It’s the dark side of veterinary medicine and part of the job. While pretty much everything else we do is a work in progress, we need to get this one right the first time and every time. I’m talking about euthanasia. For our clients, it’s the biggest deal there is. Sometimes, you’ve worked with the pet owner for a while, you have a veterinarian-client-patient relationship, and the case has come to its inevitable conclusion. At my practice, however, many clients are first-timers who worked with another clinic and, for some reason, came to us when they made the final decision.
I was moved to write about euthanasia after an emotionally draining day involving four of them.
“Don’t Be Sorry”
“Did anyone tell you that you have a euthanasia and he’s been here for a while?” asked Lettie, a technician helping me juggle cases when I was the only veterinarian on duty.
Mikey the dachshund was waiting patiently on the treatment table. His owner had records from another clinic detailing Mikey’s probable urinary tract mass. Now, he had stopped eating and was having diarrhea.
I considered the little red fellow with the bright, dark eyes who was sitting sternal on the table, not betraying his fear of the strangers surrounding him. Old dogs have the softest coats. I embraced Mikey, the technician got him ready, and we went to the exam room. On impulse, I plucked a bud vase off the file cabinet (sent to us by a grateful client) and set the flowers on the counter. “I’ve been putting off coming in here,” I told the owner, smiling gently.
Mikey’s dad was crying. He told me what a good dog Mikey was, and he questioned whether he was doing the right thing. I told him it was time and that losing a best friend was excruciating. He said the decision hurt so much that he understood why people in his position vow never to have another dog.
He wailed and then apologized. “No,” I told him. “You don’t need to be sorry for loving a dog so much. Mikey had a great time with you and loved every minute of it.”
The Desired Doctor
It was almost lunchtime when another euthanasia patient appeared. I peered through the one-way window into the exam room and immediately recognized Jordan, a 10-year-old Great Pyrenees I had recently diagnosed with malignant lymphoma. He presented to me because of a bad cough, low energy and poor appetite. That day, I inwardly winced as my fingers parted his soft, white hair and touched egg-sized lumps under his mandibles, in front of each shoulder blade, and along the backs of his thighs and his prepuce. His chest radiographs depicted a snowstorm in his lungs, and cytology confirmed the diagnosis.
Jordan’s devastated owner wanted to bring him for euthanasia later in the week, but I told her I wouldn’t be working then and that she would be in the good hands of my colleagues. Yet, here they were the very next day.
I knelt, hugged Jordan, looked up at my client and said, “I’m so glad you came when I was here.” She told me she wanted me to be the one to do it.
Now’s the Time
Next up was Tedford, a Shih Tzu we’d seen a few months earlier because of severe periodontal disease. He was brought in this time due to labored breathing and a swollen belly. He had stopped eating. His radiographs revealed a perfect storm of horrible problems: a prickly-edged bladder stone, a visible lemon-sized abdominal mass and pulmonary edema obscuring his heart silhouette.
I took a deep breath, called the owners into the exam room and told them their dog suffered from compound medical problems. Then, with a calm voice and level gaze that told them there was no bargaining to be had, I said: “I don’t say this very often, but you really need to put him to sleep. It’s bad.”
As I watched them hugging their little black Shih Tzu goodbye and murmuring love words, I mused that even though I’d done this twice today, it was the only time they would do it with Tedford. His red-haired owner told me between tear wipes how she’d rescued him years earlier from people who wanted to put him down because they didn’t want to deal with him. “Look at the great life you gave him,” I said.
A Display of Maturity
It was nearing the end of the workday when I picked up the next client sheet. The paperwork detailed the requested euthanasia of a dog “diagnosed with cancer by the vet in Claremore,” a town 20 miles north of Tulsa. (Claremore has a number of veterinary clinics.)
I walked into the exam room to find a geriatric, skinny, brindle and white pit bull lying recumbent on a blanket on the floor. Sitting next to her was a teenage boy whose young face showed the raw sadness of someone new to the loss of a loved one. His mother was waiting in the car, and he seemed vulnerable as I sat down and asked him about his dog. He told me about their life together, and I explained what I was about to do.
The dog went rigid momentarily when I administered the Euthasol injection, then relaxed. I wondered whether the procedure would upset the young man, but he was brave.
The dog’s heart stopped, but her lip quivered for a time. “They do that. It’s their body shutting down,” I said. He nodded and said he was OK. I sat silently with him for a few minutes because I wanted to make sure all muscle movements had ended before we put her in a coffin.
Finally, I looked at him and said his pit bull was ready. “Thank you,” he said with a look that conveyed a thousand words. “You’re welcome,” I answered, my heart welling up with the certainty that of all the things I did that day, this was the reason I got out of bed and showed up.
Closer to Home
Among the toughest things I’ve had to do is euthanize a pet owned by colleagues or staff members. That’s because I care so much about them.
Shortly before the deadline for this piece, I was privileged to end the suffering of Willard, a wrinkled string bean of a Sphinx cat who was surrounded by his family: head technician Heather, her husband and their two sons. Three of the four were crying. Son Kaden sobbed while clinging to Willard, who stretched his smooth kitty arms with crooked toes around Kaden’s neck.
Because of my certainty that none of life’s circumstances are accidents, I searched my heart and found the right words. “It is an honor that you chose me to be the doctor to do this,” I said.
QUOTABLE
“It was a good death.”
— One Stab, alluding to Tristan Ludlow in “Legends of the Fall” (1994)