| This is such a tough choice that there simply cannot be only one right answer -- it has to vary from dog to dog and owner to owner. We were so fortunate to have an ethical vet. He looked my husband in the eye and told him to spend his money on pain killers and euthenasia. We still don't even know the precise name of the cancer, we just knew that it would be fast. We decided to let Vern tell us when he was done with us, and he did. He never lost his dignity or the "light" in his eyes, but one day when we called him to do something he liked, he just looked at us like "ugh -- do I have to?". To us, that meant he was no longer enjoying his life. Armed with the greater knowledge that what he had was terminal, we ended it then, rather than to spend a bunch of time and money for our own sake.
That's our story and it's based on our ethics and our knowledge of our animal. With little Tinkerbell, I don't believe that we'd have handled it the same way as she's not as able to "communicate" with us as Vern was; she's more the stoic "will do whatever you ask until the end" type. We'd probably have had to go with the "put her down after the dx" method with her.
To me, the fact that you love your animal enough to seek input and really think out the decision means that you're doing the very best you can, and this is what your animal wants from you. The odds are also very high that you're doing the right thing under those circumstances. I think it's the owners that get stubborn and crankily make their demands that are making the "wrong" choices.  |