Quality of life vs quantity of life

*disclaimer this thread is not prompted by or as a response to anything or anyone on here and is merely a result of my own musings about my own animals*

Over the last few weeks I have been musing about the above, prompted by Merrys potential impending op and the fact that my pets are all now middle aged or more. How do you decide when enough is enough and are we as animal lover sometimes driven to continue with care for our own needs rather than the pets?

When Timmy pig died a few months ago I was very upset and one of the things I said was that it wasnt fair he was only three. A very wise lady pointed out to me that he didnt know he was only three all he knew was he had had a great life been poorly for a few hours and that was it and I feel she was correct in that that was what matters. It got me thinking, had he recovered and lived for another two years but needed constant meds and had days of being quite ill who would benefit from keeping him alive me or him? are there worse things than being pts?

I think it depends entirely on the individual animal - if they take meds willingly and don't mind being handled, i think that is definitely the way to go. If, on the other hand, they hate being touched, fight being medicated, they are just going to spend the rest of their life being stressed, which would be just awful. My Molly is like that. She is on daily metacam but happily eats it up in mashed banana. If she didn't, or she needed more meds, it just wouldn't be fair on her to force the issue. Very difficult one!! :?

I often worry about this too. But then I think that some animals adapt a lot better than others. It probably helps to not have a big brain in that sense, so perhaps the smaller critters are the better adapters?

weeble said:

*disclaimer this thread is not prompted by or as a response to anything or anyone on here and is merely a result of my own musings about my own animals*

Over the last few weeks I have been musing about the above, prompted by Merrys potential impending op and the fact that my pets are all now middle aged or more. How do you decide when enough is enough and are we as animal lover sometimes driven to continue with care for our own needs rather than the pets?

When Timmy pig died a few months ago I was very upset and one of the things I said was that it wasnt fair he was only three. A very wise lady pointed out to me that he didnt know he was only three all he knew was he had had a great life been poorly for a few hours and that was it and I feel she was correct in that that was what matters. It got me thinking, had he recovered and lived for another two years but needed constant meds and had days of being quite ill who would benefit from keeping him alive me or him? are there worse things than being pts?

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I think it depends entirely on the individual animal. I could say more but having been told in no uncertain terms that my opinions are hypocritical I no longer give them if on here

Jack's-Jane said:

I think it depends entirely on the individual animal. I could say more but having been told in no uncertain terms that my opinions are hypocritical I no longer give them if on here

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I have never known you to be hypo critical Jane. Most of us value your opinion s very highly

But yes. It depends on the individual animal. It is a difficult call though. i often wonder if I got it right with gypsy

i have a principle - if a long-term illness or condition develops, my bunnies will be helped to the bridge.

all four are eight years old, just had birthdays (m+t 8/6, c+c 1/6). they've had the best lives i could give them and hopefully there is more to come. but i am not going to prolong life where it would naturally end, nor keep an animal alive for my benefit.

people know best about their own circumstances, the money they can spare, the emotional drain they can withstand, and they know their own animals best. i'm not saying mine would want to go... just that long ago, when they were babies, this is what i decided and i hope that when the time comes, i can stick to it.

there will be no 'replacement partners'. my two pairs bonded nicely for a few weeks then fell out, so they are living as pairs side by side with only a single width of puppy panels between them (they try to steal each other's food and they nip each other's bums but don't kick off badly). they will stay as close as i can keep them, so that they can be company for a singleton if one dies. if charlie rabbit dies, i'll try bonding cecile with m+t, but not the other way around. charlie turned out to be a very aggressive tiny cuddlebun.

and after the bunnies, no dog (that had been my dream for years, a westie called 'Ruff') and no animals other than a single, big, hairy Syrian hamster who i hope will be as characterful as the late Fluffy. cheap to feed, doesn't destroy the house, easy to rehome when i kick the bucket.

I really don't know what to say as we have been in a similar situation recently with oscar. We were convinced we were near the end with him. Last few days though, he seems much happier, I feel terrible admitting that three weeks ago I had my phone in hand to get the vet out to PTS, my daughter pleaded with me to keep on trying to give him another chance, different meds etc. This is such a difficult question and I don't think I'll ever know the right answer.

I dread if Bumble bunny get poorly and needs medicine because she's terrified so terrified of being picked up I know she'd get so incredibly stressed and lose all trust in me

Dreading something happening to Indy or Mimi and finding myself in that position.

Sometimes love makes people selfish and have seen many times people making animals struggle on because they don't want to let go.

I hope if I found myself in that position I'd manage to do the right thing

I think quality is more important than quantity.

When Tinkerbell got ill with headtilt she was only 3 years old. She only had the headtilt for 3 days but, after only the first day, I was contemplating euthanasia if she did not recover quickly. Her quality of life was so compromised, not eating, could hardly walk, not aware of her surroundings.

She passed away during the night on day 3 so I didn't have to make the decision. But I couldn't have left her not able to live life as a rabbit should.

ripminnie said:

I think it depends entirely on the individual animal - if they take meds willingly and don't mind being handled, i think that is definitely the way to go. If, on the other hand, they hate being touched, fight being medicated, they are just going to spend the rest of their life being stressed, which would be just awful. My Molly is like that. She is on daily metacam but happily eats it up in mashed banana. If she didn't, or she needed more meds, it just wouldn't be fair on her to force the issue. Very difficult one!! :?

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Definitely this. It depends entirely on the ' condition ' and the animal's response to meds. I see this a lot a work. Some owners will fight tooth and nail till the very end no matter what. I had a customer just last week that told me her cat had aged, had problems, and was 'having accidents' in the house. She said she didn't want me to feel she was cruel. I said I understood, my elderly dog occasionally has accidents if we don't get her outside quick enough or get up early enough to let her out. The next day I came in to this cat and was absolutely horrified by the mess - it wasn't having ' accidents' it was totally incontinent and even messing in it's bed. The poor thing looked on death's door.
I know of one owner who gave her cat chemo for cancer and it survived 6 more months. But during that time it was back and to to the vets. Is it worth it? I'm not so sure.

I am a great believer in quality over quantity. Animals live for the moment, they don't give a damn about the future. My rule is If they are happy and content in that moment and can get about/ keep themselves cleanish and do not need long-term grueling treatment I think keep going. We all have to die sometime, it's inevitable. You can drag it out as much as you want but it will happen.

Jack's-Jane said:

I think it depends entirely on the individual animal. I could say more but having been told in no uncertain terms that my opinions are hypocritical I no longer give them if on here

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I haven't been on here for a while, but it really saddens me that someone has said that to you. I believe that the majority of us value your opinions and observations.

As to to actual qustion, it really comes down to each individual animal. It broke my heart to have pebbles pts last year but he had lost the spark in his eyes, he was no longer happy to take his medicine via syringe, and he was again showing no interest in food....he'd had 3 years of happiness with me and his wifey bun Poppy because I'd had him operated on to remove a tumor the first week I got him. But when he went, all I could think about was the fact he could have had so many years more.

It was the same with Violet this week, having an inoperable tumor in her chest making it hard for her to breathe & eat, I had no choice really, I had to let her go after just 8 months...but if it was something less serious I would have probably tried to give her a chance to fight it first.

I agree that it depends on the individual animal, what they want and can tolerate and how whatever condition actually affects them. There's no one size fits all and no one rigid approach. As long as the owner is following what the animal wants, then there can be a whole wide variety of different approaches.

I hope that I know my animals well enough that I can make the right decision for them. I'd never keep them alive if their quality of life was low, but with rodents I try to give them the chance to pass at home as long as they're still comfortable and peaceful. They also seem to cope much, much better with daily medication than rabbits!

Milly likes metacam, but if she had to be given other meds for life I'd have to seriously consider if it was fair on her. She hates being handled. Charlie doesn't like being given meds, but he forgets quicker.

With the cats, Sheena could not cope with daily meds. I don't think Puddy would notice, even if I had to force them down his throat :lol:

Not sure with my birds though :? That's harder.

For me it's easy in principle, but it's hard to be objective when it's your pet.

Nena has had a quite hands on approach for over 4 months due to her abscess re-occuring. She needs it cleaning out and flushing twice a day, plus meds twice a day (which she loves), plus injections twice a day now. Along with vets once a week. Before it was cleaning 5 times a day but no injections. Vets trips were as frequent as once every 3 days at the beginning. There is no way I'd be putting her through this if there wasn't a decent probability that we can cure this thing, although the odds are admittedly dropping.

If she can't fight it off and we run out of options I'll take a step back with everything. I'll keep her on painkillers and some less intrusive oral meds rather than the injections and just let her be a happy carefree bunny for as long as possible before I have to make the decision. I'll let her get to the point where she starts to lose a bit of weight or starts to be uncomfortable, and then I'll make the decision.

I personally would never keep a bunny alive with a severe long term illness unless it could be managed very easily (i.e. daily meds which they take nice and easily).

I think you raise a very valid point in that the bunny itself doesn't know how long it's 'supposed' to live. For me it's only worth prolonging their life if it's going to be very happy.

yaretzi said:

For me it's easy in principle, but it's hard to be objective when it's your pet.

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Exactly this.

I think that when it comes to PTS too soon is better than too late.
I personally will not put an animal through a prolonged period of suffering on the basis that they "might" or "could" recover, if they don't appear to be responding to treatment or keep them if they are having more bad days than good days. They can't possibly understand and chronic illness is tough enough on people who can understand, I won't do that with an animal.
I don't agree with putting animals through chemo etc. on the basis that they can't possibly understand.

Our usual approach is to try everything to help an animal recover from an ailment but it's not always easy to know when to stop. Generally age plays a big part in our decisions as we'd be more inclined to fight hard for a younger animal than one which was elderly. I can't really think of an animal that I think "I wish I'd put him/her to sleep earlier" but decisions are influenced by species as well. The problem is we've just seen too many "miracles" I suppose so we're now extremely reluctant to give up unless it's very obvious that treatment will only prolong suffering.

In 2012 we adopted my dog Sansa and she came with an absolutely massive fatty lump on her shoulder. The rescue we got her from advised us that it didn't cause her any pain and to operate at her age wouldn't be worth the risk. When we'd had her a few months we realised that the lump was growing rapidly and it wouldn't be long before we would have to consider having her put to sleep. It was clear she was uncomfortable so we took her to the vet. The first vet we spoke to repeated pretty much word for word what the rescue had said and that it'd be unfair to consider putting her through the op. She also gave another reason in that she could spend a significant proportion of her remaining life recovering from such an op.
We weren't 100% happy with the verdict so we went to the practice manager who agreed with us that the lump should come off. The op was totally hassle free and Sansa was more or less better the following day. She became far less grouchy and was able to lie down comfortably and run around again. There's no question in my mind that we did the right thing there.

My fiance had a rat called Scabbers that suffered numerous health problems in his (oddly) long life. He ruptured his ear drum and couldn't move for around 48 hours, in that time we fed and watered him with a syringe and washed his rear end. After a week he had improved enough to allow him to clamber around (slowly) on the floor and haul himself into a hammock. By this time he was also able to eat and drink but the vet that saw him for his re-check advised putting him to sleep. This was the same vet that had seen him the morning we noticed something was wrong and admitted there was an obvious improvement. I imagine the vet thought that putting Scabbers through any more suffering wasn't the best plan and that he wasn't significantly better but as we were seeing small improvements day on day we declined. Scabbers did make a full recovery after a change of meds so again no one could convince me we did wrong in that case either. I think Scabbers was a year and a bit when this happened, he lived until he was 2 years 7 months.

We're going through something similar at the moment with one of our parakeets. On Tuesday morning we found him on the floor or his cage hunched over, fluffed up and very slow to respond to anything. We rushed him to the vets and had to wait for an avian vet to see him. The verdict was that he was extremely sick and they could attempt treatment but due to the stress and the fact birds are extremely delicate Joey very likely wouldn't make it. We asked for treatment to be given and it was very intensive treatment for a little bird. He was on oxygen, being tube fed and was kept in an incubator all the while being separated from his partner. The last update I got was this morning and he's been eating well, playing with toys, peeping at the other birds and generally looks to be recovering. He's staying in over the weekend but we're hoping to get him home on Tuesday. Again though this has been an animal that's undergone intensive, stressful treatment but I still think it's been worth at least giving him the chance. If he'd gone 24-48 hours with no improvement we'd have had to reconsider. Joey is quite young at 4, potentially he could live another 10 years.

So yeah my view is you should give an animal every chance possible, it's better than giving up at the first hurdle but if there is no chance of the animal enjoying a good quality of life then a decision should probably be made then.