Working with dogs who are sick inevitably leads to conversations about knowing when it might be time. While not everyone chooses to consider euthanasia, for those who do, the stress of trying to choose the right moment can feel very heavy. Today we will walk through identifying your values, identifying your dog’s quality-of-life indicators, and how to track their quality of life in order to plan a passing that honors the whole family.

When talking about euthanasia for a pet, the first thing I like to understand is the values and boundaries of the family. These may not be the same for every individual. Some people want to maximize time and are comfortable with some decline. Others want to maximize “normal” time with little to no decline, and many fall somewhere in between.

When confronted with these situations some of the questions to consider include:

It is also important to consider the people involved in decision-making:

You may also want to think about logistics and environment:

And sometimes there are additional people to consider:

This may seem like a lot to consider, so let’s slow down and walk through an example.

Imagine a dog who has been the childhood pet of a grown family where the children are now in college. It is two weeks before school break when the family learns that the dog has cancer that is aggressive.

In this situation, many of these considerations may come into play. The family might decide they will do everything they reasonably can to help the dog live long enough to say goodbye to the kids they grew up with, even if that means experiencing symptoms for a short time. They may even choose to plan euthanasia on a specific day when everyone can be together, even if the dog is having a relatively good week.

When working with families, what works for one family may not work for another. With the same diagnosis, parents of a young family might make very different decisions. If their dog is already showing signs of decline, they may choose to proceed more quickly, and they may even decide to exclude the children depending on their ages.

Some cases can feel more vague for people. Heart disease, for example, can fall into this category.

As we covered last month, heart disease is common, and many dogs can live for years without symptoms. But once symptoms become inevitable, even with medication, families may start wondering what comes next.

Situations like this can look very different depending on the humans and dogs involved, which leads to the next important question: how do you tailor these decisions to the specific dog you have?

Each dog is an individual, and even with the same disease a symptoms, dogs can experience illness differently.

Using heart disease again as an example, it is easy to see how a small dog who loves to be carried and spends much of its time in its owner’s arms may have fewer issues with activity restrictions than an active working dog.

The working dog may be more likely to push to hard physically or become disengaged from life because of the limitation imposed by their condition. Even if the same person were caring for both dogs, the decisions might look very different based on how each dog experiences life.

Some things to consider include:

You can also ask yourself:

And it can also help to think about negatives:

When I approach the end of life for my own dogs, I check in with myself and my spouse about where we are on these questions for that specific dog. The conversation has been different each time. Once we have talked through our values and expectations, we start tracking good days versus bad days after deciding what balance feels acceptable to us.

Making these decisions ahead of time, sometimes even writing them down, can be helpful. Later, when emotions are high, it can help remind us what we believed was best when we were thinking clearly.

Personally, I prefer a simple good-day/bad-day approach. However, I have worked with families who rank each day from 1-10 and track trends and averages over time. That level of data tracking would overwhelm me when tracking for one of my dogs, but for them it brought peace and validation that their observations were measurable.

Whatever approach works for you and your family is generally what is best here. If you get overwhelmed easily, keep it simple. If data brings you peace, lean into that. There is no single right way, as long as the focus remains on tracking what you believe is the best interest of the dog and your family.