27/05/2024
The love in goodbye.
I help a lot of pets to leave this world. Some are old and their organs are failing, some are too weak to leave their beds, most are very sick, some are too anxious to function.
Almost weekly I hear the refrain “I don’t know how you do your job”.
I’ll tell you, euthanasia is one of the most heart-opening and beautiful parts of my job as a vet.
During a euthanasia appointment, especially at home, people are not afraid to be vulnerable. The masks come off. There is no small-talk, no judgement, no expectations of how people "should be". Everyone is fully present, raw, open. These families place their trust in me with their beloved pet, their family member.
There is laughter, as tales of the dog’s heroics are recounted, the time he baled-up the brown snake on the verandah or the time she proudly trotted home with a full roast chicken off the neighbour’s table.
Sometimes the dog or cat was their first baby, before the two-legged babies came along. Sometimes it’s their only companion and they are afraid, afraid of the loneliness. Sometimes the dog is tied to a lost loved one: “He was my husband’s dog really, he never left his side, even at the end he was there,” and you know that person is feeling the acute loss of not only their dog or cat but their partner or husband or wife or child too. Sometimes this is the first experience of grief for a child, sobbing over the body of their friend, the one who slept at the end of their bed and kept the monsters away, who got dressed up and wheeled around in a doll’s pram, who sat with pricked ears under the high chair for that one bit of dropped toast and who lay patiently, tongue out, tail wagging, while laughing toddlers rolled all over him.
All of this might seem so sad and hard to deal with, but when you look around and under the grief, you realise that it is actually pure love that manifests at a euthanasia appointment. All of the tears and all of the whispered “thank yous” into a furry ear, the holding of a paw in a trembling hand, that gruff "good dog" with one last pat on the head is the ultimate act of love. I love you enough to let you go. I appreciate your unconditional love and trust enough to say goodbye, until we meet again. Facilitating this outpouring of love is a job that I will never tire of and never think of as anything less than a privilege.
