Dogs

[Luce]

We’re going off topic a bit (sorry Lily!) but the hardest part with Roxy was that we’ll never know if the surgery would have worked and she could be a happy dog with us now. But there seemed no strong enough hope that that would happen. So were faced with the prospect of taking 8k and wiping out most of our accessible savings only for her to be alive and maybe even potentially comfortable but unable to walk. Because she was 4 it seemed no life for either her or our family with young children. Weirdly if she were older we might have been more tempted to just make her happy and comfortable and would carry her around for the rest of her days. But it felt harder to do for such a young, active dog. I thought the vets would think we should have done everything but actually he was lovely and said he would have made the same decision has it been his dog. It broke my heart in two, T as well.

I still can’t watch Supervet, especially when you see similar stories and they worked out fine. I’ll never, ever know if we did the right thing.

Sorry, I go on a bit because it’s still quite hard to talk about so I’m forcing myself to :))

[Lily]

Don't apologise, Luce. Also, don't force yourself to talk about it unless you want to. For what it is worth, I think you made the right decision, hideous as it was. Apart from anything else, what if she'd needed more treatment after that surgery and you had no savings? Or what if heaven forfend you'd needed them for something else and then they hadn't been there? It's just not viable for a number of reasons.

[Luce]

Because the whole sorry saga and different specialists/tests took two days we had a long time to constantly go over every scenario. There was a lot of painful guilt that contradicted what I would have been telling a friend to do. Had you asked me before that happened I would have told you that we would have done absolutely anything to keep her with us.

We do talk about her at home A LOT :)) We have her picture up and talk constantly about how annoying she could be, she was a total princess and I absolutely adored her

[sally maclennane]

Luce, it may not help at all so feel free to ignore but the vet in the article I mentioned said that animals live in the here and now so they don't think like humans in terms of living long enough to see Chritmas or whatever, but often pet owners make decisions as if they were deciding for a human. He also mentioned Supervet and how the success stories on there were the exception rather than the rule.

[dizzyd]

We were the same with our little brown boy

I know he was a cat and this is a dog thread but

We paid £900 for tests the day we took him to the vets and they said he would need surgery costing 4k and that could fail and he would need more surgery costing another 4k

I keep second guessing myself and thinking what if and as Lucy said we'll never know

I think the vet could have done more and should have warned us after his last UTI that crystals could form as reading up afterwards I'm not sure if switching his diet could have helped but we weren't advised to do anything and I've had to stop myself reading anymore

We don't have insurance so I can't comment if it would have been covered and it's a decision we made even knowing we mlght have big vet bills

[SunnyMum]

Dogs without beds.

[ParisGal]

I read something recently by a vet who said that often people spend money on treatment for pets that he wouldn't recommend because the owners can't face losing the pet, rather than because it's the best thing for the animal. I'm not criticising anyone for that and neither was he, he was just saying it reflects people's different attitudes to animals* now.


*I always think of Papa Mac who had grown up in rural Ireland in the 50s and thought dogs having a bed was a nonsense :lol:

I feel a bit like I'm speaking out of turn as I don't have pets, but mum has several cats, and growing up we always had at least 2 cats plus livestock. Insurance wasn't a normal thing back then, could even have not existed at all, and it was generally accepted that anything worse than a broken leg would mean euthanasia. I think for a lot of pets, like Lucy's case, the long and painful recovery would be unfair any way.

[Hazey_Jane]

Sunnymum is proving you can save money not buying beds for pets. Either that or it’s the wrong thread.

That makes a lot of sense Sal.

[Morganna]

Look at them

I think a lot of people just accept that if their pet needs multi-thousand pounds of surgery, that they'll have it put down.

Unfortunately yes, we have good insurance but if we had to make a hard decision about expensive treatment that wasn’t covered, we probably wouldn’t go through with it.

I can’t even bring myself type the actual words!

This is how I see it too, although as I am 'between dogs' just now* it's maybe easy for me to say. It's probably only relatively recently that most people have had Insurance and have had the option of getting operations and expensive treatment for pets. We got our first dog 40 years ago, and insurance was all but unheard of then - only people who showed dogs or bred them professionally tended to have it - I'm pretty certain that my mum never insured any of our childhood pets either. I don't think for a moment that everyone was forking out £££ out of their back pockets for vet bills - the reality was that if something couldn't be treated fairly easily the pet would be put down. Of course it was sad for all concerned, but it was what it was. We did insure Dylan, but never needed to claim, which is true of many, if not most, insured pet owners. You only hear the horror stories, like Loki's and Roxy's spinal things, but most dogs are hardy animals who never have anything wrong.

There is a lot of truth in the view that pets are sometimes kept alive for longer than they should be, I think. I think this is true of humans too, though - I don't see clinging to a poor quality life at all costs as necessarily good, and have long thought that animals often get the better deal with the option of a good vet saying that it is in their best interests to be put to sleep.

If you can afford insurance for things that would mean a dog was in pain without treatment, and accepted that if, in the unlikely event that something happened that meant it wasn't covered, you would have to make a difficult choice, then I would go for it. You can offer love, a good, caring home, and you and the dog would be company for one another.


*and facing up to the fact that if I can't get my breathing sorted out I may never be able to take on another one :cry:

[Squirrel]

Having had six dogs in our family over the course of my life, the unaffordable treatment situation has never occurred (yet). Ted has probably come the closest as his foot injuries were into the thousands (Eta: probably a slight exaggeration but certainly over £1000) but it was all covered by insurance so we only paid the excess.

I wonder if having rescue dogs gives me a bit of mental / emotional distance. It doesn’t mean loving them any less than a pedigree, but as alternatives to being rehomed could have meant being kennelled or even put down, any time with me in the lap of luxury feels like a bonus. I was beyond heartbroken when our last dog Gladys died, but when I’d come to terms with it a bit I felt grateful that I’d been able to give her six very happy years, even though her time was ultimately cut short.

Maybe that’s why I molly coddle Ted so much :ella:. I’ll work out how much his “holiday” is going to cost when we go away without him and will post it here for your horror and delight.

[Lily]

Thank you very very much for your replies. I now feel a lot, lot better having read them.

We had a dog and 2 cats and were very lucky with them all as we didn't have any problems with them which meant we had to make a decision because of finance (our dog lasted until she was 17, and the cats until they were 18), so this is new territory. My friends don't insure their dogs, saying they will deal with things if and when they ocur. I don't know if our animals were insured. I haven't asked my parents about it because mum tried to put me off taking on Dexter the gecko when I was offered him (for financial reasons) and that little creature was the best thing in my life every day I had him (I dreamt he came back to life the other night :cry: ), but perhaps I am being unfair. I spent money I didn't have on Dexter but I would do it again in a heartbeat and I'm in a very different position to 2008.

Squizz, your last post makes me think: if I take on a dog and I give him/her a happy life, but I can't spend a fortune extending it, are they going to know? Isn't it better, particularly in the case of a rescue animal, to give them a couple of years or whatever it is in a happy environment?

[AshleyX]

Squizz, your last post makes me think: if I take on a dog and I give him/her a happy life, but I can't spend a fortune extending it, are they going to know? Isn't it better, particularly in the case of a rescue animal, to give them a couple of years or whatever it is in a happy environment?

I very much think this, and I don’t know many people who would spend several thousands on a vet bill, for all the reasons already mentioned. I think it’s important to be careful and think things through, but I think it would be very sad to deny yourself the chance of a dog based on what-ifs, when you’d be such a wonderful owner, and both you and the dog would get so much happiness from being a wee team.

[Mountain Goat]

It is, yes.

Joy's recent supervet-esque operation would have cost a fortune (£4k+) if weren't covered by insurance (and even then the excess was quite a lot) and if her other leg goes (it's a birth defect) within a year it won't be covered and god knows what we'd do. There are things that you just can't protect yourself (and them) from. It's of course wise to consider whether you can afford to give a pet the life you want to give them but there are never any certainties. Once you've hedged your risk reasonably, with some savings put aside or a good insurance, you've done all you reasonably can. If the best, most caring owners who want the most for their pets are put off by scenarios like this, then that's not a good thing. Of course be wary of a high risk pet, of course cover yourself as best you can, but there's no advantage to worrying about worst case scenarios.

[SunnyMum]

Sunnymum is proving you can save money not buying beds for pets. Either that or it’s the wrong thread.

That makes a lot of sense Sal.

Oops, sorry. I thought I'd done à previous post, replying to Sally. I was saying that our dogs don't have beds as they never sept in them and so we ditched them. They are quite happy sleeping on the tiled floor.
So, yes, my point is that Papa Mac had a point and some dogs don't need nor want beds.

[Marth]

This thread has spurred me to get insurance again. I've always had it. But not for a year as it just shot up so much. However seeing 5k for surgery has made me panic. It actually seems a bit cheaper now. Maybe because I'm out of London, but I've managed to insure both cats for 27 a month.

[Offtopic]

Lily I got Rosie as a rescue dog. She’s a French bulldog who was used for breeding. She’s got breathing problems in the summer and a very smelly bottom. And I also know that they don’t last as long as other dogs, they’re not the healthiest.

But she’s genuinely the nicest dog I’ve ever had. She needs two 15 min walks a day, she spends the rest of the day sleeping and farting. Her and B are inseparable. I can’t afford the most expensive insurance but we’ve got enough to cover her for emergencies.

More than that though, she makes Betsy and I a triangle unit and all we want is to make sure the second half of her life is filled with love. She repays us tenfold. I could never have afforded a French bulldog puppy but I would totally recommend a rescue.

B8A7423D-C602-45A5-AECC-8AB94E02A8B8.jpeg

[Morganna]

Oh, look at lovely Rosie

I’ve said this before, but much as I disapprove of Frenchies being bred, Loki is the loveliest dog I have ever known. Dylan was fabulous too, but was like a stoner dog - chilled and laid back, even as a puppy. L is more playful and so eager to please - he’s an absolute delight. (But don’t get one ;) )

[Lily]

Dear Rosie!

I'm feeling much more positive now - thank you all. I'm researching and not saying "no" to anything right now. To have a pet which loves me, rather than just tolerates me, would make me very happy.

[Dáire]

I fired off my first dog email today. Did anyone see the article in the newspapers? 57 Labradors which had been bred for working as drug sniffer and bomb detection dogs were placed in a shelter, as the contract with the company the breeders were supplying them to fell through*. Super smart puppies :) I thought finally, yes - here are surely some dogs that might be OK to be adopted by an active family.

Anyway, my husband was all on board, and I said let's fire off the email and let fate decide.

Fate said "sorry we've had about 850 applications for them and they're all reserved now." I did look at the rest of their site, but as always their dogs were quite troubled - "no visitors, no children, no cats, no other dogs and food aggressive" was attached to just one poor dog.

* if I'm being honest I think the story has more holes than Swiss cheese, but anyway. They looked rather healthy, though, and not like 57 puppy-farmed puppies with a dodgy story.

[Lily]

Ha! I saw that too. A couple of them came up as available on the website, but within 5 minutes of doing so (I'd applied) they were "reserved" so it was all a bit weird. The name "Many Tears" rather put me off!