possible impending death of a pet?

sdaisies

DS will be 4 soon and he is such a sensitive guy. There is a lot of change going on right now in his life including getting ready to move to a new house. The boxes and packing alone have been rough on him. We have a 10 yr old lab who has cancer. Originally it was just in his back leg, the vet recommended having his leg removed since it was not spread and we did. DS has been his caretaker, they are together all of the time.

Anyways, our pup twisted his other back leg last week and has been in pain and limping. We took him to the vet and scans revealed he tore his ACL in his back leg and what we were not expecting is that there appears to be masses all along his spine and in his liver which look cancerous. 

The vet gave us pain meds to help the leg, if its just his leg causing pain the hope is it will heal and then he will be pain free, but the vet gave us 6 months max with the cancer. So, we know it is coming, just not sure when. Our pup has 5 more days on the pain meds, but is still having a really hard time getting around. DS knows he hurt his leg, thats it. Not wanting to think this obsessively, but I worry specifically what to tell DS, he never has had any experience with death and also how we can help him. More specifically when the time comes to put him to sleep, do we let DS say goodbye or do we talk to him about it afterwards? I know I cannot take away the hurt and sadness he will feel, but I want to do as much as I can. Any advice? I hate this so much, for us, for our dog, and our family. Thanks for reading through all of this.

shiloh17

We put our dog down unexpectedly in May. She was 15yrs., and a buddy to my sons. We didnt tell them anything beforehand. I didnt want them worrying about something that they really didnt understand. They were 2& 3.5yrs at the time. We talked to them the next day, and explained that she was sick and needed to get better. We told them she went to heaven to be with our cat, and to play with other animals. They didnt really get it, but were ok. They still ask about her, and want her back. Its hard, but thankfully the fact that kids don't really inderstand death at that age makes it easier. Sorry you are faced with that decision. Its so hard to lose a furbaby. Hugs!

peekaboo716

I am so sorry you are going through this. When our dog was sick, ds was younger than your ds (about 3.5 maybe?). We talked about how sick our dog was and that sometimes there are certain sicknesses that doctors can't fix. We ended up having an emergency appt. To put our dog down, so ds didn't get to say goodbye. We explained that he got really sick and had to go to heaven. He was confused, sad, said he wanted to go see him, etc. He handled it okay, but there were tears and conversations that were hard to have. I have heard the book dog.heaven is a good one, although I have no personal experience with it.(((hugs)))

teg

I'm so sorry about your pup.

We didn't have to put a pet down but one of our cats died unexpectedly (apparent heart attack) last summer when DS was 2 1/2, and I can share how we handled it. We found our cat late at night and had to wait until morning to take him to vet to be cremated. We told DS that that he had died, and when something dies they never come back, we will never see them again, but we miss them very much and have our memories and pictures to remember them by, and it is good to think about all of the happy times we had with them, and it's okay to be sad. DS was with us when we brought him in to the vet (in a box--so sad to think about!), and when DH and I said goodbye, but I think he just kind of sat back.

We talk about our cat a bit, still, and DS still reminds us that he is dead, in very blunt terms. I think it was a good experience, given how hard it was for us, and we felt blessed to have this experience to reference when DH's grandma passed away recently--kind of the cat's legacy, to make it easier for DS to understand what was happening, why we were sad, etc. I don't know exactly how I'd handle putting a pet down (we may have to put our other cat down, and I think I'd tell DS after the fact, but that's based on how I think DS would do best), but I hope it helps to know that kids are resilient and I think they help us cope with losses... so sorry again about your pup.