I’ve grown up around dogs my entire life. If it wasn’t my family’s dog, it was my mother’s, grandparent’s, aunt’s or uncle’s, friends’ and neighbors’. We live in a society that treats pets like family. We’ll do nearly anything for them, especially medically. Often I feel others take advantage of that. They know emotional attachment will lead someone to spend a lot of time and money doing everything they can. Many think this is a waste of money, but honestly, most people would do anything for their loved ones, why not their pets? They deserve the same chances as we do. But we don’t ever want to see them suffer, and “putting them to sleep” is often the only solution presentable at that point.
We had the chance to adopt a dog named Toby from a couple in Hartford. A “piebald” Dachshund, he was much larger size-wise than our standard Dachshund, Dyson, but thinner due to what we figured was poor eating habits, or not being fed enough. Dyson was much like that when we got him a little under a year ago from a pound in East Hartford, but with care and attention he put on weight and fit in our household quite easily. We were confident Toby would too much the same way.
The couple whom we got him from initially wanted a couple hundred, saying he had his shots, checkup, and was neutered. When my wife visited to see him, she found he was not neutered, and that he had paperwork from a vet, but they listed his breed as “Hot Dog”. She talked them down to a more modest fee for taking him and proceeded to correct the erroneous paperwork. He was neutered, at our expense, and while the paperwork did check out, which was good, he tested positive for heartworms.
Being told your dog has heartworm is not something you want to be told. While not a rare occurrence, it’s extremely uncommon in northern states, particularly due to the fact that most folks keep their animals inside, or treat them regularly for these sorts of conditions. I remember we had to give our dog heartworm guard medication living in the midwest because there was a higher risk. The treatment is a set of fairly potent shots that essentially kills the worms off in stages, but often causes pain and discomfort as the worms die. The big risk is their dead carcasses can get lodged in blood vessels or organs and cause problems. This seems to be what plagued Toby, to the point that there was nothing we could do. After he received his third injection, things seemed to be going well until a week after, where he stopped moving around a lot, had difficulty walking up and down our stairs, and had trouble eating and drinking. Several vet trips, many tests, and in the end, he had an enlarged liver, possible thrombosis, and many other ailments. Despite treatments, he was not recovering, and we were faced with the decision to either spend more to have more tests or procedures done, none of which carried any guarantee he would live, or put him to sleep. Feeling that he would not recover, and not to put him through more pain or suffering, we chose to lay him to rest.
He wasn’t even two.
Looking back at his history, it’s not surprising it came to this. We suspect he was abused in his first home as a puppy. Someone rescued him, but then could not care for him and he went to his previous owners we got him from. So to be shuffled to four homes in under a year and a half is not something you want to see an animal go through, just as you wouldn’t a child. There was no way he developed any conditions in our care, we only had him for two months, and he was fed well, taken care of, and very happy with us, Dyson, and our cats Ellsbury and Potato. He was a genuinely happy dog. Fair doesn’t even begin to describe cruel fate.
It could very well be though that there was nothing we could have done. We could have spent thousands of more dollars perhaps and maybe succeeded, or not pulled the trigger on the heartworm treatment until we could get his weight up a little more so his body could handle it better. Everything is calculated risk when it comes to medical treatments, and more money doesn’t always equate to better results. Most of the time though, a pet is near the end of its life, and it’s often the more humane thing to do.
But in many cases, and this brings me to the real point of this post, dogs aren’t even given a chance at life before they are “put to sleep” to “keep them from suffering”. Even Dyson, our first dog, probably would have been put down had we not adopted him from the pound. These sorts of things happen all over the country. “They’re are just pets”, or some other moniker, are used to dismiss their right-to-life. Not a new tune, we’ve been singing it for decades since Roe vs. Wade. Life is a fucking convenience for some people today, and it disgusts me, especially when it’s other people’s choices that deny something else that right to live. We claim to be humanitarian, to care about the quality of life, but we not only rob each other of life at points like before birth, we rob household pets of a chance to live because we don’t fucking have an idea of how to efficiently find homes for them, and there ARE homes for them, you’re just not looking. We’ve helped close to two dozen kittens get adopted out over the last few years locally through local organizations. Don’t tell me people don’t want to fucking adopt cats. People don’t want to adopt older cats or dogs, or those with conditions. They don’t want to liability. How convenient. It’s like not wanting to adopt a child who is a juvenile offender because he wasn’t properly taught right from wrong, morals, and integrity. But they’re people, animals aren’t people! How is that convenience working out for you? Oh, I know, here is a good one:
They’re better off dead.
Sound familiar? PETA? ASPCA? Don’t believe everything you see on Animal Planet. These organizations claim to save animals, but they “save” them from people who want to truly love them. By killing them. There are internets out there on this. Read them. Ignorance is not an excuse, it’s ignorance. Ignorance contributed to our losing Toby, because each and every person who owned him before us was responsible for giving this poor dog a decent quality of life, something that isn’t hard nor terrible inconvenient of your daily life. It’s simply fucking amazing.
If this was a child, or a parent, a person will spend any amount of money necessary to treat, or keep alive, that person as long as possible. Had we not adopted Toby, he might’ve died at some point in time from heartworm, or another disease. We gave him a chance no one else might’ve. That’s more than most people give dogs or cats these days, and it’s something we take pride in even as we mourn this loss. You always hear stories of people rescuing animals with missing legs or other medical conditions and they live good lives. But there are always stories like ours where we weren’t so lucky, that despite all efforts, we simply couldn’t save him. It’s tragic as it is heartbreaking.
The best we can do is move on, like anyone else does. We spent a great two months with him, and he will be missed. There will be more dogs, I’m sure, and there will be more opportunities to save another dog’s life, and hopefully not have to face the same hardships as this time. It’s such a hard pill to swallow to have someone who gives you nothing but undivided attention and love suddenly disappear, even an animal.
As my wife said, “It’s not fair.”
It isn’t.
Death is rarely fair.