My father had always stated that euthanasia is more harmful to an animal than what is said. Is this true? What exactly goes on inside the animal when they are being euthanized? I’ve had 3 dogs pass and I’ve been dying to know if my furry friends are really passing in the most painless way possible.
I think I might have to fight your father behind a local Denny’s.
Is your father a veterinarian? Anesthesiologist? Anybody with any sort of training or knowledge relevant to the field?
Or does he just have ‘opinions’.
The euthanasia solution we use in veterinary medicine is an anaesthetic overdose. The animal is anaesthetised, meaning it is unconscious and feels nothing, and then because it’s an overdose, it passes away. And it all happens fairly fast.
The animal might experience:
The prick of the needle/catheter going into the vein.
A brief period of light headedness or euphoria (5 seconds)
A bitter taste in their mouth (5-10 seconds and not all of them).
How do we know this? Because the same drug was historically used in a not-overdose way to anaesthetise human patients, who can describe their experiences. It’s an anaesthetic. They don’t feel their death.
There are a number of things that can happen after death that look super weird or confronting if you’re not expecting them, but they’re not experienced by the animal at all. They all happen after cardiac or brain death, at which point the animal just isn’t here to experience them.
Releasing bladder and bowels
Skin twitching
Eyes open and pupils dilate
Agonal gasps- these occur when the heart has stopped and look like a big gasp or mouth twitch. They look kind of bad, but the animal is dead by this stage.
Listen, I am frankly furious at your father’s insinuation.
Euthanasia is death. It’s the nicest, smoothest, most controlled death we can offer. It’s infinitely better than starving, drowning in your own bodily fluids, lying about in pain getting bed sores, waiting for the cancer to consume you or your heart to fail.
It’s still a death, but it’s the best one we have to offer.
So your father can fight me.
