The Final Moments

Content Warning: Pet Euthanasia

There’s a meme going around that shames pet owners who don’t stay with their pets when they’re being put to sleep.  According to the meme, a lot of pets spend their final moments in terror, and keep looking around for their owners.  I’m sure this does happen, but I don’t feel it’s right to shame owners who don’t have the emotional strength to watch their pets die.  And I have to question how they really know the animal is looking for their owner.  I think in some cases the pets are actually scanning the room for exits.  Restrained animals tend to do that.

When I took Sybil in, the vet told me that sometimes the owner’s presence can actually make things more difficult.  Sometimes the pet picks up on their owner’s sadness, and it makes them anxious.  Of course, Sybil was way beyond picking up on my emotional state.  She was incapable of noticing anything around her.  Which brings me to another question – how often are totally alert animals brought in to be euthanized?  I'm not asking that to prove a point, I really have no idea.  

I know this is a run-on sentence, but if only a subset of pets being euthanized have the presence of mind to look around the room, and a subset of those are looking for means of escape rather than their owners, and another subset would actually be more anxious with their owner present, then maybe the owners who leave early aren't the monsters the meme creator makes them out to be.

Assuming my experience with Sybil was normal, it’s a two stage process.  First they give the pet a shot that makes them lose consciousness.  This is a good time for the owner to stay with the pet and say goodbye.  Once that shot has had a few minutes to take effect, they give the pet a second shot that stops their heart.  This is the part where many owners should bow out.  The animal won’t know.  But if you can't even bear the first part, I have nothing but sympathy for you.

I’ve had three cats pass away in my adult life.  Banchi died in our home, overnight, after a few weeks of complaining about pain.  I was just about to schedule a vet appointment when she died.  I swore never to wait that long again.  Honi just melted one day; becoming completely unresponsive.  We did not stay for her euthanization, and sometimes I regret it.  The whole ordeal lacked closure somehow.  How do I know she didn’t wriggle out of the vet’s arms, run out the backdoor, and die alone in the woods?  How do I know the vet didn’t take her home and use her as a bait cat in an underground dogfighting ring?  Okay, so neither of those are realistic scenarios, but the point is I don’t know.  I just walked out and left her there, and for all I know, anything could have happened next.

With Sybil, I needed closure.  I had to see her leave this world.  It’s the same reason we have open casket funerals.  I had to see it to believe it.  It’s the only way the event will form a solid memory in my mind.  But not everyone has that need.  Or for some people, a lack of closure isn’t nearly as terrifying as watching their pet die.  Some people might not even want closure, they might even want to imagine that the vet took their pet home, healed it up, and gave it a nice place to live for a few more years. 

But different people have different needs, and it’s not our place to judge them.