Asklemmy

This is one of those questions where it's very easy to project one's vision of their own mortality onto the mirror of their pet. Like, for me, personally, I dread becoming so enfeebled that the tasks of daily life slip beyond my strength, to say nothing of mental incapacity, and I very much do not want to live that way. I know people who would rather lie in bed, maintained by machines, ass wiped by a stranger, for years than give up. We can't ever know what the internal life of our pets is like, can't know if they're aware of their own mortality in the way that we are, but we will be responsible for their geriatric care and end-of-life decisions. 'What I would want for myself,' is the best place to start.

I have a small dog that isn't yet 5yo but has lots of seizures. We keep upping meds but we are hitting points where we can't add any more. The drugs make her hungry all the time and more recently she has started to stumble and walk into things. I could take all drugs away and shed surely sieze to death but that seems cruel. At this point my wife and I agree no crazy surgeries and if we get multiple instances of incontenance in a week, new decisions will trigger

I don't think you can decide in the abstract and I don't think there is a one-size-fits all answer. Every pet's (and person's) decline is different. You may get to a point where you have to make a decision, but the specifics of that point are always different, and being in the situation is not the same as trying to imagine it.

If they're suffering let it end - if they can still maintain a good quality of life let them live.. I'm also for human euthanasia.

No matter the amount of love - if the pain is unmanageable or their quality of life is shit let them go.

Do for your pets what you think you'd want for yourself, sans religious and societal opinions influencing your choice.

Looking at other comments I will point out one thing nobody mentioned so far: keeping an old per alive is not always cheap.
You have to calculate the cruel numbers against the gain or loss also.
You could give an other neglected - abandoned pet a new life, instead of making your loved one to slowly expire.
Or I do not wish the situation on anyone, but pet meds vs human food can come into play too.

All animals want to keep living, that's literally why animals evolved brains in the first place, to keep their bodies alive for as long as possible.

Absolutely not. Brains evolved because it gave an evolutionary advantage. They developed from just sensing light, giving an adavtange to finding food, into more complex forms, but every stage is just because it allowed them to survive long enough to reproduce usually, and, for most animals, not much longer. Most animals don't have an advantage to keeping elderly populations alive. At best, they're a drain on resources and can't contribute with fighting, hunting, foraging, or whatever else. Humans are special in that we can pass down information, and elderly people have amassed a lifetime of information. Animals in nature don't really survive that long, so there is not an evolutionary pressure for what you're claiming. Their bodies failing is literally evidence to the contrary.

As far as I know, no animal (at least the animals we keep as pets) have an instinct to just give up and stop going through the motions of life past a certain age. Doesn't that imply they always want to live?

This isn't totally true. Some things will cause them to stop going through the motions that keep them alive. Regardless, performing the actions that are baked into us evolutionarily does not equal a conscious choice. We (animals) will almost always eat, drink, sleep, etc. even if we want to die. If not, suicidal people would just decide to stop, instead of having to do more extreme things. Evolution has baked behaviors into us that are hard to overcome, even if we're conscious of it.

I consider the decision to no longer live past a certain age and certain number of health problems to be a uniquely human thing...

I find this weird. It may be (unprovable either way), but you're ascribing so many human traits to these animals, but then refusing to entertain the idea that they may want to die in order to stop being in pain. Why? I feel like you're showing some biases here, and if you really want to understand your opinion you need to figure out what that is.

But if they don't die right after taking them off life support, you can't just straight up kill them, they need to die by themselves. Why isn't this philosophy applied to pets, who can never consent to euthanasia?

The difference is the pet will never be able to consent. I assume the rule of taking them off life support exists to require it to take time. This way they have a small window where they could come to. I don't know though. It could also be a morality thing of not wanting to actively take a person's "life" (if you can call it that). I suspect this could change in the future, with increasing acceptance of assisted suicide, for example. Making them die from (presumably) dehydration seems much more cruel to me if they can feel anything.

I don't have a strong opinion either way. Do what you think is right for your pet. In my opinion though, suffering is something that should be minimized. That's true for raising animals for food, for humans, for pets, etc. It depends on the pet, but if they are in constant pain and can't really live life on their own (which would cause them to die in nature) then I'd consider euthanasia. I would at least not consider doing any expensive or invasive healthcare to keep them alive.

There are extremes.

There are a lot of posts in this thread already detailing positive cases for euthanasia.

My wife worked as a vet tech assistant and she told me once of a case where someone brought their dog in. Diagnosis was terminal, but that the dog was in good condition right now, and would likely not have any discomfort for months. They chose to euthanise immediately. I guess the owner didn't want to deal with the reminder every day? But that feels wrong to me.

I think that both putting your pet down and not doing so must be an honest consideration.

As their caretaker, you can empathize with them the most. Imagine what you would want in their situation, and do it. You have the ability to cognize this - they do not.

There are humane services that will come to your home so they don't even have to leave a familiar environment. But sometimes, your buddy still has joy in life, even though he's all wobbly.

..in the end, the truth is that it's a judgment call, and you do the best you can - and make your choices in a way that, if they were there in your head with you, and could understand your choices, they would love you for it, and that you can love yourself for.

Euthanizing pets has always been the rule rather than the exception in my family.

We are all big animal lovers and often end up with older pets that have no home.

When the animal gets to a point where it's crying in pain often or can no longer eat or walk or some combination of those 3, we usually take the animal to the vet and have them euthanized.

We (my family) don't believe in making an animal suffer for our own wishes that they would stay alive. It seems selfish.

Some people will keep an animal in pain, alive for a long time.

That's their choice. But I think ethically, it's wrong.

Let them go peacefully surrounded by those who love them.

Also I'm pro self euthanizing for the same reasons. But that's a different topic.

I'm an old guy, and have had lots of pet over my life. so I've thought about this a lot.

Years ago I came to the position that the most compassionate thing to do for my pets was to try and assess if their days are more full of joy, or more full of pain and suffering. We can't ask our pets that, we can only do our best to figure it out. If they're spending more time suffering than enjoying their lives, then I think it's a kindness to put them down.

We don't usually have to make that decision for other humans, because they can decide for themselves. Note that we do make the decision sometimes to "pull the plug" on people rather than keep the alive.

Also note that animals do sometimes go off to die when they're sick and miserable. In fact, when dogs and cats have illnesses that are miserable but treatable, we sometimes have to be careful that they don't go off to die before treatment is done.

All animals want to keep living, that's literally why animals evolved brains in the first place, to keep their bodies alive for as long as possible. How can you, who is not the pet, say for sure they would prefer to die than keep living? You can't ask them, and you can't get in their mind to determine how much they still appreciate being alive. Even the oldest, sickest pet will still make an effort to keep themselves alive however they can: eating, drinking water, moving out of the way of danger, etc. As far as I know, no animal (at least the animals we keep as pets) have an instinct to just give up and stop going through the motions of life past a certain age.

While it's not an instinct, I've known friends and family members who have had dogs and cats who stopped putting in the effort to eat and drink at the very end. At that stage, you know that it's over...

It's too case by case to make a sweeping statement. Sometimes a pet's quality of life is extremely bad, sometimes an animal's instincts will tell it to stop eating, sometimes you could have an old pet that does that and think that they're going but then it turns out they have a totally treatable kidney issue and go on to live five more years after two weeks of pills. That last one happened to me with my thirteen year old cat who went on to live until eighteen.

I wouldn't put down an animal unless they were suffering and an expert told me there was no way out of it - but of course that's easy to say in isolation, when in the real world vet visits cost money. I guess what I'm saying is that I wouldn't judge someone on the decision they made for their pet unless it seemed that they were acting without compassion and didn't consider all alternatives.

I always want my pets to die naturally of old age. It's very peaceful. I've only put a couple to sleep, and they had aggressive cancers.

I can’t sit my pets down and explain to them what chemo is or that they’re going to have an invasive surgery and may get better afterwards. All they know is that they love me, but they’re in pain. You may question it for a long time afterwards, but if they’re miserable and don’t understand why then keeping them around is more for your benefit than theirs.

I’ve spent way too much money getting care for a sick, young cat because I knew the pain would be temporary and they could get back to their bonded half and recover quickly and I’ve had to put down a dog that could have lived a few more years because their dementia had become so bad they were confused and lost constantly, even when in the same room as I was.

Compassion and love are always important, but you can’t explain to them why they’re in pain, only save them from needless suffering.

I've had a few creatures put down. My grandmother's dog was in such bad heart health she couldn't really move around anymore. When the creature shakes and whimpers under the strain of standing up, and sometimes just randomly screams in pain, it's about time to make that difficult trip to the vet.

My old cat Spice lived to the ripe old age of 18, and then she had a saddle thrombus. Essentially a blood clot blocked her aorta where it forks to her back legs. Her back beans turned cold and blue, she couldn't walk right, she was obviously in distress, so we rushed her to the emergency vet where we were told at her age she probably wasn't going to survive any treatment, and that she probably had about 3 more horribly painful hours to live. She was actively dying, it was a question of how long do we let her lay there gasping?

I let it get about that grim before it becomes an option.

Humans are already imposing upon our pets and depriving them of their autonomy, simply by keeping them in captivity. Any argument against merciful euthanasia grounded in concerns about how it is imposing are moot.

As for pulling human euthanasia into this context, do yourself a favor and don't. You might be surprised at how common euthanasia is in humans. At least in my part of the world, it's largely a wink-wink nudge-nudge situation, but it does happen with some regularity. Also for people who are actually suffering in decline, there are all kinds of supportive care options being provided that simply aren't feasible or economical for pets. There's also not really the potential for the same kinds of perverse intentions with pets as there might be for people. Like, the list goes on.

So, basically from either of those two perspectives, let alone the fact that both apply, the argument against euthanizing pets that you've presented fall apart.

Having said that, this is often not a simple and straightforward decision. But since we've already established that we're imposing upon them one way or the other, it really comes down to what kind of imposition do you want? The animal is going to die soon one way or the other. You can impose upon it and force it to experience the pain and fear and discomfort of its body naturally shutting down over the course of days, weeks, or months. You could impose upon it and decide to euthanize. What can you live with?

On a more personal note, I've had to have 2 pets euthanized.

One was a cat who managed to escape outside, it got hit by a car and then a neighbor's dog mauled it. Literally pieces of broken rib and punctured lung exposed as well as untold other injuries. No hope of recovery. The idea of letting it suffer another moment was not something I could live with and it was going to die anyway.

The other was a dog with congestive heart failure. There comes a point where there are no more medications and no higher doses that are effective. The animal literally is experiencing the sensation of drowning. They're terrified and in pain, exhausted, and suffering. The vet might be able to alleviate it a few hours or even a couple of days with a procedure to manually remove the fluid, but then you're just going to put the animal through this again and soon. I could not live with myself forcing the dog to endure that knowing there was another option.

Plus, I have seen the pet owner that refused euthanasia and wanted their pet to die a natural death. The dog had cancer. I'm honestly broken up enough just thinking about what I witnessed that I can't even bring myself to type it out. So I'll stop there other than to say I've seen people dying of cancer in their final hours -- there is a world of difference in those things, at least in modern times. The pet was clearly distressed, in pain, and suffering. The people are being made comfortable with drugs and medical care.

I see a lot of good reasoning here but I can't get over the fact that I wouldn't choose the same for myself. If I can't see myself choosing death why force it on my friend? I have never judged someone for choosing to kill their pet who is in a terrible condition dommed to get worse however.

I just can't do what I wouldn't want done to me.

Cats will readily voluntarily starve themselves to death if their food isn't up to their standards.