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This may be premature, but...

11K views 91 replies 31 participants last post by  Drew’s GSDs 
#1 ·
She is a month shy of 13. Sometimes, she seems so full of life. She plays with me, she sometimes still goes for walks.

BUT. So much has gone wrong. she had really bad vestibular this summer and has never been the same since. She was having progressive constipation that has gotten much, much worse. I have to give her fluids every day. Basically our day is like this-- 1 hour in the morning it takes to do fluids, mix her meds, administer all meds, take her to poop probably twice and then wash her because her hygiene is terrible (she gets poop all over her rear)

She's on a ton of meds for bowel stimulation and laxatives. Since the last crisis she hasn't made it more than a week without an enema as a rescue because she still will become unable to poop despite everything else I am doing. She's been to the big hospital and seen internal medicine for this. They say if it can't be controlled with all the meds she is on then they want to consider a bowel resection surgery or removing all/part of her colon.

there appears to be a part of her intestines that just functions poorly and cannot move things along. They can't say 100% sure why. Mostly think neuropathy. There is no blockage, she has had a recent abdominal ultrasound to look for that.. Internal medicine did suggest a possible neurology consult but that means another state altogether and frankly I'm totally bankrupted by all this, I have spent thousands and thousands of dollars on her in the past few months. There is no price I won't pay but I also realize there will come a point when there is nothing more that can be done. And I sort of doubt that anything can really be done to truly fix this at her age.

Today I told her vet...i fear we have a quality of life issue. I feel like I spend more time with her poking and prodding her and pilling her and sticking needles in her than having any enjoyment and she is OVER it. He said yes...that is the age old dilemma.... I said, I feel I have choice and he said you don't, if you were not doing everything you are doing she would die. Which confirmed what I thought...lesser care than what I have done recently and she would already be gone.

She played ball with me today (in her old lady way). She wagged her tail. I took her to the tracking field. She doesn't get it at all but she snuffled for food in the grass and I think she enjoyed herself.

Awhile ago she became so constipated that she vomited so violently as a result that she aspirated and got pneumonia and it was a close call. Then I learned how to give her enemas and I have a much of rescue meds and enemas on hand so I can head that off at the pass when it gets that bad.

I know the end is near. I don't know how to figure it out. I do not want her to suffer or lose all her dignity. I know she has suffered already but then I ask her if she wants to play and she comes alive and gets so happy. She can seem so full of life still i can't imagine putting her down.

She is such a good girl. She still goes to her bed in the kitchen and lays down so i can jab a huge needle in her and run her fluids twice a day. She is too good for this. But also I can only even do it because she is so good.

Neither of my local vets feel I should consider the surgery which is my inclination too. She is too old. Risks way too great.

I guess I don't know how to weigh doing all this stuff to her to keep her going every day vs. how much enjoyment she gets out of every day. It is just so hard to figure out.
 
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#2 ·
Sometimes they hold on for you...you think she is happy to play ball, yet she might be thinking, she seems so happy when I play ball!
This poem might be premature too...
whatever your decision, she will be on board
 

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#5 ·
She would, too. Back when she had that bad crisis with the pneumonia I asked 2 vets if it was just time. The first one said no I owe her a trip to the big hospital first. The internal medicine vet said no, there are medicines we have not tried yet and she isn't there.

Now we've tried the medicines, we've been to the referral hospital, and we are pretty much back where we started.

The laser was kind of a last ditch maybe we can reduce inflammation in her spine and see if thst helps anything. It has helped her comfort level, she can get on the couch again. But it has not helped her pooping. I am still doing it because she has better mobility and she can't take any pain pills really because it all interacts with another drug or condition that she has so adequan and laser are it.

Am giving her CBD too but I don't think it is doing anything
 
#3 ·
There’s no way to not second guess yourself. A good day, a bad day. It makes it all so confusing. I’ve been there, and it stinks. My heart goes out to you.
 
#6 ·
I sat on the floor with Sabi in the middle of the night when all the noise of the day was gone and had a long conversation with her. I know that sounds really stupid but I did. I told her how afraid I was to be alone. I told her how sorry I was that I could not find a way to fix this. I told her how much I dreaded a mistake that would rob us of a day. I poured out my heart and said how worried I was that I could not do this. I was just not strong enough.
I saw the weariness in her eyes, I saw the love. I knew that she would hold on until **** froze over if she could. And I saw her answer as clear as if she spoke it.
You can do this, because I chose you.

Stop thinking and just feel. You will do what's right.
 
#9 · (Edited)
One of my dogs did me the favour of passing in her sleep. With Ranger, it was harder. He could get up and down the stairs to the outside if I helped him, and his appetite was good, and he did not seem to be in any pain. But he would lose control of his bowels several times a week. I put up with it because I loved him and the poop was always firm and dry and easy to clean up.

Finally, it reached the point where I would come home from work, and find him lying on the floor, unable to get up. The vet tried a couple of different medications, and I thought he got better briefly.

Then there came this day when he couldn't get up at all, unless I helped him. When I did help him, his hind legs were so weak, they were crossing over. OF COURSE this had to happen on a weekend, when our regular vet wasn't available! I made some calls, and found a vet that was open the next day, and wouldn't charge an extra emergency fee.

I slept beside him that night, in case he needed anything. The next morning, he got up, went to his water bowl and drank as if nothing had happened the previous day.

I ALMOST backed out. But I knew it was going to happen again. He was 14 years old, so any sort of invasive procedure to find the cause of the problem was out of the question. And I thought of him lying on the floor all those hours while I was at work, struggling to get up, and I knew it wasn't fair to him. The time had come. :crying:

Still it was so very, very hard.
 
#12 ·
Only you can make that decision, it's so deeply personal, between you and your girl. We know the heartache and anguish you're going through. The last dog I put down was my bearded collie. The vet came to our house to put her down. In the end I decided I'd rather put her down 2 weeks too early, than have her suffer 2 weeks too long. But that was the right decision for me, and my dog.
 
#16 ·
In general totally agree, too early is better than too late. What is time to them anyway...

Also, she is just not a dog who wants to be a lump. She wants to do stuff. Ironically my last dog to pass I think would have been totally happy sleeping, getting belly rubs and hamburgers and nothing else for months, and he passed kind of suddenly. She is not like that. She wants to be the dog she always was, she wants to work, train and play and do stuff even now and I think she will as long as there is a breath in her.

Thanks for all the input guys, I really appreciate it. I did write down her week in review and am restarting her welfare / what meds produced what result log.

I am just taking it day by day and then I will look back and see what I can see.

I think my vet will come here to do it when it is time, I'll talk to him about that too.
 
#13 ·
I am sorry you are going through this.

Sometimes it is best to do a diary for 30 days, and give an overall impression: good day, bad day, and then a few lines of what stood out today. Sometimes looking back on the month, from day to day, we can see more clearly whether she is ready or not.

You are the one that has to make the decision, and will know.

I think we look at putting a dog down as a sort of betrayal, or something that we do because we feel that we are being inconvenienced by the dogs needs. This is not true. It is a way our brains attack us when we are down by making us feel guilty. Euthanizing a dog so that they do not suffer unnecessarily is the last gift we can give to our beloved friends. It is just so hard to feel that way when you are in the middle of it.
 
#15 ·
This is a great idea. I actually started doing this right after the pneumonia: I was making a log so I could try and look back and see how many days out of a month had been bad for her. and then things seemed better and I stopped. I will start that again for sure. Sometimes I get all emotional or exhausted and my brain isn't giving me a clear picture.

One thing I feel so blessed for: I work at home and I have been able to take time off for her or pop in and check on her during the day or basically do anything she needs. She can toddle up to the kennel with me and lay behind my desk with me whenever she wants.

The only trips we took this summer were in the rv and we brought the dogs. After that one vacation last spring I think I told my husband I would not leave her again. We were supposed to take the rv down to see my father a few weeks ago, but I had been up all night with her and I was so exhausted and overwhelmed at the prospect of trying to travel with her in the shape she was in I just cancelled.
 
#14 ·
So true, Selzer, so true!!

I often think that if I hadn't been working, or if I'd had more money, and been able to pay someone to look after Ranger while I was at work, I could have kept him going longer, as he didn't seem to be suffering. Or I could have had a cart made for him to help him get around.

Then, I shake my head, and say, Hey, who am I kidding? The dog was FOURTEEN years old! How many GSDs even make it to that age? If I hadn't done it that day, it would have been a week, two weeks, a month down the road anyway! And how do I really know he wasn't suffering? Dogs can be very stoic!

But we do like to beat ourselves up when it comes to stuff like this!
 
#17 ·
Well, today is a good day for her. She had no pain response when I did her morning fluids. She hopped up like a spry young thing when I asked the dogs if they want to come help me load the truck for the dump. She played with a toy.

She rode to the dump with me with her chin on the window which she loves. I stopped by the general store and got her a hot dog, which she ate happily.

Today, she can poop. She ate a real breakfast before the hot dog.

Right now she is sleeping peacefully.

Today is not that day, for sure. And it goes in the log as a good day. I will continue to keep notes until it becomes clear that the scales tip in the other direction.

Thanks for your thoughts everyone.
 

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#18 ·
What a beautiful girl. She will let you know when she is ready to go. You will know when you listen. Look at the joy in her eyes when she goes for a drive or eats a hot dog. When the light isn’t there anymore, it is time. We tend to deal with death badly. We can learn a lot from our dogs.

We just lost an elderly family member recently. It was a terrible loss for everyone. A few months ago, she told me she was ready to go and it was what she wanted, which didn’t make the loss any less, but I understood.
 
#19 ·
Glad she's having a good day! Day by day, it's all any of us can do, I never saw that spirit/presence fade out of our dogs, yes, they slowed down, weren't able to carry on as they had in the past, the physical pain/illness present, but the spark was still there! I think that is the hardest part. They just enjoy life, seeing what the day will bring, the spark that gets us up and moving. I guess it's all part of making the complete circle of life. She looks content in those pics.
 
#21 ·
I truly believe dogs are the sole proof that it is better to have loved than not at all. We so willingly take them into our lives, knowing what will eventually come and lose ourselves with an incomparable sense of loyalty and love. I can’t think of a better sense of the word love than what we share with dogs.

Dogs share that same feeling with us, perhaps in an even more profound way. Except it comes naturally to them, it is their very essence. They would of course sacrifice any malady to spend time with us or make us happy. Except when even they know the time has come. And they do. You won’t doubt it when she tells you. It is not exactly the same but I have bad knees and although it hurts me and I might not be able to move the next day, I still embark on hikes and participate in races. The pain is worth the joy I receive doing what I do, and we are that to our dogs except ten fold.

I had a horse 30 years old I had for 17 years, since I was six years old. I’ll never have another like him, he was amazing and we were so completely in tune. I decided to put him down not because he was sick, miserable, wasn’t eating, or any of those sorts of health issues. He ate a senior feed and that was it as far as supplemental care to his age. But he had such terrible arthritic calcification in one of his knees that it was three times it size, bowed out and he’d almost fall over and lay down when the farrier would try to lift it for a trim. You could tell it hurt terribly especially in the colder months, and he was always incredibly stoic. He would still run like that with the other horses, I was sincerely worried one day it would snap on him it was so bad. Instead of letting it come to that, I had him put down right as it started to get colder out. I still miss him and it’s been seven years, he even shows up to visit in my dreams every so often.
 
#23 ·
Reading this thread, especially that poem that Gator posted and seeing your pictures has brought tears to my eyes. It was 2 years ago (still fresh in my mind) that I was making that same decision for my 1st dog. (Still hurts. I feel like I betrayed him.) I had no idea when and where to do it. He had his good days and he had his bad. I asked everyone: the vets, the vet techs, the oncologist, my friends who had dogs, neighbors with dogs, my family, etc. Everyone I knew. And I still couldn't get the right answer I wanted. But what everyone did say was that 1) it had to be my decision, 2) if there were more bad days than good, then it was maybe time, and 3) it's not just the quality of life for the dog, but also the quality of life for you. If you're getting 2 hours of sleep a night, or your cleaning poop off his long fur outside in the freezing temperatures at 3 in the morning, then your quality of life is...well you get it. His good days: a normal day. Bad days: vomiting, didn't want to go out to poop, pooping while eating/sleeping, loss of appetite, etc. I was told by the oncologist that he had several months...3 to 5 months. I was trying so hard to get him past the new year. But at the end, I made the decision at 2 months (from diagnosis), around X'mas time, something I tried to avoid. Why then? Bad days had become 5 days out of the week. I just picked a random day that my whole family could be there with me. I also decided not to do it at home. I didn't want to remember a lifeless body or that death happened at his favorite spot. I also didn't want to do it at my primary care vet's office either. I knew I was going to get another dog some day and I didn't want to that last image of him to pop up in my mind at the vet's office. So I made the decision to do it at the hospital. Even though it was an unfamiliar place but he was still surrounded by his 5 favorite people.

I'm sorry you're going through this right now. I hope my short story helps even a tiny bit to help you make a decision. Sorry, it's all over the place. I was just writing down my thoughts as they came to mind.
 
#24 ·
Well, you brought up another piece of it that I didn't really want to say but it probably should be said. I have gotten critically low on sleep in the past few months since this has gotten really bad. I'd say since the summer I've almost not had a single night of uninterrupted sleep. Some nights I would be up with her every night on the hour and could not even get back to sleep in between most times. I'm not a good sleeper anyway. A good night would be I only have to take her out once.

Two weeks ago I finally broke down and had her sleep in my kennel (detached building. Very nice, climate controlled, she is comfortable there). I have in and out runs, and I left her with the door up so she could just take herself to the bathroom when she needed. A dog door in my house won't really work for a lot of reasons not the least of which she has some senility and gets confused at night, can't see well in the dark, and can't be negotiating my porch stairs like that on her own, and she eats dirt like crazy when unsupervised outside. But the run is perfect, she can just step through a flap into a 6x12 outdoor run where she cannot get disoriented or fall and she can toilet and go back to bed without me.

BUT I've never slept apart from her in her life. It took me literally months to get desperate enough to have her sleep up in the kennel. Honestly she did not seem distressed by it, although I don't think she sleeps as well up there as she does in the house. I, however, felt like a new person after a couple nights' sleep. after my husband, my vet and my therapist were all like listen, you can not go on like this. Let her sleep in the kennel, she will be okay.

She really does seem okay up there. but I still hate it. But honestly I was near to the point of considering putting her down because I felt I could not go on.

So, the plot thickens. She's been in the house with me all weekend. I got so emotional after making this post that I decided I couldn't put her up there again one night and then we were full so she had to come back down anyway. She hasn't been too bad. Last night I only had to get up with her once. If it's not poop sometimes she has these episodes where she just paces and whines and I don't think even she knows what she wants or needs. Sometimes I think she has sundowners a little.

And then, like I said, other times she seems so full of life during that day that I think I am losing my mind even considering it. OR like others have said I'm actually going there in my head because I can't go on like this.

If she were truly distressed by sleeping in the kennel that would be a dealbreaker but she really does not seem to be. I have cameras up there and I check on her and she is just sleeping peacefully. If she has to go, she takes herself out. I'm lucky I even have that as an option. And what can I do, the poor girl takes whopping doses of laxatives daily, no wonder she has to poop at 2am.
 
#25 ·
I personally will always have my animals put down where they are happiest and most comfortable, at their home. I believe most if not all animals are much more stressed and anxious at vet offices, I know mine are. I want to make their last moments as well as possible. I will also always be there with them, they deserve it. I hear about people leaving their dogs to be euthanized in a cold vet cubicle without them being there and it makes my heart hurt.
 
#26 ·
I take them to my vet. The vet they know. The vet I know. There are now 3 vets there that they may see. Two have been there for over 20 or 30 years. One is newer.

When I brought Babsy in, she was almost 13. Dr. Curie, who owns the place and who I saw the first time with Princess, when I was 15, 35 years ago. He came in and went down on his knees and hugged Babsy.

The vet techs at my vet clinic always tell me they are not afraid of my dogs. My dogs are not afraid of them. They do not act like they are scared to death there. There may be some anxiety if they are already hurting, but mostly, they are perfectly good at the vet.

When I put Heidi down last month, they brought a blanket in for her to lie on. She fought going to sleep. But we got her to sleep in the end, and then they put her down. It was terribly sad. And I know I will have to think about Babsy and Heidi and Quinnie, and Tori, and Jenna, and Milla and Ninja, and Cujo1 all of which were put down there. Well Cujo died there, before the juice was administered.

The thing is, it's horrible to lose your best friend. It's horrible to lose a young dog. It's horrible to lose an old dog. Most of the time, I watch them pass and feel incredibly sad, but also happy that this ending I can give them is peaceful. They go to sleep. And then shut down. I have time in that little cold room to hold them, to sing to them, to tell them how beautiful and special and good they were their whole life.
 
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#27 ·
Well today was another good day. Kind of makes me feel stupid for starting this thread. She was energetic and asked to go for a walk with the boys so I cut their walk short so she could come.

She did not eat well at all. No breakfast, about 1/2 her dinner. But during the day she seemed happy and alert and playful.

My husband got home and we talked about it. He says he does not think she is there at all....

The log continues. We shall see
 

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#29 ·
She may just be cycling but I thought I'd share a quick update. Since I started this thread she has continued to do well and even improved.

Some things of note: it may be unrelated cycling but I did buy her a bottle of CBD. When it ran out I thought, if anything she is worse so i am not buying more. Her appetite had tanked so bad I had a sack of bacon double cheeseburgers and cans of AD food and if I got her to eat one or the other in a 24hr period it was a win. No appetite. I thought this is it...when we start with the cheeseburgers the end is near

CBD ran out and she perked back up and starting eating again. She is eating her regular food again no problem. She went from 61 at her lowest to 63 back up to 65lb. 65 is a good weight. 61 she was thin. Not a bit to spare if anything went wrong. She looks healthy at 65. I am no longer feeding her rescue food. Right now I think the CBD made her worse, although it could have been a coincidence. But fair warning if you try random supplements! (It was a quality one)

I *think* I have found to magic mixture of her stomach meds and she has been a whopping 3 weeks without an enema. Or maybe the laser on her back is helping...the vet thought it might which is why we are doing it. Orthopedically she is definitely more comfortable.

I've dropped her fluids back to every other day and she is doing ok so I feel like quality of life improvement there with less needle jabs

She is still sleeping in the kennel most nights if there is a vacancy. She has climate control indoor run with dog door into a covered outdoor run. She uses her outside run to toilet overnight and I get her first thing. I do a night check late potty for my boarders so that's when I leave her up there and I get her bright and early so we are only apart for the time I am sleeping. She seems totally fine with it. She is happy to see me in the morning but is not distressed when I leave her at night. The kennel is quiet, I don't take nuisance barkers. So she goes to bed with classical music and then takes care of her own needs at night so I can finally get some sleep. My vet was encouraging me to do this and he was so right...I have so much more compassion and energy for her to take better care of her during the day now that I can sleep. And that's exactly what he would lecture me for every time I bring her in...you can't take good care of her if you are stumbling around without sleeping for months.

So things have definitely taken a turn for the better for now.
 
#32 ·
We are still just taking it day by day. She likes to play with me so I try to make time to spend alone with her every day just doing stuff she likes.

We've started taking walks in town after her laster treatments because the mountain trails are a struggle for her now. But she likes to stroll around town and the sidewalks are easy for her

Every day is gravy. We probably don't have that much time left.
 
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