The Guilt of Good-bye

It's never easy saying, "Good-bye."

The price of sharing one’s life with dogs is knowing that their time with us is short.  Although dogs can live to 15 to 20 years, many dogs don’t make it to that point for a variety of reasons, some beyond our control.  When our dogs die, most of us expect to feel the grief of loss.  But some of us also carry an element of guilt with our grief, even if we strongly believe that we acted in our dogs’ best interest, the guilt never fades.

Early on in our lives, we learn about the responsibility that comes with bringing an animal into our home.  Whether a goldfish or a dog, we learn that our pets are completely dependent on us for food, water, shelter, and safety.  If we do not feed or give water to our animals, they die.  If we do not provide them with safety, they die.  Animals learn very quickly that it is only through us that they are able to live.   Unlike children, we never teach our animals to live independently of us.  In fact, we groom dependency.  And that is the basis of our relationship with our furry (and scaly) companions, we love them and promise to care for them, and they trust us.

With dogs, we spend the first year or so building trust with them, assuring our dogs that we will provide for them, not put them in danger, not harm them, and will assist them in times of need.  We then spend the rest of their lives together following through on that promise.  We train, play, and travel with our dogs. We become not only their source for basic life needs, but also for the finer parts of life:  fun, comfort, and companionship.  But that makes it all the more complicated when we reach The End.

When our animals die suddenly, we wonder what we could have done to prevent the untimely death.  Did we fail in our responsibility to them?  Did we exercise the right amount of caution?  Did we care for their health enough?  And then there are the times when they don’t die suddenly, when pain becomes unendurable or when happy or even comfortable moments become fewer and further in between, until they don’t come at all.  At this point, our dogs turn to us, trusting that we will help them once more.  But what if there is only one solution to ending the pain, to ending days of misery?  How do we decide if and when to bring about that end?

Our dogs do not have the luxury of choice.  They have a survival drive, something that compels them to fight for life.   We don’t know if they understand the concept of their own death.  Dogs do not have a concept of an afterlife.  They don’t know about the “Rainbow Bridge.”  Then again, when the body begins to shut down on its own and appetite declines, dogs don’t force themselves to eat. 

In a test done with laboratory rats, rats were put in pain and given the ability to self-administer morphine, which they did, but not to the point of being “stoned.”  That experiment suggests that given the choice, animals want to be pain free, something that seems fairly obvious but is also complicated when we can’t explain to them that the only relief from some pain is death.  Dogs live in the here and now, which is one of the traits that makes dogs so endearing, but makes our burden that much harder to bear.

Time spent together is always too short.

As humans, we’re sometimes forced to make a choice and a most difficult one.  Do we let our dogs, the ones who put their complete trust in us, continue to endure, knowing that at some point the end will come, perhaps over years, either quietly or with ever more intense pain, but it will come?  Or, do we provide the end to their pain and suffering as they’re asking, but in the only way possible and thereby betray their trust by killing them?  We can use the term “euthanasia,” but even with the kindest and best intentions, our hearts and conscience know that we are taking the life of someone we love, who trusted us to make things better.  There isn’t a right or wrong choice, only what our hearts and minds can bear.

I’ve had nine dogs in my life:  three were dogs with whom I grew up, six were dogs I acquired as an adult.  I’ve experienced the loss of seven of them. Not surprisingly, death does not get any easier with multiple passings.  I’ve learned to accept the hole each dog left behind in my heart.  What haunts me is the guilt.  With each dog’s passing, the questions that always lurk in my heart and conscience return: Did I make the right decision?  If I could have explained what the options were, if my dogs could understand, would they have chosen the same?  Unfortunately, I’ll never know the answers. 

However during their lifetimes, my dogs’ trust in me allowed them to forgive the times I violated their trust either by accident or necessity, the times I’ve tripped over them, yelled in a moment of frustration, or held them while the vet administered a vaccination.  So now I must place my trust in my dogs.  I must trust that if I made a decision that was wrong by them, they’d forgive me once more. It is my trust in their forgiveness that allows me to endure and to share the cycle of love and trust again.
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