He stretched his neck out and puffed his chest, and made a weird noise. I can't explain it articulately, but it was definitely cries of pain. These attacks came and went. Me and my dad were actually considering giving him up since we could no longer afford to take care of him like he deserved, despite how close he was to us. (Really, we relied on him a lot to comfort us after Mom died...)
One night, it all culminated. He got this look in his eyes, like he didn't know where he was, and started walking back and forth, tripping over things and walking into the table. I think he suddenly went blind. Then the seizures started. They came and went, with only a few moments of rest between. But even then, he couldn't stand up, seemed like only one side of his body worked right. He lost control of his bowels and the pained cries from before turned into cacophony.
You have to understand, his brother lived in the hills surrounding a podunk small town. Even if they did have an emergency animal clinic, and it wasn't 3 AM on a Sunday, they wouldn't do anything because we had no money to give. There was nothing for us to do but to endure. I thought that the seizures would pass, I tried to hold and comfort him, but they didn't. We endured this nightmare for hours. Finally, there was no other alternative. I knew what I had to do. My father couldn't or wouldn't (He was there with us too, suffering alongside us) I balled up some blankets and covered his face. It was over almost immediately. There was one final yelp, then nothing. You have no idea what I felt after the deed had been done, and I can't articulate the horror, the pure horror, I felt. I remember holding it on his head to make sure he was gone. I didn't want him coming back half-dead and suffer further. Not sure I would have been able to handle that. Despite the coldness and rain, I took his remains into the back yard and buried him, taking care to dig deep and wrapped him a plastic bag so he hopefully wouldn't be dug up by the local strays and other animals of the woods.
I know he was just a stupid animal. I know that he doesn't think like we do. Logically, I know that. But even now I'm tortured by the thought that he felt betrayed at the end. I was suppose to protect him, to help him. I can't help thinking that he was calling to me for help, wondering why we weren't doing anything for him. We were very close, as much as a dog and his master could be. He trusted me to protect and look after him, and I rewarded that trust with death. Damn it, if he were a person he could have at least communicated what he wanted.
So I moved on, mostly by not thinking about it, but it keeps coming up, and the grief is intolerable. I dunno why I posted this here, maybe I want my guilt assuaged, to be told I "did the right thing." Maybe I want to know what killed him, to this day I still don't know. Me and Pops guessed heartworm or strokes brought on by something, perhaps the parasites. Here I am, a stocky, shaven head grown man with tears in his eyes. The pain is still that raw. I mean, this doesn't make sense. I didn't react like this when other family members died, or even when my Mom died. Why is this still so intolerably painful? He was just a pet.
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Didn't make me feel better to hear it, and I still feel awful whenever I think about it now. Guilty at what I did, guilty that my guinea pig didn't have a gate blocking him from getting that close to the door.
You did do the right thing, even if that sounds like a worthless platitude. Unfortunately, doing the right thing is often terrible.
Take care.
you did do the right thing, better you than someone else, some amount of hours later.
summed up perfectly.
chin up.
We weren't even there, because we had to work, and the vet told us she expected everything would go fine. He went to sleep terrified and alone and he just never woke up, just because we had no idea it was as bad as it was.
That guilt is still killing me as well, even though I know he isn't there anymore, or afraid. But I knew Charles inside and out, we spent a year gaining his trust, and he really fucking loved us to death, as we did him. He deserved so much better than that pointless end after a week of indecisiveness.
I have to keep telling myself that my guilt is my own, though. He is no longer there to blame me for anything, and he didn't blame me for getting sick either. I just have to treat it as it is and let the normal mourning process take over. A beloved family member died a sudden and unexpected death. There's always going to be a bunch of "maybes" and "if only's", but focusing on those keep you from dealing with your grief as you should.
Even when there's a vet handy to do the job, too many people just drop their animals off and leave them to be put down alone in a strange, cold room, whether because they can't bear to watch or because they just don't care. It sounds like you did your duty by the dog as best as anyone could.
As far as the Dog's feelings - he may not have understood what was happening, but that's exactly why we, as pet owners, are obligated to shoulder the burden of making hard choices on the animals behalf. He trusted you to do the right thing, and you did.
I'll never, ever forget what it was like to take another's life, even if it was merciful. It was the most horrible thing I've ever felt in my life. Again, I know he was a pet, and sometimes they have to be euthanized, but to do it yourself under those conditions. It really was a nightmare.
Tch, I always considered myself a logical person, and yet, all this sentimentality. ;P
Your story brought the tears to my eyes. It's hard to type this even, I'm looking at the screen through a blur. I've never been in your situation. I hope I never am. The one time I had a pet that had to be put down (cancer...it was terrible, she had a tumor in her gut that perversely made her stomach gradually look fatter and fatter as her whole body was getting thinner and thinner), a) I was still a kid, not having to make the hard decisions myself, and b) my family could afford vet care and to have her painlessly put down, by a stranger's hand but with family present to hold her, at just before the point when her life would have become dominated by terminal suffering. I think there's no question that you did the only thing that a loving and empathetic person could have done in your situation. And I think your feelings of guilt persist because you are a good person, and you did the right thing, and it being the right thing still can't change the fact that it was brutal and awful and why the hell did everything have to happen that way.
Logical is not mutually exclusive with sentimentality. If you didn't feel these feelings I'd worry that you were a psychopath. We need both our reason and our feelings to be complete people.
You did the right thing in a terrible situation. You can't forget and nor should you, but let the certainty that there was no better choice be a balm for your pain.
Steam: badger2d
I couldn't possibly imagine what you are going through, and the closest thing I can think of was when we brought Mollie to the vet emergency station be put to sleep. She had been slowly deteriorating due to cancer, which was blocking her common bile duct. I'm not a vet, but I have medical training, and I knew exactly how bad it was going to be. I tried so hard to keep her alive for a whole month. I would feed her chicken baby food from my finger, a mouthful at a time, every hour on the hour through the night. That was the only thing she would eat. She missed the litter box all the time, and she would try to hide from me constantly. I'd beg for her to stay with us, if only a little longer. I tried so hard.
On the last day, we knew it was time, and I look back at that day with regret and wonder if we had waited too long, if she had suffered needlessly. We put her to sleep on Sunday, and the Friday night before, she had one evening of lucidity, where she was almost to where she was before the cancer, as if she was allowed just one more day of happiness. I'm glad I kept her alive for that day. It was a chance to say goodbye to our little Mollie.
It's been six months since then. I still think about it. I still cry. She was a wonderful cat. Another dozen years wouldn't have been enough time with her.
People bond with pets differently than with other family members, it seems like (and anyone who won't call a pet family is either a liar or an idiot). Maybe it's the complete lack of drama, the total simplicity of that relationship. I'm not ashamed to say that I get closer to my pets than I do to a lot of my relatives, you shouldn't be either. It's going to hurt when you lose one, there's no way around it. Knowing that you did the right thing to end his suffering though, that should help you come to terms with your grief sooner than you otherwise would. I wouldn't recommend dwelling on it, but if you think about it, don't try to distract yourself. You can shed a few tears for such a close member of your family as often as you like.
By all means, if expenses are a problem then I'd wait. But if you eventually do get a dog, then yes please adopt one from the shelter.
Go to your vet.
I can't really help with the medical side of things, but I can tell you why harm being caused or endured by animals make a lot of people (myself included) more upset than the same harm being done to a human.
The reason is comprehension. Humans can usually either comprehend or be made to comprehend why something is happening to them. For exmaple, lets say one has a family member with a terminal painful illness. Its awful, its horrible, but they know they have the illness and they know what it is, why its causing them pain, and why it is happening.
An animal has no such comprehension. They're in pain and as far as we can know, they don't know why, which makes it worse. You can't comfort an animal with anything but holding them gently because you can't communicate properly with them. This makes it hard to endure anything bad happening to them.
I get how you feel, I'm not really given to crying, but fuck me I cried when I put my dog down. The only thing I can tell you is that time heals all wounds, you'll feel like hell for a while but it'll pass eventually.