Couple: Vet faked dog's death to give pet away

Actually the "micro" prong already exists.

http://leerburg.com/prong.htm#micro

And I have seen very small muzzles that were too small for my friend's Chi puppy.

The humor isn't in IF they exist but rather what kind of NUTCASE would have to resort to using either of them for training. Yes, I know....some Chi's need to be muzzled for Vet. proceedures.....

i see your point and i am not saying that the vet enjoyed doing it. you can never know 100% what is going to happen, even if you got years of experience. and even if it wouldnt change the womens mind i wouldnt do it.
the vet knew it was wrong to put that dog to sleep. so just because another vet might do it anyway is NO good reason to do it and wipe out any change that the dog eventually would have had.....even if it would have been just a tiny one.

its never wrong to do the right thing.....
i really didnt want to upset you or make you sorry for posting this. it is just such a heartbraking story and so wrong....
i didnt mean to say that the vet did this easily or is a bad vet ingenerell.
i wish that vet would have had other options like rehoming the dog.
no vet should be forced to euthanize a healthy dog or being made part of that crime. if all the owner wants to do is get rid of the dog and kill it then i think a vet should have every right to take the dog and put it in another home.

to go back to the original story: its not ok to brake the law though so i dont think they should have done it....specially because i think in that special case the owner put the dog to sleep because it was suffering not just to get rid of it......

Thats just rotten, beyond mean and the new owners wouldn't give the dog back. I would've gone into hysterics too.

I have mixed feelings as to whether or not a vet should be able to say if a person is a fit owner or not.

There are a number of (in my opinion) unfit vets out there. If we give them the power to say "you don't deserve this dog" then there are some that will take full advantage of it and that's certainly not right. Letting someone with a limited exposure to your dog say that you're a bad owner is a huge risk.

In the case of the epileptic German shepherd .. well, the people were having the dog put down due to health reasons and the vet was obligated to either do what they ask or send them away. To steal the dog and rehome it wasn't right. The dog lasted another 9 months and if she had seizures every couple of weeks - that's at least 18 seizures during that time before she lapsed into a "coma". If the dog couldn't be made better, then I'm not sure that the vet wasn't the one being cruel. Sometimes euthanasia is a kindness.

In the story that dr2little shared, I can see that this would have been a much more difficult dilemma. The owner was offered a very kind solution and rejected it. Legally you're stuck .. and yes, I agree that this woman would have just gone somewhere else and had the dog destroyed anyway. When people are adamant about getting rid of a piece of property they're not going to stop just because of one "no". Unfortunately many do consider dogs just property.

I remember one of the first euthanasias I helped with. It was a big beautiful puppy, about 8 months old. He was friendly and happy - looked kind of like a Bernese Mountain Dog. The guy who brought him in wanted him put to sleep because the pup had had ONE seizure and he didn't want to have a dog that was going to be sick. We couldn't talk him into any testing or anything else. He came in specifically to have the dog put down and that was it. And yes, we did it. I cried.

That euthanasia will always stay with me because this pup could very well have lived a long and healthy life. But in our area, if someone doesn't provide euthanasia then people just shoot their dogs. We couldn't talk this owner into anything but death for his dog. OH - and he wanted the collar back, because (in his words) "I'll just go get another dog".

I ended up with my first chow because the owners were going to kill her and we offered to let them sign her over to the clinic - and they did. We fixed her medical problems and she's been with me for over 14 years now.

As far as why they didn't demand to take the dog home after euthanasia (in the original story) .. a lot of people choose not to take their pets home. Many people think that once the pet dies, what they loved is gone anyway and the body is just a body. Some don't have access to somewhere they can bury them, or can't afford the cost of cremation (cost me $80 to cremate my cat last January).

Melanie and the gang in Alaska

How scary. I'm NEVER leaving my dogs ANYWHERE after this......

Absolutely not. If the vet suspects the animal is being abused somehow I feel it is their responsibility to contact animal authorities. Animal cruelty is against the law, in some places it is a felony to harm animals. I do not believe it is the vet's right to take an animal from it's master based on their judgement.

In this case the owners were doing what they thought was best for their suffering pet. The vet only saw the dog when she was brought in for siezure treatments, not between times when she was at home with her family. Her masters were the only people that knew best what her quality of life between siezures. Obviously they cared for their dog if they were taking her for medical treatment. There are a lot of people out there who would just abandon a dog in that condition, try to give it away, or ignore the condition entirely. The fact that she had to be later euthanized for the reason her first owners brought her in to be euthanized speaks for itself. She was suffering and the veterinarian not only stole her from her family, he also prolonged the suffering they tried to spare her from.

I find it suspicious that a lot of the dogs "rehomed" by people with good intentions are purebreds....

It was probably riding on her conscience. Maybe the employee didn't want to say anything while working there for fear of losing the job.

Even if they had asked for cremation, they would have had no way of knowing whether the ashes they were given were their dog's. And many people are unable to bury their dog on their property.

But I'm torn by this story. On the one hand, I'm not a fan of euthanasia. I've heard the 'good death' and the 'mercy' arguments, and I've had a dog with terminal cancer put to sleep. But I never felt good about it, and I remain dubious whether we have the right to kill our loved ones in the name of anything, let alone kindness. The death of a suffering family member, pet or human, is also a relief to the family's agony of witnessing that suffering. There is a danger of covering up that relief and justifying ourselves with vaunted kindness when we're really trying to relieve our own pain. So when I read that the dog lived another 8 months of relatively good life after he was supposed to be killed, I wonder how serious the owners were about balancing their pet's interests against their own needs.

On the other hand, I know very well how judgemental and self-aggrandizing animal people can be. It's a strikingly arrogant act to allow someone to suffer the death of their pet, all the while secretly swooping the dog off to a new owner.

In any case, that vet clinic is up a crick.

I've seen a vet have to muzzle a Chi, lol! He did it very well - just a soft, wide piece of tee shirt material, looped over and loosely tied just long enough to take a temp and give a shot at the very end of the exam. That was on angry little dog!

Seriously - perhaps a worthwhile project would be to draft a Companion Animals' Bill of Rights to submit to our individual legislators . . .

I would ask the question slightly differently: Should a vet have the discretion to make a final un-appealable decision to terminate your rights in your pet?

(What if the basis for the decision to terminate your rights is that you choose to feed raw rather than to buy Science Diet from her?)

To tell the truth, the sole final discretion - at this point in the discussion - that I would allow a single person is to give veterinarians the discretion to decide against euthanizing an animal. When an owner makes the decision to euthanize a sound animal the attending veterinarian should have the discretion to take custody of the animal rather than killing it and the former owners' proprietary rights should be set aside.

It just occured to me that if vets had the right to refuse to euthanize, they could get the right to force an owner to euthanize. That would be horrible.

The two don't have to be mutually inclusive!

True, but the first could be the camel's nose under the tent.

It could be, if the statute were written either carelessly or with that end in mind. But bear in mind that even the statutes regarding reporting child abuse don't allow a medical care provider to just snatch a child away. They are required to report the suspected abuse and allow authorities to step in and make the determination.

All in all a tricky subject, I totally agree that some provision should be made so that animals in good health, and a good state of mind, shouldn't be needlessly euthanized. Especially if there is someone waiting and willing to become responable for said animal!!

But on the other hand.... Sick animals do have the luxury of being Euthanized, and I do mean Luxury, my great Grandma was dieing incredibly slowly of terminal cancer, it was eating her up inside and there was nothing the doctors could do for her, except to watch her suffer. She was always a very proud lady and one day she said to one of the doctors making the rounds in the hospice "If I was a dog, you would take me to the vets, and I would leave in peace and dignity!" The doctor could do nothing but agree with her.

The last thing we would want is for this to happen to our animals, so any law would have to take Humane Euthanazia in to account, Not sure how that would work, as then how do you define "Humane" would it only be for dogs suffering from a critical illness, and then where do you place the cut off? Surely there would have to be a suffering scale, where minor suffering was ok, but once they had passed above and beyond the vet would be legally covered to euthanize??? It all becomes a question of how much is too much?

Just musing really.