Should dog with cancer be euthanized?

Dr. Marie replied:

Oh dear. I'm so sorry to hear about Ben's cancer. A Grade III mast cell tumor is indeed something serious.

Decisions like this are really hard to make. I can see where the vet is coming from. We know that Ben has a very bad type of cancer and it is affecting his lymph nodes and his organs. The odds are extremely high that he only has a small amount of time left. If I had to guess I'd say that this time is likely a week or two. (But that's just a guess of course.) The train of thought here is that, if Ben only has such a short time left, the best and kindest course of action would be to consider euthanasia now so that he doesn't need to experience sickness and pain.

I can also see your point of view as well. It would be very difficult to consider euthanasia when Ben is acting normal.

The answer, as I see it lies in how certain the vet is of the diagnosis. If there is a severe spread of cancer and it is definitely affecting his organs then you can be guaranteed that the end is near. We all wish that when our pets finally pass on that they do it peacefully in their sleep. However, that does not happen often. The types of things that could happen to Ben are not pleasant. If the spleen is affected, it may be that a tumor ends up rupturing the spleen and he can bleed out into his abdomen. This would cause him quite significant distress. If something like this happens over the holidays or in the middle of the night, rushing him to emergency to do an emergency euthanasia is going to be a very traumatic experience for everyone.

Another possibility that I saw many times when doing emergency work is that he could end up having seizures. Rushing a seizuring dog into the vet for euthanasia is very traumatic as well.

Now, it is possible that the decline is slow. You could make the decision to wait and when Ben has lost his appetite or is showing other symptoms of not feeling well such as vomiting or extreme lethargy then you make the decision then. But, there really is no way of knowing whether he will gradually decline or whether something emergent is going to happen.

It's a tough call. Your vet is the best one to help you in making this decision though and I really would trust her judgement in helping you to decide.

I hope things end well for Ben, and again, I'm so sorry for the bad news.

Dr. Marie


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