Or it’s a swift, compassionate decision made for a dog with severe injuries after being struck by a car.īut the question of what a “good death” looks like starts well before the last breath. The veterinarian will handle the remains, calling you to pick up the ashes in a few days or weeks. Or perhaps it’s going to a veterinary clinic at the end of the day, where you can spend as much time as you like before leaving. Maybe it looks like this: taking the cat who’s lived with you since college to the park to spend a day outside and then returning home, where a veterinarian will administer euthanasia and you can bury him under the lilacs. What does a “good death” look like for the animals in your life? How do you want to remember their final weeks, days, and hours? “You do see a lot of end-of-life clients in the ER,” she says. She came to animal hospice from a veterinary emergency room background, and it informed her practice. In some senses, vets are failing their clients due to gaps in their own training, she says. Lynn Hendrix, a mobile hospice and palliative care veterinarian, says we don’t have often enough. Sitting down to think about the kind of death you want to have is important. Shrinking back from conversations about death isn’t healthy for us or our animals It may be preceded by a sudden traumatic accident, or the rapid onset of a serious illness, or months of struggling with cancer or another terminal disease.Īnd it often comes not independently, but with assistance. But unfortunately, that’s usually not how death happens for pets. The thought of an elderly dog curling up peacefully next to the fire is a powerful one. “They’ll just go to sleep and not wake up,” we tell ourselves. We insist we’ll have many happy years together, that our pets will outlive the average, and when the end comes, it’ll be gentle, quiet, and natural. Death will trail in the footsteps of a beloved pet until, eventually, it catches up. She was empowered to make decisions that would best serve her canine companion.Įvery time we bring an animal into our lives, we unwittingly also introduce a shadow: death. Over the six months leading to his death, Ivan experienced a slow decline, but one in which Rhoads felt like she was in control. “At the end, the vet came and put Ivan to sleep in my backyard under the apple tree,” Emily Rhoads recalls, describing the death of her beloved dog, Ivan.
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