I just put my 9 year old dog to sleep, and I would like to know if I made the right decision.

Question

I'm suffering terrible from guilt. One week ago I put our 9 year old Fox Hound to sleep. He was a wonderful dog to the family.

    We got Gage when he was 5 months old from a local animal shelter. He was very fearful of people. When we brought him home he stayed in his kennel for 3 days, except when we physically removed him to go potty. Once he warmed up to us he was great! Very loving. However, he was always very shy around people. When he was 1 we took him to the vet, because we noticed one of his legs was not as large as the others. The vet discovered that at some point it had been broken and had healed incorrectly. Five hundred dollars later, he was ok, with the exception of battling arthritis.

    At around the 1 year mark he became very aggressive towards anyone who came to the house. Once the person was in the house he would warm up. As the years past by, it got worse. At one point, when he was 8, he lunged at a friend and tore her shirt. I took him to canine good citizen training and intermediate training. However, we continued to battle his attitude towards strangers.

    Two months ago, we had to move from our home of 10 years to an out of state home. We did this move for our son, who was diagnosed autistic. We moved to a state where he could get the educational help he needed. Unfortunately, we had to choose to rent for 1 year and the landlord would not allow the dog to stay. We found a foster family, who agreed to keep him for us, until we purchased a house.

    Everything was OK until the 6th week. He increasingly became aggressive to people coming into their home. A close family friend was bitten and did bleed. This was actually the person who got Gage into the foster family home. They called and asked to have him removed immediately. Luckily, this man did not need stitches and felt bad for the dog! The day before we were to pick him up he bit the baby sitter in the face. It did not break the skin, thank god. Our landlord agreed to allow the dog, for $50 more each month. When I went to pick Gage up, he did not recognize me. He growled and snapped. I was scared. It took 10 minutes for him to allow me in, and another 10 to recognize me. I took him to the vet, for help. The vet advised me to put him to sleep, noting the fact that I had 3 children under 6. He felt the children could be injured or someone else and we would be liable. It had been 12 days since the bite that bled, so we could go ahead with it. I felt he was correct and followed through, staying with Gage (alone) while it was done. My children were with Grandma at her house. My husband was in Washington on business.

    I felt horrible doing this. He was the most loving dog to us and I feel like I betrayed his trust. My husband feels he had 9 great years with us, and that he came into our family with a lot of mental baggage. I know this is true, because the dog had many odd behaviors.

    Do you believe I did the right thing? I don't want my family to know how upset I am. I need a unbiased opinion on this one.

    Sincerely,
Paula
Madison, WI

Accepted Answer

This is a no brainer - this dog got 8 more years of life than he should have had. The problems with this dog (which was a fear biter) were genetic in nature and not environmental. Simply put it was bad breeding that caused this. Had it been environmental you would have fixed it in the 8 years that you had it.

    The bottom line is that people make the mistake of forming emotional attachments to dogs with bad temperaments. It's difficult to have a dog put to sleep, I don't question that. But the fact is that there are so many nice dogs in animals shelters that these kinds of dogs should not be placed in homes.

    What if this dog had taken an eye out of this little girl? You need to look for a dog with better nerves next time and don't listen to these animal shelter people who say "THIS DOG HAS BEEN ABUSED" While this happens, the majority of the time it's a dog with a bad genetic problem and it's in the shelter because the original family did nothing wrong, it just could not deal with the baggage that came with the dog and did not have the guts to have the dog put to sleep.