Death and Dying and Being Alive With Our Pets
Life is a terminal condition. We’re all gonna die. But how many of us truly live?
– Kris Carr
Those words were spoken by a woman diagnosed with terminal cancer 10 years ago – she’s still alive and thriving. Those words may seem harsh, but they are reality for ourselves and for our pets. An older reference and one of my favorite quotes is from Benjamin Franklin: “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”
As veterinarians, we see death frequently and we are also often the deliverer of a peaceful death for a patient. But I also see that we’ve created a loss of understanding of death in our society. I don’t want this to be a depressing article, but a thought provoking one for you.
While attending the North American Veterinary Conference in January, I went to a TED-like round of talks and one of those three-minute speeches really stayed with me. Dr. Jessica Vogelsang spoke on demystifying death. Dr. Vogelsang is the founder of a pet hospice and home euthanasia service in San Diego, California, and she is also the creator and primary contributor to www.pawcurious.com.
As she opened with some bad jokes about veterinarians being “Doctor Death” and more, she also highlighted death and dying as a natural processes from which many humans have become very distant from in their own or family members’ medical care.
In the good or bad old days, multiple generations of families lived and died together – death was not a stranger to be feared or avoided; it was a part of the fabric of life. The saddest statistic I heard was that now nearly one in five elderly persons die alone or with staff members and not family in attendance at their nursing home.
We have much closer and kinder ends for most of animal patients at home or at the hospital via humane euthanasia, but no less emotionally difficult. I think that some of the emotion behind the loss of a pet may stem from other losses, acknowledged and unacknowledged, in the human’s life, but the rest is true grief at the loss of a beloved friend and companion.
I’ll be honest and say I don’t enjoy euthanasias, but they are a meaningful part of my work. With a mix of drugs, we deliver peace to a suffering pet and, hopefully, we do it with grace and caring for the owner. And, for many families, it is a starting point to have a conversation with their children about the natural order of things – we are all on this earth for a finite time and just as there is joy in birth, there should be honor and joy in death for ourselves, for our pets and for our family members.
My hope is that you, human and pet owner, will know that death has a natural place in our life and that, with regard to your pets, your veterinarian is the resource for helping whatever the situation may be.
Go live the best of each day with family and furry family members.
Dr. Margot can be reached at parkhillvet.com