Breaking the Ties That Bind.

When you've been in practice for 30 years you've euthanized a lot of dogs. You would think it would get easier. The trouble is, now many of the dogs I give that final mercy to are like old friends, whose owners are old friends. I find it gets harder, even when I know beyond doubt it's time to make their passing away a little easier on them.

Henry was seven weeks old when I met him. His owners have led a full and adventurous life and Henry enriched it further. He was an English Setter and an aggressive hunter, described by his master as a "muscle powered nose with a little brain in between."

Henry was hard on himself, to say the least. When he was nine months old my wife and I were at a large dinner party at Henry's house. In the middle of dinner, there was a commotion out in the hallway. Henry's mistress took me aside and said "I know you're not on call tonight, but could you take a look at Henry?" He had been chasing a neighbor's horse, and got all his front teeth kicked out and his jaw broken.

At two years of age Henry went AWOL from a jet boat on the Snake River near the mouth of the Salmon in Hell's Canyon and took his brother, Barker, with him. They were finally found and rescued after four days of worry and searching. Then he almost died from parvovirus.

On hunting trips his enthusiasm, to put it diplomatically, often got the best of his training and common sense. He was hit by a truck, chased off a mother cougar and her two cubs, had a skirmish with a coyote and it's pack, and had multiple torn foot pads and tail lacerations. He wore out four shock collars and out lasted countless batteries. Highlights of his retirement included getting rolled by a moose and wading in wet concrete. Henry lived a few days past his sixteenth birthday. And he really lived.

Jade, a big Samoyed, was not quite seven years old. She began having epileptic seizures several years ago. Epilepsy is common in dogs and can usually be controlled with medication, but Jade's seizures were difficult to control from the start, and just kept getting worse.

There were multiple emergency calls and trips to the Veterinary Teaching Hospital at Washington State. For a while a combination of two drugs worked, then she developed a serious drug reaction and we had to drop one of them. Her pet parents became proficient at giving Jade emergency medication at home to stop seizures. She had another major crisis a few weeks ago, and an even worse one last week. Finally, clearly, it was time.

I have never seen anyone try harder to save a dog's life, and I've never seen anyone suffer more anguish when she had to give up. Jade had helped her through years of intensely painful back problems and surgery. Through her long convalescence, Jade was always patiently there with her and was her walking partner during rehabilitation. Words cannot convey the love for Jade that I saw in her owners eyes as she and I came to terms with that inescapable decision.

And Henry's parents, during the last years of Henry's life, suffered from unimaginable personal loss. A dog, just being there through such times, can provide a unique, priceless comfort. As in a marriage, a family or any friendship, what you go through together builds strong ties. But they can really be painful, those ties between hearts, when death seems to break them.