#cw: euthanasia

[slowandsteddie]

I was thinking about participating in WIP Weekend this weekend, but ultimately decided against it.

We’re putting my baby down tomorrow and I just don’t want to put that kind of pressure on myself.

Well,,, technically, he’s my aunts dog. And she’s having a hard time with it. It’s time to stop putting it off so hopefully she doesn’t change her mind again.

His name is Bandit. He was born 4 July 2016. He is a Siberian Husky, German Shepard, grey wolf mix. He is the bestest boy. All brown and black with the most amazing brown eyes that I have ever seen. His muzzle is just starting to go grey.

He loves cuddles, cats, cheese, and stealing dirty laundry. I cannot even begin to count the amounts of underwear and socks that he has stolen from the household. Sometimes he hides it. Sometimes he eats it. I swear in years to come, we will still be finding under garments in the most random of places.

Cancer has taken a lot out of him. His fat, his muscle. It’s curved his spine and made it all but impossible for him to walk more than twenty steps. He’s being carried up and down the stairs everyday.

But you look at him and he’s still there. His eyes still light up and his tail thumps against the floor so hard that you can almost feel it vibrate. He still eats. He’s still gentle and loving. He still lets both cats lay on him and chew on his ears. He hasn’t gotten mean.

He’s best boy. Best friend.

We’ve had to let many dogs go.

This one hurts the most.

They say that we’re all made of stardust. I think his and mine have always been close together, ever since The Beginning. He is the dog I was meant to have, and I thought we’d have so much more time…

[thepringlesofblood]

not as fun, but i cannot resist an opportunity to infodump about snakes:

this "stargazing" behavior can be caused by a Lot of different things.

vitamin deficiencies (specifically B1)

a variety of diseases and infections, such as IBD

head trauma/traumatic injury

inbreeding or a genetic defect (like with spider ball pythons)

environmental issues like the temperature or humidity being too high or low, e.g. respiratory infections from improper humidity

exposure to something toxic, like a pesticide

if it's a permanent issue (which it usually isn't), survival depends mostly on the snake's ability to a. move around its environment safely and b. eat consistently and be able to process food.

(if you go to 4:06 in this video, you can see an example of "star-gazing" in a snake with a kinked spine. cw: animal death and humane euthanasia are discussed thoroughly)

listen, PSA to all good omens fans. i’ve seen this “fun fact” going around that snakes can’t see stars, to use for crowley angst purposes. this is not true, there’s nothing preventing them from seeing stars. snakes in general don’t have great vision, since it’s not their primary sense, but snakes are physically able to look up and see stars, albeit blurrily. HOWEVER a true fun fact is that snakes will often do a behavior called “stargazing” which is a symptom of underlying sickness, often neurological, when they act wobbly/tilt backwards and stare straight up. i think this has even more angst potential and is actually true, do with that what you will ((:

[kangals]

two years later.

the first night I brought Boone home I ended up sleeping on a dog bed next to him all night long to stop him from crying the moment I was out of sight. I had a miserable uncomfortable night full of anxiety about how I was ever going to be able to live with this dog, and the moment the sun rose I took him for a long walk around the city to ease my mind.

the last night I spent with Boone I slept on a dog bed next to him all night long, because I knew he would die the next day and I couldn’t bear to not be with him every minute. I took a picture of the last sunrise and the way the light touched all the overlapping planes of limbs and body and blanket. knowing that something is ending makes you search for significance in everything. I did the math: 77,736 hours in between those two sleepless dawns. and all I could think was god, please, just a little more time. it’s too soon. I’m not ready.

he died as peacefully as he could have. at home, on a beautiful day, head on my lap as I clung to him in a silent panic. I have never in my life been as terrified as I was while watching the doctor push a syringe full of poison into his IV.

it needed to happen and it was quiet and gentle and the air smelled like lilacs but it was the scariest thing I’ve ever done and it replayed in my head for months afterwards over, and over, and over. what a privileged life I lead to be traumatized by a peaceful euthanasia!

it took me a long time to realize that my grief had changed from a productive healing process to something more akin to emotional self-harm. that it was ok to let go of the sadness and leave it to trail behind instead of holding it close. despite everything time has kept moving forward and the wounds have healed over. there’s still pain - I’ll never stop missing him and I’ll never forget the misery of that day. but god, 77,736 hours and I refuse to only remember the final few. there was too much love to be covered over like that.

I’ve been pretty good about moving on, of wiping away the old stains and re-using the leashes and bowls. one of the last things I was struggling to put away was a linen storage bin where I kept his coats and pajamas. I don’t have a use for them anymore but the thought of giving them away was abhorrent. the colors and patterns and textures - soft fleece, black and white houndstooth, blue camo - were in so many pictures and memories it was like his second skin. I couldn’t put them away.

I brought them up to the attic this morning, carrying it on my shoulder like a pallbearer. i remembered my grandmothers funeral last year when I tossed a shovelful of dirt into the grave. the rabbi described the act as “the greatest mitzvah you will ever do.”

shutting the attic door behind me sounded a lot like dirt hitting the top of the casket.

[wackywatchdotcom]

i forgot i never posted this its been sitting in my tadc art folder since february 5th, apparently

[vvlxenn]

[fancygremlin]

The contrast between how Overhead treats their experimental subjects and how Aubrey treats the people she swore to protect is SO OBVIOUS when comparing Warren and Jade’s experiences at Red Valley.

Warren was led into the facility by trapping him in a web of lies, he was dehumanised clumsily and cruelly debriefed about his situation, and then bodily moved to the medbay to prep him for hypersleep. Jade willingly found her way to the facility, was welcomed there and allowed to lead a healthy life surrounded by people who cared about her. She chose the time and space to elect euthanasia.

Warren was forcibly hooked up to the monitoring apparatus and on morphine. He was left in the room for who knows how long before Gordon arrived. Aubrey made sure to have a comfortable and friendly environment ready for Jade. She was gently accompanied to the room and walked through each step of the process.

Both Warren and Jade decide to go through it, despite Gordon’s insistently trying to dissuade Warren/ Jade’s transient hesitation.

Both Warren and Jade recount of a happy childhood memory to put themselves at ease (interesting they immediately thought of their respective mothers for comfort)

It’s truly tragic that Warren (who has dissociative amnesia due to PTSD) is the one that distrusts and can't really remember his memory, while Jade (who has dementia) is confident and retells everything in great detail.

Warren falls asleep with the sounds of machines and medical equipments beeping. Jade drifts off accompanied by the sound of medical machines… but also nature and the faint sounds of the party still going full swing in the distance.

[mitesworld]

Behavioral euthanasia is filling your fridge with food enrichment and realizing too late that the dog who loved it is coming home in a small wooden box.

[wildlocks]

we have to put my kitty to sleep 💔 I haven’t stopped crying I literally don’t know how to deal with this. it’s scheduled for saturday morning wtf am I supposed to do until then…. I’m so heartbroken she’s only 6

[markscherz]

The specimens in your video, are they killed to be preserved or do they die of natural causes before preservation?

As with all natural history collections, the vast majority of specimens in the Natural History Museum of Denmark (where I am the Curator of Herpetology) were euthanised to be preserved and kept in these libraries of biological knowledge, where they are curated and maintained for research purposes for centuries to come. We have one of the oldest collections in the world; some of our specimens are over 300 years old.

With amphibians in particular, we almost never find them dead in the wild, unless they've been run over by vehicles or have died of some disease in large masses, because their soft bodies decay extremely quickly. Even in captivity, a vertebrate that dies of 'natural' causes usually is almost always in a pretty grim condition either leading up to the death, or by the time it is found. These make for very bad specimens. With reptiles, you can do a little better, but not much. So, even though we have lots of animals from Copenhagen Zoo that died in captivity and put in the freezer soon afterwards, these are mostly in poor condition. Also, because they are not representative of wild animals (dietary and environmental differences), and lack information on their locality of origin, they are poor animals for research purposes, and mostly are avoided by researchers wanting to study e.g. natural variation in a species. However, they are still very valuable specimens, especially when they are the only specimens of a species that we have.

[scenic-route33]

CATCH ME CRYING IN THE CLUB OVER THIS

[happinessisntfun]

sad rowan posting hours

discussion of animal euthanasia below the cut

My horse is on her last legs (pun intended) and her arthritis has progressed into her hips and back, instead of just her hocks (knees). I was going to wait until September, but she's declining pretty rapidly. I think I'm comfortable waiting two or three more weeks, but no further.

I'm almost.... regretting not putting her down in June. No, I am regretting it. I was selfish and wanted more time with her. I'm putting her down before it starts getting cold.

She's had one last good summer, and I'm going to feed her an apple every day for however long she has left.

I'll give her a bath next weekend and get folks to come say goodbye. It's her time. I'm absolutely devastated and I'll probably spend the next three weeks crying, but she's had such a lovely life. Her barn is a dream and she's been happy with me since I bought her. She's a spoiled brat and I'll miss her so much, but she won't be in pain anymore.

So hey, if anyone who reads this does horse art, hit me up. I'm already planning a tattoo of my horrible girl and I want to get some art for a friend as well.

[horatioandalice]

I'm afraid I have some bad news about Harriet.

Yesterday morning when I got the budgies up, I noticed that she wasn't able to use her right foot. (The picture attached was taken before she lost the use of her foot.) I thought that maybe she and Pippa had had a fight, or that she had injured it in some way, so I toweled her and gave her some of Pippa's leftover pain meds and looked at her foot. There wasn't any visible sign of injury, but she was definitely unable to move her toes. By an unbelievable stroke of luck, my vet had an opening at 2pm, so I took Harriet in to get looked at.

Unfortunately, the prognosis is not good. The vet found a significant amount of bruising in Harriet's abdomen, indicating that she likely has some kind of organ dysfunction that is resulting in pressure being put on the nerves that control her right foot. The most likely causes, according to the vet, are either kidney cancer or reproductive disease. Because budgies are so small, and because of Harriet's age (she's 9) and relative fragility (since she's already had surgery for reproductive issues), the vet isn't confident she would survive the major surgery required to determine the problem, and the odds are there wouldn't be an effective treatment anyway.

So the decision has been made to try to keep Harriet comfortable with anti-inflammatory pain meds and in a hospital cage until her quality of life declines enough that it will be kindest to euthanize her. She is still allowed out with the other budgies, so she's not totally isolated, and as of this morning she is still eating well, destroying toys, and being very active and vocal (her wonky foot doesn't slow her down at all!), so right now she's doing well. She has already outlived all my other past budgies by three years (!!!), so although of course I will be heartbroken to say goodbye to this little fierce warrior, I am grateful for whatever time we have left.

[bbirddogg]

Hermit time again

[naamahdarling]

.

[mjrtaurus]

Modern AU

Dragon met Granma at a very rough time in his life.

Medical discharge from a broken neck.

The cost of the surgery needed to save his life was covered by Veteran Affairs but the cost of therapy for the ptsd diagnosis and the damaged larynx? Nope. He had a pulse and he could walk. Looked good enough on paper. That’s all that the VA seemed to care about.

He was alive and he wasn’t paralyzed from the neck down, so yeah, he at least had that going for him… but now he couldn’t talk (yet). Now he was having nightmares every other night. Now he was feeling nauseous whenever he saw a certain hue of green. Now he was reaching for a weapon that wasn’t there whenever he heard a sudden noise. Now he wasn’t finding joy in anything anymore.

It was… it was really bad.

Garp had an idea, though. A spur of the moment idea: Maybe not the most well thought out, but Hell, his son needed help and he needed help quickly.

Wind Granma had been a race horse in her day, and not a very well treated one. She was young, she was jumpy, she would bite you if you got too handsy, she would kick you if you got out of her line of sight. She had chased away every other horse that would try and befriend her.

Garp had bought her because the people that had saved her from the dirty underbelly of the industry couldn’t care for her, and were stuck with the decision to either sell her to someone who could or to put her down.

Garp was determined to give her the second chance she deserved, but he wasn’t around as often as he liked to do that. So… why not she and Dragon get acquainted? Why not heal together? Once Dragon had fully recovered from his surgery, of course.

Look, it wasn’t his brightest idea, okay?

But before Urpi could give Garp a proper chewing out for impulse buying a horse that needed proper care, Dragon already had it in his head that he was going to be riding this horse.

Stubborn, hard-headed men, the both of them.

But it worked.

[blue-grama]

Musings about how Spare Me Your Mercy is approaching medical ethics with some spoiler-ishness for Ep 5 below!

So I think it's interesting which characters they're giving which opinions about euthanasia. Dr. Somsak has the almost strawman-ish "extend life over all else" opinion -- which does exist, I'll grant you, it's just a bit over-the-top here. Boss disagrees, as the gun to the head might suggest, but when he starts defending euthanasia to Somsak, he emphasizes not the patient's wishes, but how doctors, nurses, and the patient's family feels about the patient being a burden. I think most people would agree this is also a toxic opinion, ripe for ableism and eugenics. Not a coincidence they gave this opinion to an unhinged murderer, I'd say. (Love that his motivation was "Dr. Kan Stan" though.) Meanwhile, Kan is always shown getting consent, including in the pretty aggressively educational scene about the Living Will. And what does he get for it? Framed.

Anyway, Thiu over here trying to take it slow with a man who turns up at literally every crime scene despite being totally innocent, he really is having a rough few months.