What happens during a euthanasia visit?

Sophie aims for this experience to be as calm, stress free and dignified as possible for you and and your pet. In most cases Sophie will administer an injection of sedative to your pet. The sedation usually works over 5-10 minutes and your pet will gradually fall asleep.

Once they are sedated and sleeping soundly, Sophie will then place an intravenous catheter to allow her to have constant and secure intravenous access. This allows the administration of the euthanasia solution, which is a type of anaesthetic. As your pet is sedated, they will not feel any discomfort from the IV and they will not be aware of the euthanasia injection.

The euthanasia injection will work over around 10-20 seconds and your pet will pass away under the sedation.

Why consider euthanasia of your pet?

Making the decision to put your pet to sleep is always heart breaking. However if their quality of life is in decline due to illness or old age, it may be kinder to choose euthanasia to prevent suffering.

Scheduling a euthanasia allows you to have a lot more control of how, where and when they are put to sleep. It can be much more difficult to have a euthanasia performed at home last minute or out of normal working hours, so you may be faced with having to take your pet into the vets instead.

Performing euthanasia with sedation and euthanasia solution is considered very humane, as they pass away without pain and without awareness, which may be more humane and quick than a natural death.

Assessing quality of life

There are several different ways to assess quality of life in dogs and cats, including online scales where you can calculate a score for your pet.

The way that Sophie likes to assess quality of life is with balancing positive factors on one side and negative factors on the other.

Positive factors are your pet being able to enjoy the good things in life such as:

  • Positive interactions with people

  • Playing with toys/enjoying walks/exploring/sniffing

  • Eating and drinking

  • Fair mobility- being able to get around the house/garden without pain

Negative factors:

  • Pain of any sort

  • Limited /painful mobility or profound weakness

  • Blindness/deafness can limit their engagement with their surroundings

  • Incontinence

  • Struggling to breathe

  • Nausea/hunger

  • Becoming withdrawn, not interacting

Please note that severe pain and breathing difficulty constitute an emergency and require immediate intervention.

If your pet is experiencing an imbalance where their life lacks positive factors and is dominated by the negative factors, it is time to euthanasia to prevent suffering. You can book an appointment with your own vet for a quality of life discussion, or contact Sophie to speak with her. Your vet may be able to help with certain things such as pain relief or medications to help with incontinence.

Below are some resources you may find helpful.

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