Lloyd - photo by Deborah Wilson
Deciding when to euthanize an animal is about as much fun as stapling luncheon meat to yourself and going swimming in a stream full of piranhas. But as the saying goes, where there’s livestock, there’s deadstock, and when you have as many rescue animals as we do, death is an expected, though preferably infrequent, occurrence. Expected, yes, but never easy.
Sometimes an animal’s death is a surprise - you walk into the coop at sunrise to find a hen has dropped from her perch in the night, a still heap confettied with the wood shavings blown upwards by her impact.
Sometimes death is a planned and merciful end to something all the care in the world can’t fix, like repeated bouts of laminitis compounded by worsening equine recurring uveitis in a pony… you could remove the affected eye, but you’d still have the painful hoof issues, for which treatment and management options have run out. When a case is relatively clear-cut like that, it almost makes the decision to euthanize easier. Easier, yes, but never easy.
My biggest fear is that I will wait too long to euthanize an animal. The last thing I want is for a beloved animal to suffer. I am firmly in the camp of “better a little early than a little late” when it comes to that final needle. Most of the time, I feel like I’ve picked the right time, but sometimes I still wonder if I have waited too long. Llike with my goat Lloyd.
Caseous lymphadenitis runs through my herd of rescue goats. It’s not a rare disease, and some goats don’t even show symptoms. Someone keeping goats as a business would cull infected individuals, but of course many of the animals that come to our farm are here because they are imperfect specimens, with chronic illness or disabilities. Few of our goats show symptoms; however Lloyd did, and last summer he developed a particularly tenacious abscess near his jawline (abscesses filled with cheesy pus are a hallmark of this disease.) Usually these lesions drain and heal within a reasonable amount of time, but Lloyd’s angry pustule was hanging on for dear life, despite repeated treatments by my vet. That little lymphatic volcano finally had its last eruption and was on its way to healing over nicely when Lloyd started to develop other issues: a chronic cough, rapid breathing, and weight loss.
Just before last Christmas, our feisty goat-guy had a crisis during a terrible snowstorm. His breathing was rapid and laboured, he was unwilling to stand, and he was bleating in distress. I moved him to our heated garage and called the farm vet. The roads were almost impassable due to the weather, so my vet gave me advice over the phone, and I administered pain meds and antibiotics to Lloyd. The vet said to give it an hour, and if things didn’t improve, he’d make his way to the farm. Fortunately Lloyd settled and was clearly feeling himself again. The next day, Christmas eve, the weather was still terrible, but my vet came to check out Lloyd anyway, skillfully navigating our snow-covered roller-coaster of a 900-foot laneway.
Everything pointed to abscesses taking up residence in Lloyd’s lungs, as sometimes happens with CL. We put Lloyd on dexamethasone for a few days, which made a new goat out of him, but no sooner was he off the dex than he was back in respiratory crisis. I gave him another shot of dexamethasone, which settled him, but it was clear that we were running out of options. Lloyd’s respiratory events were obviously painful and distressing to him, and becoming more frequent.
I knew I was going to have to make a decision sooner rather than later about ending Lloyd’s life. On January 10, he had one more troublesome episode. I thought about having the vet come to euthanize him right then, but once again, dexamethasone got him back on his hooves. I knew I needed to make the call, but I just wanted a little bit more time. His breathing was back to normal and he was happily munching hay with his pals.
Lloyd was such a nice goat, shiny white with impressive horns and a beard a beatnik would covet. He’d come to our farm in 2017 via another rescue with his friends Lillian and Olive. They’d all been saved together from some dire situation. We’d had almost six years together, and I wasn’t quite ready to say good-bye.
Lloyd, however, had other plans. I checked on him that night at bedtime and he seemed perky, but when I went down to the goat house on the morning of January 11, Lloyd was stretched out stiff, his eyes open and unmoving. I couldn’t know for sure if he had suffered much in dying, but I knew that euthanasia would have been a more peaceful option for him. It’s fortunate no one was around that morning to hear me screaming obscenities at the annoyingly-sunny sky.
Torn between sadness at Lloyd’s death and anger at myself for not having had him euthanized the day before, I wrapped my goat in a sheet and loaded him onto the sled used for cleaning out the goat house, crying as I dragged him uphill to the barn. There he he would rest until our unofficial farm undertaker Matthieu could come to bury him with his backhoe.
If I’d been just a bit more decisive the day before, I could have said a proper good-bye to Lloyd, and made his passing more peaceful. This was one of those times when I wished I’d moved a little bit early rather than a little bit late. But we’d lost a lot of animals in the previous year, and I just wasn’t quite ready to let go of Lloyd. As it turned ou,t Lloyd had other plans. I hope that wherever his is, he has lots of fresh alfalfa to nibble and many goaty friends to keep him company. All I can do is learn from this experience and hope I do a better job with timing when euthanasia is once again inevitably required for one of our precious animals.