DF not accepting its time for DDog to go

[Seasonofthewitch83]

We have a 17 year old italian greyhound who has led the most marvellous life. She is loved immensely. Over the past few years old age has started to catch up on her and now she has failing eyesight, hearing, stiff joints, doesnt want to go out for walks etc. She is very much retired on the sofa.
She is what my family and I have agreed, reached a stage of life where her quality of life is gone. She is barely eating or drinking, blood in her stools etc. She has had episodes of shaking from pain. The vet has checked her over and has given her a boost of antibiotics and cannot see any signs of cancer etc and agrees that this is all attributed to old age.

My DF is in complete and utter denial and does not want her put down. My family and I are trying to convince him that surely it is better for her to pass, surrounded by her family and not in pain than letting her deteriorate further, start to suffer or die when no one is in the house.

Am trying not to make him feel like he is backed into a corner but he is treating us like we are a death squad. I dont know at what point the foot needs to come down if he outright refuses to do the right thing?

The vet was gently trying to nudge towards putting her to sleep but he completely closed her down. Not sure what else we can do?

This is neglect. You need to take the dog to the vets and do it. It's the only humane option. Anything else would be animal cruelty at it's worst. Is the poor dog at least prescribed painkillers???

Someone on here said 'better a day early that a day late' to me when my dog was dying. We had already made the decision but the quote did really help.

Yes she has prescribed pain relief and antibiotics. The vet was happy to send her home on a see how she goes basis. I just want her to go peacefully rather than dragging it out. Its our job to make that decision for her.

Am going to text him that now

It’s a rubbish situation, I feel for you all.

We had to have our DDog PTS last week and, up until he spoke directly to the vet himself, my DH was the same as your DF. Although the vet can’t say directly, it’s time to go, she was very clear that any treatment would be palliative and that DDog has days, a few weeks at the most. Sadly she had a stoke at the weekend and we made the decision on Thursday. She had a lovely last walk and treats to eat. We didn’t want her to become a welfare case, or put her in the situation where she had a really bad turn and started to really suffer. That’s not fair on her and she deserved a better ending given all the years of love she’d given us.

I’m not sure if it helps but maybe chatting through how he sees the next few weeks playing out for her will help
him focus. Is he in complete denial about her quality of life? There are some online questionnaires you can use, although we didn’t find them particularly useful in our situation.

An older friend is like this with a Tibetan terrier. Not scarily old, eight or nine I think, but has diabetes that the vet is finding hard to manage, and it's gone blind. It's bumping around the house, hair/fur is lank and thin, and they won't even entertain that they need to let it go. The couple didn't have children and see the dog very much as their "fur baby" and have plenty of disposable income to continue to pay the vets astronomical fees. I'm not a pet fan at all but even I can see that it's the time to let it go.

Our local pet crematorium has a specialist vet that purely does quality of life assessments and euthanasia , check if you have something similar locally and that may persuade you dad , it’s what I did with my sister and her 19/20 yr old JRx .

Thank you x