Post #51150

I’m an old guy, and have had lots of pet over my life. so I’ve thought about this a lot. Years ago I came to the position that the most compassionate thing to do for my pets was to try and assess if their days are more full of joy, or more full of pain and suffering. We can’t ask our pets that, we can only do our best to figure it out. If they’re spending more time suffering than enjoying their lives, then I think it’s a kindness to put them down. We don’t usually have to make that decision for other humans, because they can decide for themselves. Note that we do make the decision sometimes to “pull the plug” on people rather than keep the alive. Also note that animals do sometimes go off to die when they’re sick and miserable. In fact, when dogs and cats have illnesses that are miserable but treatable, we sometimes have to be careful that they don’t go off to die before treatment is done.