I work at a wildlife rehab clinic. Just a guess, but we probably euthanize more animals than any vet, since for people to be able to catch and bring us wild animals, they are typically much worse off than most domestic animals. A third of patients are dead by the time they get here, or shortly after. The next third, we will have to euthanize within a few hours or days. That’s a lot.

We don’t do it because they are too hard to work on or anything like that. Our only goal is to return animals to the wild and have them survive. We try some far-out things sometimes to make that happen, and since most of us work for free, we do it because we love animals and want to see them survive.

I just attended a conference talk about the topic of animal suffering. It wasn’t specifically labeled as a talk about euthanasia, but it ended up being a large part of it, and attending made me feel a bit better about it.

When we’re treating animals, it’s like a balancing scale. We have their health conditions, stress levels, etc on one side, and we have our treatments and stress mitigating factors on the other. Ideally, we can either balance the scales or tilt them positive. But as time goes on, and if things are not improving, or get worse, even if we can stack more and more positive responses on the other side, that is still a lot of weight on the scale. It wouldn’t take a big nudge to make it crash. Or the negative side is stacking up and the positives have no chance to keep up or reverse things.

All this time, the animal is not living the life it was meant to live. Out in the wild, hunting, mating, etc for my animals, or being a happy, lazy, snacking, sunbeam soaking friend to you that a domestic animal should. And animals hide pain as a survival reflex. If they are sick or injured, they are always hurting more than you know, because they don’t want to be seen as that slowest wildebeest in the pack that the lions are chasing.

And the point of the lecture was this: no matter how hopeless the stack of negatives is, there is one thing that is guaranteed to instantly alleviate that pain and suffering. Euthanasia is not a positive or negative, but should be looked at as neutral, a zero point. No points on the positive side of the scale, but the negative side is swept clean. If you can do nothing to help your animal, or if the treatment itself is making their life miserable, you have the ability to take that stress and pain away. When to do that is an ethical question with no concrete answer. We address each case on an individual basis and come to consensus as a group. With your pet, that is you and your family. Are you keeping them alive because the animal is still happy or because you aren’t ready to let go to a hopeless cause?

I’ve tried to treat my pets, 2 of which died of failing organs, and for my cat, it was clear the treatment was making her suffer, and for my dog, she eventually has a seizure. Those were where I had to say to myself that what I was continuing to do was only for my sake, and it wasn’t helping me, and was certainly not going to help them. Looking back though, if I would have euthanized them a week or 2 sooner, I probably could have spared them days of pain, and I regret being what I consider to have been selfish acts.

Especially with a dog (I was not a dog person, but the death of my 2 dogs both crushed me immensely due to that pack bond they have with you as opposed to more independent cats) it can be hard to make the call. But when you learn they are that sick and are likely going to crash soon, don’t try to prolong that time, but do spoil the shit out of that dog. Take them on extra walks if they can. Take them to beautiful and smelly places like a state park or a sunset walk along water and walk extra slow so they can enjoy it in their dog ways. Feed them all the stuff they always wanted but wasn’t good for them. And when they start to not enjoy even that spoiling anymore, know you gave them the best life they could have dreamed, and accept that ultimate responsibility you took when you committed yourself to that dog the day you brought it into your home and made it part of your pack.

I hope that was helpful. I gave up having pets because it was hard to do that last step so many times. Now I work with wild animals and see death all the time, but it is less personal, so it is easier to see the positive/negative balance because it isn’t clouded by an emotional bond. No one wants to say goodbye to a loved one, human or pet, but it is a certainty of life, and because we live life at a different scale than they do (unless you have parrots, tortoises, etc!) that time is never going to feel like enough, even if you could keep that dog alive for 50 years. The length of their healthy days we have no say over, but we can keep the sad days to a minimum.