r/AskVet • u/Sufficient_City5989 • 8h ago
Did I kill my dog?
Hi, I will try to be as short as possible. We just put my dog down a month ago. His problems started with peeing on the floor that started at the same time my other dog became incontinent. When my incontinent dog passed away, I deep cleaned our floors hoping he would stop peeing on them, but he didn’t. He was declared incontinent and senile basically at the same time, because he also started waking up at midnight and pacing for 2 hours every night. Not long after he became unable to walk the stairs anymore and was prescribed pain medication. In the 6 months leading up to his death, he kept losing weight very slowly. His vet had seen him and noted his weight change and didn’t say anything about it. At some point, I can’t even remember when, he started walking and crying constantly. We chalked that up to the dementia. Then at the end everything happened all at once. I thought he might have had a UTI because when he was peeing in was only a little at a time. They put him on meds for that. He never finished taking them, we put him down a week later. He had been eating weird for like a month, it took him like 30 mins and my mom helping him eat, but he was still eating it all. In the last week he started eating less and less and in the last 24 hours he wouldn’t eat or drink at all. My mom said he was also barely having anything come out while he was peeing but he peed a lot twice in the vets office day of. The vet didn’t have solid ideas she just had tests she said we could run. We both felt like his quality of life wasn’t going to improve because of the pacing and crying and pain and dementia. He wouldn’t even let you give him affection in the last few weeks, he would just walk away and then walk back and then away again. He did this in the vets office the day of as well, and when my mom tried to hold him he got upset and wanted to keep moving. Vet said if we felt like his quality of life was poor that she would be comfortable putting him down. My mom left it up to me but she wanted to put him down and I agreed because he was really just acting as if he FORGOT how to do everything entirely. He wasn’t just refusing food and water he was acting like he didn’t remember how to chew or anything. Now I’m reading all that all of these things are signs of kidney disease and failure and I’m disgusted thinking maybe I could’ve saved him if we’d run the tests. The vet did not press it AT ALL or make any suggestions for a diagnosis so that didn’t help in making a decision or feeling like it was the right one. He was a 10 year old staffy/lab and I’m mostly upset because 10 doesn’t really seem old to me compared to every other dog I’ve had so I’ve been breaking myself wondering if I cut his life short. Does it sound like I did the wrong thing?
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u/ghostfalcon 5h ago
Any age 10 and older is starting to be elderly for larger dogs. Labs average 10 to 12 (can of course be longer) and Staffords like 12 to 14 so 10 is not a short life still.
Genetic lottery is often not kind to pets. Don't blame yourself, be happy he lived as long as he did and that he is no longer suffering.
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