Question I have a 12 year old dog. She's no longer in great health, doesn't qualify as cute or attractive, and has rightfully been accused of stinking up any room she remains in for more than a few minutes. Still, she's my dog and I love her. Unfortunately, I am in a situation that requires that I move to a place that won't allow me to bring her. I can't find anyone to take her and am pretty sure that if I take her to the animal shelter she will spend a terrible 2 weeks there, not be adopted and then be euthanized. I've been thinking of taking her to a veterinarian who will put her to sleep with a painless injection while I'm there with her. I know this will break my heart, but is it the right thing to do?

Accepted:
November 8, 2005

Comments

You have what is known in the industry as a Hard Problem. You apparently have already weighed the interests and responsibilities that favor (or as you say, require) your moving without your dog against any prospects of your staying put or moving with her. Presumably also you have exhausted every avenue in searching for a new owner or a rescue operation that might take her. So let's assume that you really have no alternatives besides immediate euthanasia and a two-week shelter stay probably followed by euthanasia.

As far as "in principle" considerations go, the latter course has the advantage that you would not be killing your pet while there is any way of not doing so, while the former has the benefit of avoiding preventable misery.

But to my mind this is a "weighing" situation, where those aspects of your options need to be assessed in conjuntion with any number of other things: the odds (such as they are) that she would find a new home in those two weeks, the value of the life she'd lead if she were to find another owner, the degree of misery she'd likely experience at the shelter, and even the effects on you and on others of knowing that you'd made the decision you did (e.g., would you be haunted by guilt? would you be contributing to a general lessening of reverence for the lives of animals?).

You might ask yourself how'd you'd view the matter if it were an elderly relative whose life were at stake, and then think hard about the relevance of the (very significant) differences between that case and the case of a dog you love.

Another important question here is whether it's okay to adopt a dog when there's a good chance that a situation like yours might arise.

I agree that this is a hard one, harder of course for you than it is for us, and harder for us than it is for your dog. The last is an important point. Euthanising your dog in this situation will cause you a great deal of suffering, but will not cause the dog suffering. It will deprive her of future pleasure of course, but she will not suffer from knowing that. I think that condemning her to spending her last few weeks without you in a cage would be cruel, and recommend against that course of action. Of course, if you can, you might arrange a private adoption. But if you can't, I think that euthanasia is the most humane option. You can ease your own feelings of guilt by remembering that. But you probably can't do much about the reasonable grief.