A difficult decision that should be made
Fair warning in advance, this is not a happy post.
Over the weekend I had the opportunity to spend an entire day with my family. It was a fantastic time spent cleaning the travel camper my parents have on a permanent campsite in a private club.
However, the mood of the day was somewhat clouded by the presence of my sister’s aging dog. She’s about 13-14 years old now, and I’d been hearing for a while now that with her failing health, they were going to have to put her down soon.
When I saw her, I was stunned. What had once been a gorgeous, vibrant dog had been reduced to a scarred, frail skeleton of her former self, barely able to walk.
Open sores and tumor lumps covered her body, a rattling snore coming from her with each breath. Apparently in the past month or so, her body has started attacking itself, resulting in raw, oozing sores exploding across her entire body. That poor dog is literally rotting away.
There simply is no more quality of life for her, and it’s obvious she’s suffering.
While I understand the difficulty in making the decision to put a beloved pet to sleep, I’m struggling with how anyone could take one glance at her and think putting her down is not the right thing to do. What purpose is there to keeping her alive, what benefit is there for her?
I’ve been in that position, having had to make the decision with my parents years ago when our cherished 7 year old dog was being ravaged by diabetes. However, I could never imagine having let him get to this level.
They said they brought her along to give her “one last trip”. Instead, while it may have made them feel better, it also made my parents and myself feel awful as we watched her struggling around.
She’s not my dog though. All I can do is hope that they do right by her and help her.