Monday, July 14, 2008

How far should we go to save our pets?


These days, we can get our kitties chemo or a new kidney, but should we? My buddy Vicki Constantine Croke wrote this thoughtful and well researched story for yesterday's Boston Globe Magazine, asking just how much is too much? Pictured is Boswell, a goose, getting anesthesia before his chemotherapy.

4 comments:

Caroline said...

Oh God. There was also a story in the NYT about animals getting mood altering drugs, which made me uneasy. How much is too much, indeed? Yet, when my tortoise was ill, I spent a fortune on him--and gladly.

Clea Simon said...

You should read this story - Vicki figures out that she spent something like $10,000 on her wolfhound.

catd264 said...

A pet becomes like your family, a child so to speak and I'd do anything for mine and have. It's hard to let them go without a fight.

Clea Simon said...

It's true. The hardest thing is deciding when to stop. Our late, great cat Cyrus was so sick that even though our vet said we could do exploratory surgery (he had some kind of intestinal blockage as well as kidney failure), that we knew it wouldn't be right - we didn't think he'd survive the surgery. But deciding when to let him go was the hardest decision in the world.