Blog author 28 May 2008 17:24 | My blog Behind the statisticsI was phoned several times over the weekend by an elderly gentleman who was very worried about his dog and clearly had some kind of mental health difficulties. Finally I got to speak to one of his neighbours, who was helping him out with transport, and we agreed that the dog wasn't really ill enough to warrant taking her to the out of hours emergency vet (£85 just for the consult) and that it would be more useful to spend charity money on giving him some help with the cost of hospitalisation at our own clinic.
The neighbour kindly brought him to the clinic in her car yesterday, and it was apparent to the vet on duty that his dog was simply very old. She wasn't in great distress, but wasn't eating and couldn't stand without help. The vet gently suggested to the owner that the kindest thing would be to put his dog to sleep, but he was insistent that he wanted her treated, so we admitted her for tests.
These showed that her kidneys were definitely failing and her liver was probably not much better. Vet contacted Social Services as the gentleman was now talking about killing himself if the dog had to be put down and this was clearly going to be necessary in the near future if not immediately.
It turns out that the dog originally belonged to the gentleman's mother who had been his carer up until the point where she had to go into residential care herself. This literally is someone with nobody except his dog. Comments 31 Jul 2008 21:57 31 Jul 2008 21:57 Description
How sad this story is. The poor mans last link to his mum was the dog. To have no-one else in the whole world must be truly heartbreaking.
What was the outcome for the man? |
