Jill Rants and Raves: three dog (good)night

Photo: Jill Posener ©

Yet another euthanasia looms and I feel worn out. Not so much by the prospect of Frankie's departure but by the way in which my own brain tortures my decision making. And it's not that Frankie's death will be anything short of miserable for me. But these weeks of twisting and turning about the right time, the best day, the nights of no sleeping as he pants and paces and falls and cries, and my getting up and searching in the dark for a comforting medication - for him, not for me - have taken a toll, especially so soon after Oscar. I cannot hear another word of advice or platitude about how I have done the best for him, that I will know when the time is right, that he will somehow communicate that decision to me.

I don't want to hear another comment by someone whose job involves killing animals that these are 'good deaths'. Buddy - there are no good or bad deaths. There is death, there is an ending. That is never good. It might be merciful if pain is constant, it might be carried out as well as it can be given what we are doing to a creature that can never really consent, it might even be the only option, as when a police officer is called to 'dispatch' a deer hit by a car and in what the state law calls 'irremedial suffering'. A bullet to the brain is at least a quick end to a terrible event. But a good death? Death by injection with a loving owner and a beloved pet is a terrible decision made at a time of awful and fearful suffering. It may well be the right, the best, the only decision. But it is simply death - not good, not bad, not indifferent.

I worry that if you consider the mercy killing of a suffering animal as a 'good' death, you might, as you take the animal that has not been adopted, or the underage kittens or the tail waggin' smiling pitbull to her death in the room now being re-named the 'comfort' room, that you just might be able to persuade yourself that these are 'good deaths'. Euthanasia after all, comes from the Greek and means literally 'good death', but it refers to the practise of ending a life painlessly. It doesn't engage in the decision making leading to that death. Euthanasia in the vast majority of cases in our animal shelter system are acts of expediency, budget concerns, lack of kennel space, behaviour assessments. Necessary sometimes? Absolutely. Good? I don't think so. And sometimes the Greeks got it wrong you know. The word 'hysterical', which as every woman knows will be levelled against us when we get a bit upset about something is from the Greek word meaning 'womb suffering'. A similar level of 'hysteria' from a man will be admired as some sort of passionate outrage.

And death by injection in the death chamber at San Quentin, while done as 'painlessly' as possible is not a good death. It certainly is not the same as a home-rigged method of self deliverance done with an informed and deliberate consent. If there is a single thing about my adopted country that I despise it is that it still takes a man in shackles to his death in a clean quiet room in front of a hungry, if small, crowd.

You see where my tortured brain takes me?

I have sometimes wished Frankie gone. Not through suffering. I fantasised a couple of times that he would have a massive sudden heart attack while prancing along a trail and die with the wind on his lips, right there. But now that he is a pathetic old man, I cling to him, feel his soft velvet ears brush my face, look at his fading brown pools of eyes and wonder what, if anything, he is trying to say. He is the last one of the trio of dogs Susie and I brought from San Francisco - Roxy, Riff Raff and Frankie. So he carries on his poor shoulders the weight of my losses.

He is a border collie, bred badly in some stupid San Jose puppy mill, and bought for $300 by a woman and her 4 year old daughter in the afterglow of the movie 'Babe' to live with them in the Mission district. Never let off leash to play or to run, tied to the banisters of the staircase so that he could not join the kid upstairs, and most terrifyingly - abused and kicked by the child whose love he most sought, Frankie was facing euthanasia before he was six months old for biting the child in retaliation. When I casually asked at a shelter whether they had any border collie pups, a staff member eagerly put me in touch with the woman who was going to take a 6 month old puppy to a vet for a shot of the pink liquid - the 'Fatal Plus' euthanasia drug developed by a vet for the most humane reason - because his own dog had suffered while being euthanised and he wanted to develop the 'best' and most painless drug on the market for what is a growth industry and an inevitable moment in almost every animal lovers life.

For me - it was love at first sight. And really this blog should be a celebration of Frankie's smart and determined grab at freedom. And I've ruined it with my agonised, murky tussle with the issue of euthanasia. I think killing animals is a dreadful necessity. And many many times the animal in a shelter is dying for the simplest of reasons - the ignorance, neglect and cruelty of humans. I have agreed to the euthanasia of many - more than I can remember and many of the deaths haunt me every time I let the memories sneak past the curtains of my memory.

Let's be clear - we kill hundreds of thousands of domestic animals because we simply have nothing better we can do with them and they cannot live by our rules - so they have to die. And those that we, loving caring pet owners, deliberately and carefully plan for are the lucky ones. But none of them are 'good' deaths. The Greek notwithstanding.

And Frankie's blog - his joyous, extraordinary story of survival - he deserves another day.