when the time comes ......

when you know its time to have your dog put to sleep do you take the dog to the vets or get a call out?

daisy and dora are sooo close i am wondering if they would cope alone or go one after the other

i will always get a vet to me rather than go there

BUT in a case like daisy and dora being sooo close would you let the other one be there or see the pts one after?

just wondering how people do it?

( mine are not at this stage they are all fine)

cheri

Hi Cheri,
When my six year old shepherd had to be put to sleep the vet came out as i wanted to be done at home. She advised me to have the deed done then let Phoebe my female shepherd come into the room to see him. I refused thinking it would be too harrowing for her so she stayed upstairs with my daughter.
With hindsight I think she might have been right as Phoebe kept looking for him all the time.
Animals don't understand death but they know when a fellow animal is no more.....

I always thought I would prefer a home visit, BUT there is the logistics you do have to consider, obviously a fully grown Saint is going to need at least 3 probably 4 people to lift. Obviously as the time is harrowing to say the least, you don't want to have to be one of those people helping to lift him or her, that wouldn't want to be my lasting memory, as well as looking at the place in the room that they passed on, would be too much for me I think.

I suppose it would be different if you had property in which to bury them, i'm only talking from teh side of having the ashes come back.

When Monty passed away, it was 2am that I had to call my vet, and i'm lucky as I work in the vets so it's a bit different for me, we met at the vet hospital at 3am, for a very difficult time it was really peaceful and quiet, bit surreal really, it was comforting the way he left us. He went so peacefully.

He loved going to the vets (spent quite a lot of time there :0( )so it wasn't stressful for him to go, other dogs it might be a different matter.

Just my thoughts on the matter, hope it helps x

This is an extremely painful subject for me - tears as I type.

If at all possible, I would ALWAYS have the vet come to the house.

RIMA was put to sleep here (at the age of only 14 months). Although she had been ill for some time, the end - ie the point at which we knew we just had to make that call - I had spent the night just being with her - came suddenly. ARGO was not in the room when she was put to sleep but we made sure that he had the oportunity to see and sniff her afterwards. I think this is important as dogs will instinctively understand what has happened.

We decided to bury RIMA in the garden. This was a major undertaking at a time when we were distraught and exhausted. Briz (BLESS him) made her a coffin and we then had to dig a hole at least 4ft deep in which to place it.

ARGO (the one who broke my heart forever) developed Lymphoma and had been having chemotherapy at the Animal Health Trust for almost a year when the time came. Again, the vet came to the house but on this occasion we arranged for Peaceful Pets (in Norfolk) to collect him for cremation (two men and a stretcher). We were able to collect his ashes two days later. If we had buried him here in the garden, I knew I would never be able to move to another house and leave him behind.

Circumstances and preferences will always be individual. These are just ours.

BeBe

I have tears in my eyes just thinking about it now.

Having recently experienced this ourselves, I am glad to say that the pet crematorium we used were brilliant.

Naively, I had previously assumed that when we lost one of our pets that the vet would arrange for them to be collected to be cremated the next day - not so in alot of cases, where they can be kept in storage at the vets for up to 10 days....

The private crematorium charged just under £200 this time, the vets would have charged me over £300.
The crematoriums that many vets use also deal with the clinical waste from the practise & charge around £70-80 to the vets to deal with your pet, it's then the vets that add the extra charges that are passed on to us.. in most cases already having charged you for the animals' treatment while it was still alive.

Added to that the mortification of returning to collect your pets ashes, while in some cases the waiting room is packed & the receptionist rummages under her desk to find your pet. urghhhh!

Almost everyone I have spoken to that has lost a pet says (and me included) that there has always been a nagging doubt in the back of their mind that they ashes they have had back have been that of their pet & them alone.

On this ocassion I have none of those concerns at all, however this recent article from a dog magazine really does make you think....

http://www.appcc.org.uk/images/behindcloseddoors.pdf

Just to quietly extend my sympathy to you Heather.

Kindest thoughts.
BeBe

We had our past family dog put to sleep because he was very sick and old. My mom cried the whole week because of that sad experience.