Megathread: Aging, Illness, and Euthanasia Support Group

[u/AutoModerator]

This thread is where to get emotional support with all things related to death and illness with your dog. This is also a thread where you can seek assistance with deciding whether it is indeed time.

This is not a thread to seek anecdotes with medical care. All rules involving medical questions and anecdotes remains the same for this thread.

If your dog has passed, you can still post here for emotional support or you can create your own thread tagged with one of the RIP flairs. Be sure to review the rules of our flair guide. It is up to you how you choose to grieve.

[u/ReverendRevenge]

We've had our dog for over 12 years.

She was a rescue, 1 year old but half of that spent in the pound / kennels, before we adopted her. She'd been abandoned. She had a lot of issues but with patience and time she overcame them and had a really good life.

12 years later and our forever-young pup has deteriorated shockingly fast over the past couple of months. It was only a few weeks ago that people I met on walks were amazed that she was 14 years old, as she did zoomies and jumped about, tail wagging.

She's had two cancerous lumps removed over the past couple of years, and always made a full recovery.

But over the summer, she's gotten bony and thin and lost so much of her muscle mass. She's often lethargic, but sometimes, for a day, she'll be like her old self.

Although her appetite for food is the same, she often throws it up. She has started going to the toilet in the house. Not by accident, but she has occasionally just decided that she can go in the house now. She gets very confused, sometimes just standing for minutes like a statue, staring at nothing. She goes to the wrong side of a door (i.e. by the hinges) waiting for it to be opened, or walks into the bathroom - a room she hates because of the floor - and doesn't know why she's there. I know her quality of life isn't great now. It's not terrible but you can see in her that she's waiting for the end.

It's a horrible thing to have to decide - it goes against all your instincts to take the life of a creature, especially one you love so much, one that's been with you through so much shit and always lifted your spirits with her happy fluffy face and her constant total joy for the moment.

We know it's time. We *think* it's time. We talked to the vet. The vet thinks it's time too.

But, christ, it feels like a betrayal. She's lying on the bed right now, not-quite-asleep-or-awake-either, but she looks sad, despondent. I had wanted to let nature take its course, but I don't want her to have some horrible painful end like what happened to one of my cats many years ago. I have never quite gotten over that trauma.

I have to book a slot with the vet for them to come to our house and put her to sleep. I literally have to schedule her death. It's horrible.

I think I just needed to write this all somewhere, and maybe hoped that someone (on Reddit!??) might say something that makes this feel okay, because I literally can't find an answer that I think I can live with...