The Last Walk: Reflections on Our Pets at the End of Their Lives (Emersion: Emergent Village resources for communities of faith) - Softcover

Pierce, Jessica

Softcover

ISBN 10: 022615100X ISBN 13: 9780226151007

Verlag: University of Chicago Press, 2014

Inhaltsangabe

From the moment when we first open our homes—and our hearts—to a new pet, we know that one day we will have to watch this beloved animal age and die. The pain of that eventual separation is the cruel corollary to the love we share with them, and most of us deal with it by simply ignoring its inevitability.

With The Last Walk, Jessica Pierce makes a forceful case that our pets, and the love we bear them, deserve better. Drawing on the moving story of the last year of the life of her own treasured dog, Ody, she presents an in-depth exploration of the practical, medical, and moral issues that trouble pet owners confronted with the decline and death of their companion animals. Pierce combines heart-wrenching personal stories, interviews, and scientific research to consider a wide range of questions about animal aging, end-of-life care, and death. She tackles such vexing questions as whether animals are aware of death, whether they're feeling pain, and if and when euthanasia is appropriate. Given what we know and can learn, how should we best honor the lives of our pets, both while they live and after they have left us?

The product of a lifetime of loving pets, studying philosophy, and collaborating with scientists at the forefront of the study of animal behavior and cognition, The Last Walk asks—and answers—the toughest questions pet owners face. The result is informative, moving, and consoling in equal parts; no pet lover should miss it.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jessica Pierce is a bioethicist and coauthor of Wild Justice: The Moral Lives of Animals.

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The Last Walk

Reflections on Our Pets at the End of Their Lives

By Jessica Pierce

The University of Chicago Press

Copyright © 2012 The University of Chicago
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-226-15100-7

Contents

1: FINAL ODYSSEY, 
2: INTO THE OPEN, 
3: OLD, 
4: PAIN, 
5: ANIMAL HOSPICE, 
6: BLUE NEEDLE, 
7: REMAINS, 
Acknowledgments, 
Notes, 
Bibliography, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

Final Odyssey

Ody shuffles down the hall and stops at the doorway of my office, peering in at me with brown eyes made milky by age. He doesn't come all the way into the room to put a muzzle on my lap or push a nose under my hand as he used to. For Ody the greeting remains incomplete, a reminder that he now inhabits a different world.

I turn in my chair and call him. Though he doesn't come, I know he hears me. His stump of a tail flicks back and forth in reply. I also know, because we repeat this exchange day after day, what comes next. With a snort and a raspy cough, Ody will turn stiffly and make his way back down the hall, the click-drag click-drag of his nails telling me where he is headed. But I don't want him to go just yet.

I stand and step into the doorway. Kneeling, I take Ody's face in my hands. His long ears are like velour under my fingers. I run my hands along his body, feeling the spongy lumps that bulge out here and there, like a super-sized Braille inscription. The lumps, the vet tells me, are fatty deposits called lipomas and are a harmless, if unsightly, manifestation of age. Despite his lumps and skin tags and white hair, Ody is still just as handsome to me as ever.

Repeating another familiar exchange, I lower my face and touch my nose to his. I've always loved his nose, which is improbably colored to match the russet of his coat. I close my eyes and feel the cool roughness. His breath is a reminder of worn and broken teeth and of gums decayed by time. We remain here nose-to-nose for several long moments, and I then I stand up and turn back to my work. Ody shuffles off, click-drag, down the hall.

Ody is just over fourteen, and if you saw him on one of his occasional walks (he walks when the mood is right, and otherwise refuses to leave the house) you would know that he is an old dog. His back legs are atrophied and weak and bend awkwardly, and he stands as if he were halfway toward sitting. Every few steps one of his back legs fails to do its job, and he lands on top of his toes, rather than on his paw pad. Without support of the foot, the leg collapses, and his body dips and sways. This idiosyncrasy is most likely the result of some neurological dysfunction that causes the brain to send the wrong signals to the legs. It is one among several symptoms of "cognitive dysfunction syndrome"—in other words, Ody suffers from dementia.

Ody is nearing death. And the closer he draws toward the end, the more puzzled I become about what a good death would mean for him. It is pretty clear what a bad death looks like, and far too many animals in our world suffer a bad death, dying afraid, in pain, and alone or with strangers.

But what is a good death? The message I get from everything I read and all the people I talk to is that eventually Ody will reach a point at which his life becomes burdensome, and he will tell me, somehow, that he wants to be released. I will take him to the vet and the kindly people there will poke him with a needle and it will all be very quick and painless and gentle. But something about this scenario bothers me, like a splinter just under the skin of my conscience. And the closer Ody limps and shuffles toward this elusive endpoint, the less comfortable I become.

Is a "natural" death preferable, for Ody, to euthanasia? Why is it that we have such a revulsion against euthanasia for human beings, yet when it comes to animals this good death comes to feel almost obligatory? If it is an act of such compassion, shouldn't we be more willing to provide this assistance for our beloved human companions as well?

I worry: will I be able to read Ody's signals? And I wonder: does life ever become so burdensome for an animal that he or she would prefer death, or is this something we have judged from the outside? Is it that their lives become burdensome for them, or for us? The more troublesome Ody becomes—the more he pees on the floor, the more often he barks for no reason at odd hours of the night, the more frequently he stands, confused and panting, in the middle of the kitchen while I'm trying to cook dinner—the more ambiguous the question of burdens becomes.

WHY I WROTE THIS BOOK

When Ody was about thirteen and a half, I decided to keep a journal about his life. Although he was still in relatively good health, I could see age wearing its tracks onto his body and mind. His health was starting to fail in small ways—he had had mast cell tumors removed from his ear and from his haunch, his hearing was fading, and he had to work a little to stand up. I began to write down the funny and annoying things that Ody spent his days doing, so that I would remember him in color and detail. And I recorded my reactions to watching him grow old. I thought it might help me work through the anguish of someday losing him, and the difficult decisions that I suspected lay in wait for us. I didn't know it at the time, but the "Ody Journal" was the beginning of this book.

Ody's story soon became something more than personal. As a bioethicist, my work has focused on how the biomedical sciences intersect with human values, particularly within the context of healthcare. At the same time as I began writing my daily journal about Ody, I was finishing a large college-level textbook on bioethics. The ethics of death and dying has long been at the core of this field of applied philosophy, and one of the central chapters in the textbook focused on ethics at the end of life. I would sit at my desk, immersed in the literature about human death and dying and hear Ody retching in the background, as the water he just drank got stuck in his throat. I would have to get up from my work, frustratingly often, because he needed to go out and pee, again, or was barking at the door. It became obvious to me that many of the questions under discussion in human end-of-life care were similar to ones I might soon encounter with Ody. How aggressively should I treat his encroaching disabilities? How do I judge the quality of his daily life, as he experiences it? Might there ever come a time when his day-to-day living is filled with so much pain and fear that the humane course will be to hasten his death?

Bioethics has not generally concerned itself with animals, and most certainly not with the aging, dying, and death of animals. But as I began dealing with Ody's aging, and thinking about how to navigate decisions at the end of his life, I realized that end-of-life care for our animal companions is worthy of sustained attention and that pet owners and veterinarians face moral quandaries every bit as complicated as those we face with human loved ones. Yet as I learned the hard way, we are not always prepared for these challenges, not having been asked to think carefully through the terrain ahead of us. No one told me that having an old dog would be hard and that his approaching death would strike so much fear into my heart. I didn't know that planning for his death—knowing how a good death might best be accomplished, what might happen with his body, how I might find constructive ways to grieve—would have helped me do it all better,...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: University of Chicago Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2014
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 022615100X
• ISBN 13: 9780226151007
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 271
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Buchbär; info@buchbaer.de; ; Weberstr. 67; Osnabrück; 49084; Deutschland