Dignity Over Delay: Rethinking Pet Euthanasia, Treatment, And Quality Of Life ft. Linda Hughes

Grief is heavy; choice is heavier. We open the door to a conversation many avoid: how to make humane, timely end-of-life decisions for our dogs and other animals without surrendering dignity to fear or delay. Through real stories—a goat with Johne’s disease, a Labrador remembered with regret, a joyful dog named Eazy whose last morning was full of play ... we map the emotional terrain and the practical steps that lead to a kinder farewell.

We talk about the hard calls that vets present and what they mean in real life: failed vein access, prolonged sedation, and invasive procedures that add risk without improving outcomes. You’ll hear why “a day early rather than a day late” can prevent traumatic endings like haemorrhage, suffocation, or frantic final car rides.

We share how to plan a peaceful goodbye at home, in a place your dog loves ... the training arena, the garden, a sunny bed ... with familiar voices, favourite games, and last suppers that say “you’re safe.” Presence matters; calm touch and routine reduce fear, and those final moments become a gentle memory instead of a lifelong scar.

We also challenge treatment norms. Not every surgery, MRI, or chemo protocol serves the animal when the prognosis is poor. We walk through the questions that bring clarity: What does recovery look like? What comfort will this buy? What risks are certain?

Alongside honest talk about limits, we cover supportive care ... nutrition upgrades, raw diets when appropriate, targeted supplements, and low-stress routines—that can boost wellbeing without false hope. The through line is stewardship: asking tough questions, choosing compassion over delay, and trusting yourself to act before suffering eclipses joy.

If you’re bracing for a hard decision or carrying the weight of one that has passed, this conversation offers language, frameworks, and courage for the moments that matter most. Subscribe, share with someone who needs it, and leave a review with the one question you’d ask your vet before making the call.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Mission
• 0:57 The Goat’s Illness And Hard Choices
• 6:53 Evaluating Euthanasia Methods
• 10:43 Better A Day Early Than Late
• 12:47 Childhood Loss And Being Present
• 19:09 Peaceful Home Goodbyes Versus Trauma
• 27:55 Easy’s Diagnosis And Planned Farewell

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:09

Welcome to the Absolute Dogs Text in a Squirrel podcast. I'm Lauren Langman. I'm one of the world's leading dog trainers, and it's my mission to help owners become their dog's top priority. In each episode, you'll discover how to gain trust and communicate with your dog like never before, creating unbreakable bonds that make you the most exciting part of their world. So my story is that recently we had to have one of our little goats put to sleep. And for me, whether they're my goat or my chicken or my dog, I always feel sad. And having to make that call for any animal, I personally feel is not only our responsibility, it's our duty. And it's a right that we have in animals currently that we definitely don't have in humans where I live. And it's sad, right? It's sad. And the day came where I went up to feed them and she was shouting. Dottie was like, something's wrong, something's wrong. And this really, I've never experienced this with other animals. And I I love my animals. I'm looking at my little goat now. She's up on the top of the hill, she's just over there. And I love my animals dearly in the sense that it's so emotionally intelligent. And Dottie was squealing and bleating. And if you ever heard a goat bleat, it's it's a real, like you know something's wrong. And last time they bleated, we had a fox in, and the fox was trying to have the chickens, and they were telling us, and we didn't know it, but they were telling us. And this time she was telling me that her friend was sick and her friend was poorly. And I went up and they have something called yonis, which is basically means they can't they can't take all the nutrients from their food. And so eventually, with yonis, they always die. They're in an area where nothing else gets to them, and they're in an area that's just their little paddock. And so I was going to let them live out their days in that paddock where nothing else goes in, and it's got a high fence and nothing goes out. And so we knew that that her friend was was sick. She came out, she could barely move, she was sort of falling over as she's moving, and I know the call. And I rang the vet and the vet came out. And as the vet's trying to raise multi-veins, and this little goat is behaving herself beautifully, like being the nicest little goat, and she's a sweet little goat, and I'm we're trying to raise the veins, and we've shaved three different spots on her now. And to have an animal cope with being shaved, let alone cornered to do it, is testament to their temperament because they're being shaved and it's a very novel situation. And he's still not able to raise a vein. And I look at the day and it's sunny, and I look at the goat and she's able to eat and she's able to stand. And I say to Jamie, give me the day, Jamie, and I'm gonna make her lots of last suppers. Like she can have all the vegetables and all the last suppers that she wants. She can have the sunshine for today. And then if we can't work out a plan by tonight, I'll call you back. And the consideration goes, and some of our listeners aren't going to like this. We've tried to pin this goat for 15 minutes, and the goat is beginning to become distressed as us trying to raise veins on her. And in animals, you have to make the right decision. And he gives me the option that you can go into the liver and it will take 30 minutes and we can put her to sleep that way, but it will take 30 minutes, and we'll do that sedated. So we'll sedate and then we'll do that. Or we can keep trying to raise these veins, but he's blowing veins, so they're not they're not wanting to be raised. That's because she's got low blood pressure, and it's because she's got a disease, and it's because she's sick. And I think it through and I talk it through. And the kindest thing to do to a little goat like that, as awful as it sounds, is probably to shoot her. And for me, that like to conceive that as a as a pet owner, these are my pets, right? I'm not, I'm not a person with a shotgun or or I that's not my life. But it's quick, it's instant, and there's no stress, right? And she is she it's done. There's no there's no trying to raise a vein, and there's no 30 minutes of trying to receive uh a drug, and and there's no long, like drawn-out death. And as an owner, whether it's your goat or your dog, we have this responsibility to our pets to get it right. And that day, I spent most of my day taking our little meals, and I spent most of my day uh making sure she had everything she needed. She had a massive bed of hay, she sat munching it on the floor. She looked quite content. I've got loads of pictures, loads of videos of her. And like I said, my dog, my goat, my pony, my chicken, I love them all, love them. And for me, at the end of the day, I asked a very, very good friend of ours who has a license, and he came up and and um we said goodbye to Tula. And I'm a huge believer in you do what's right for the animal at the time. And as much as I'd called the vet out and we tried to raise the veins and we tried to do it that way because I knew she was a friendly little animal. It also wasn't right to then leave her and then him come back and raise those veins again when we already knew they would collapse and they wouldn't, wouldn't, wouldn't work. And I've got lots of stories about dogs with with end of life too. As I know you have, Linda, I think we've got a real duty to help people out there to make the call. And that goat could have gone on three, four, five more days. But I'm a huge believer in it's better a day early than a day late. And I'm also a huge advocate of what is the kindest thing you can do for that animal in that moment. Will she ever get better? No. Will she ever regain all of her strength? No. Will she ever stand properly and walk properly again? No. So it happens today and it happens in a really kind way, and we're not stressing her out and taking her anywhere away from her home. That's how it happens. And I know you've got a story to share as well.

SPEAKER_00: 5:55

Yes, I have because when I was a toddler, we had a family dog that I sort of knew about. It was blind, and but it was my mother's right joy. And then there was a big cafle. I think I was about three or four, and this dog had died, it had a heart attack or something. And my mother from then on said, We're not ever having any dogs in this house because I can't afford to lose them. And I was I was the kid that picked up all the baby rabbits and the kittens and the birds that were injured and everything else in the cloud when I wasn't allowed to have it all. And then someone dark human. My mother had a serious accident in the following life when I was 12. And I saw a puppy free to put home in the music. And I went and got it with a black ladder. And my mother designed herself. I had every other animal. I left home and I left the dog at home because I couldn't know why I was doing I couldn't check this dog, but I hated that. And then the labor got sick. And my mother called me and said, You need to take this dog to the bed. And I took the doctor, and I had all these memories of what would happen when I was really sorry, it's nothing we can do. And I lost it, I just was like, I can't go with the doctor. I think I was about 21. And I just left it with a bed, and I remember that dog looking at me as I left. And I thought, that's terrible, but I could not save that dog. So that so life went on. I got the Jack Russell, and the Jack Russell got run over by my husband, who he was a farmer and had an accident with the farm. I had to pick it up and dig a hole in the area. That sort of hardened me up a bit. So then when the next dog, which was a bit more late, was needed to be put asleep, I was determined that I was not gonna do what I did the language. Because by then I was also aware of lots of vets saying that the animals themselves worry when they're not with something familiar, it's hard on the vets to try and reinsure them. Anyway, so from then on I always make sure that I'm present when my dog is asleep, and I will always go early rather than late. I have surprised some vets in the past because they can oh, you can ride quickly, knowing that we were in our last days of the dog. I would rather have it done earlier where the dog is still doesn't feel too miserable. But I you know well done. I will stand there and pull my eyes out whilst the dog is asleep. But I'm always there, and I'm always reassuring them and I'm always letting them know it's okay. And the the best one I had is I had a dog who had I shouldn't laugh. He had some problem with spine and he lost the use of his back legs. And for for about a year we had him in one of those carts, and he used to come out for the water and his video's wheels. He had no point where his quality of life was rubbish, particularly in the winter time and indoors. Couldn't be done. He's the only dog I've ever had put to sleep who ate sausages right up to the last minute. Sausages being very running, completely oblivious to the fact that what the pet was doing, the other, and he went to sleep as happy as Larry, bless him. But yeah, so that's my story. I after the Labrador, I promised myself I was never going to do that again to a dog.

SPEAKER_01: 9:49

And I think that's really brave to share it because I like you, I didn't go with my first dog. My dad did, and my dad took her, and my dad stayed with her, even though, like your mum, he was never having another dog again. Um, and I kept reintroducing new little animals into our lives. And then with Poppy, and and this is another one I want to make sure that we share, is that you get to choose. And so with Poppy, I was she had quite severe vestibula, and then she got to the point that she got quite distressed and got herself hit like stuck in an area, and it made me think that if she did this and I was out, she's got such severe cognitive decline. She was making her life quite dangerous, and others actually, because she was jamming herself in places and very distressed when she did it, and she was quite poorly in the morning. But by the time the vet was coming out, she was a bit better. And I think this is something to acknowledge as well that they will go up and down and up and down and up and down, but eventually they do just go down. And Poppy, like your dear dog with the sausages, Poppy ate tripe sticks and bits of tripe till the last moment, and she was cappily snuffling. Wait, I've got a picture of her that I'll share, and she looks so peaceful, and she was put to sleep at home in our daisies, so she's lying in the middle of a field of daisies. And if I was to imagine a way to go, Linda, that'd be it. That would be it. And if I compare that to my dad, who I saw die of end stage cancer in our home, it was a completely different experience. And I can tell you now, I wouldn't want that one. And at the same time, my dad was still in our home, and he was still being cared for by mum and myself and Liza and Matt and the family and Mark, our brilliant friend. Like we were we were all caring for him, but the lack of dignity and the lack of comfort and the lack of everything, I mean, it's just a completely different space. And so, one of the big reasons I wanted to share today's sexy in a squirrel podcast, which is not that sexy and and maybe not that squirrel, is that the ability to be able to say goodbye to your dog in a really dignified and kind way is something that we are granted. And I'm disappointed in human beings that that put dogs to sleep for no reason, because I don't think that was the ability that it was ever granted for. But the ability to say goodbye to a loved one at the end, another example I'm gonna tell the Easy story, which we were meant to film on the morning, and we were filming something for Games Club. For those of you listening and you love your games club and you love your pro dog trainer club, I love games club. And we were filming, and Kev was coming down, and I said to Kev, come and film, and we're gonna do this, that, and the other. This was like weeks and weeks before. And anyway, easy was diagnosed with a mass in a short space of time. We started to lose her, and it caused uh megosophagus and a few other complications, and quite quickly, one of the complications was collapse. And from collapse, you also would have sudden loss of breathing where she might just regurgitate or suffocate or not be able to breathe properly. And so for me, there were a lot of decisions to make quickly for a dog like that, and we hadn't prepared in our heads that she was going to be put to sleep, but she was going to be put to sleep that day, and we really didn't know it until it happened. And I could hear her being sick and I could hear her not able to function properly, and so we called out the vet in a pretty serious space, and within 10 minutes, she was fine again, but we also realized the condition that she had it was going to be like that forever. She we knew she had a fatal mass as well. And so that morning, easy at seven years old, we put to sleep and we put to sleep easy at home. And unlike Poppy, Easy didn't like the field that much. Easy's favorite place in the world was the training arena. That was her favorite place in the world. It was where she did everything that was magic. It's where she got to do her skidding downs, it's where she got to do her agility, it's where she got to do all of the racing around with her friends, it's where she got to earn as much food as she could, and she was a foodie. And so I chatted to my vet, my vet came out, we she played, she did agility. I mean, easy was functionally fine until the collapses would kick in. And she looked a bit weaker, but not terribly. And she was, it was really hard, Linda, to say now is the time because she hadn't suffocated and she hadn't choked and she hadn't completely collapsed and she hadn't done all of those things. But the information was there that this mass was killing her and that we could end it in a way that was very traumatic, or that we could plan an ending that was actually very kind. And that's such a big decision on you as a human. Like it's big, and and when they're like panting and breathing and like nose pushing, and she's doing all the brilliant stuff that she did, middle on the move, and skidding across the floor, and sitting on the sofa and eating ice creams. And I mean, we had to feed her differently in everything for for weeks because of this megosophagus, and it was different, but we would do it, and we would, we would, we would do like you with the your dog with the wheels, you'll do it, right? Look like you'll do it. But when quality of life comes into question and when trauma comes into question, and I've experienced a traumatic death, two in fact. Three, in fact. One, my mum's cat, who was put to sleep very, very late and started hemorrhaging on the floor, she couldn't do it. She couldn't put the cat to sleep. Mum couldn't do it. She was so traumatized herself by losing her cat, she couldn't make the call. And that for me ended up in an emergency call of me begging my vet to come out and put this cat to sleep really fast because the cat was seriously ill and hemorrhaging on the floor. And I don't want to drive them to the vets when they're like that. I want someone to be in our home and say goodnight in a really kind way. And then my second one was my dad, like that's a traumatic death. It's not, it's not nice. It's it's it's just it's not nice, it's traumatic. And then Tokyo, which was another traumatic death, because we he he had he had effectively all he was he effectively poisoning and so shutting down of the organs, and so when you watch a dog going through that, it's it's painful, it's painful. And and we were trying to travel him to a to a um specialist, and so I suppose when you've experienced a painful death, there's something beautiful in a planned death, yeah. And the fact that Easy wasn't traumatised, and and if you get the choice to pick that or that, if you did a this or that, I would be like, take Easy's or take your lovely dog that was eating sausages every time. Like, why would we allow it to go to trauma? And so as Easy took her last meal and all of her last breath, she was sat in a space that she trusted with people she trusted, with surrounded by love and surrounded by care. And it is the same as when you sedate them, they just look like they're going to sleep, right?

SPEAKER_00: 17:31

And and and it's the gift that we can give to them because we can give them that gift because we know down the road that this is just going to become a trauma, and your dad knew the trauma he was going through, and that's gossip, and and you know, as human beings, we have to face that. Whereas we don't have to make our animals face that you know, they can go to sleep just naturally and beautifully, and we can have a dignified life, and and it isn't going to be trauma. I've had the you know, I've had the cancer that are bled out, and dogs being rushed to the bed thing, and the dogs know they're not well, and I will stay with them, but they know they're you know they're very poorly because they can know what's going on, but that's not a good way for them. Like it's not a good way for human beings. We have that gift that we can give our animals, and it's a much better. I don't I do know sometimes people choose to put their text to sleep and then go through the whole guilt thing of oh, what if I hadn't done it, you know, maybe this it could have got better and all of that. You have to just let that go. You did and best you could in the moment for your adult.

SPEAKER_01: 18:46

And know that we all ask that. I love that you say that because I was saying to the vet, Jamie, he was called, he's a lovely vet, and I was saying to Jamie when he came out here for my little goat, and I think they all stack on each other a little bit because you do have different experiences and you learn from those experiences. And I'm grateful for all of the lessons I've had to help me to make better decisions for animals like my little goat. I said to him, Jamie, is there anything I can do to make this better? Is there anything I can do to cure or to preventatively or to do anything? Even can I can I give a steroid for a few days, or can I give a like and he said, Lauren, you've done everything. There is nothing you can do. This is a horrible disease and it will kill her. It's how you decide to do it now. So this this will this will kill. It's whether I go in with this injection, I go in with that injection, or you get your local shotgun guide to come out and help. And and to visualize it, and and then like the the human being in me says shotgun is unkind, but actually it's instant. Whereas the other two, one of them is pinning her until you can find this vein, and we've already tried for 15 minutes, and she has been so tolerant and she's been good as gold. But let's not stress this poor girl out. And then the other one is actually, you know what, this is going to take half an hour to die, and you don't know how painful that is because the animal's sedated, right? So you don't actually know what's going on there. Yeah, for me, we have the the foresight and the understanding, and as I say goodnight to easy, there's something very strange about something that's beautiful in it, and I don't know how to explain it, but there is trauma behind losing Tokyo, and there's trauma behind losing my dad. For easy, there's no trauma, there's a really nice memory, and the same for Poppy. Like I met I the memory of it is is quite lovely. So I also think it's not only for the animal, it's also for what it leaves you with and the feeling it leaves you with, because I'm a huge believer in the spirit and and the space that you go into and what they go into as well. And and like I said, the unprepared and the unplanned is hard, and the prepared is not easy, but it's definitely there's for me, there's a nice like the goat, there was a nice day for easy. There was a nice way out, like it was kind for for Poppy. There was a very, very kind way out. And as I can hear from for your dogs and that memory of your little Labrador and looking at you, you never forget those, but those are lessons you move on with, right?

SPEAKER_00: 21:14

Well, I learned I did leave learn the lesson, which is testament to my intellect, I hope. Um I learned the lesson. I but like I recently lost Kelty, but that was traumatic, and so that left me with a oh what is did I notice that she was unwell? Should I have had an idea that something was going on? So you you ended up with all this self-doubt and self-criticism from deaths that happened with the text that happened really suddenly when they maybe you've had been harbouring some sort of illness that you haven't picked up on, and then you sort of think that could be all maybe the same as that. That is left me with more trauma than me making a choice in a in a in a a space than I did for gadget and just money. I think I'm also I'm personally not a great fan of I'm gonna be contradiction. I'm not a great fan of trying to treat cancers in dogs and pets. Um because I again I just think it puts them through a whole load of treatment and doesn't gain a sort of a huge amount of time.

SPEAKER_01: 22:30

It's it's such a good topic to talk on because when I've been offered cancer treatments, I've always asked what are the likely outcomes. And inevitably with chemo, there isn't really, with a lot of the cancers, any good outcome. And actually, it's just something often the vets offer you, and and I think it's a good topic that we could we could definitely dive into and maybe even its own separate podcast. Often what is offered is offered for you as a human, it's not necessarily offered for the animal. And and another one for me would be we were told one of our dogs had end stage cancers, and they could go in and do a biopsy and tell me a bit more, but ultimately it was the end result was the same. And I said, Well, why are we knocking her out again? This is surely like these are some of her last weeks of her life. Why are we doing that? Would I change diet? Would I change enrichment? Would I change lifestyle? Yes, yes, and yes. And I've done that, and miraculously, in one of our dogs, we have no cancer, and she was told she had a lot of cancer and she doesn't have any cancer now. Massive diet change, vitamin C, mushrooms, shroom canine. I love great, great, great natural foods, no processed foods, no kibble, no nothing for her. She purely eats raw. And yes, but but the chemo that people put dogs through and pets through, unless there is a curative outcome for me, no. Unless there's and it would have to be pretty guaranteed curative outcome because you watch an animal go through that and and each their own, we all get to pick what's right for us and our dogs. But I'm very similar to you, Linda. I if there's not a curative outcome, then I'm not sure I'd go down that route.

SPEAKER_00: 23:58

And I mean, Ping's got a bad back at the moment. The the lad that went into the wheels, he he clearly had some sort of degenerative disc disease going on. I don't even, when they're at a certain age, I don't even put them through an MRI scan. Because I'm only gonna get information that's gonna tell me what's wrong. I'm not going to get a cure. They are going to, you know, whatever's going on is gonna get worse. It's part of them as an animal. It's like us when we're aging, you know, I've got lots of arthritis.

SPEAKER_01: 24:30

You're only 21 though, Linda.

SPEAKER_00: 24:33

Oh, I am, I'm 21 and I've got arthritis. But but but it's it's it's making this right call for the dog or the pet. You don't you don't inflict in you know procedures or treatments on them that make them uncomfortable or make increased strangers around everything else just for the sake of information for us.

SPEAKER_01: 24:55

That was huge with easy. It was we can go in and we can remove this this mass. And my question was okay, how does that operation look? And that operation looks like breaking her breastbone and taking that mass out. Now that is a massive invasive operation, so there's nothing that you're going into all organs, so everything is behind that breastbone. So you break you break the ribcage, so you break the whole rib cage. So number one, you've just broken the dog's ribcage, and number two, what's the curative option? Well, she's probably still gonna have megasophagus, which causes the regurgitation and the potential pneumonia, and and and she already had pneumonia, we didn't realise it, but she did have pneumonia, and she's just a hardy little dog, so she could try and show you that she was fine, but she wasn't, she wasn't fine, and so the regurgitation was there, the the pneumonia potentially uh was there, and she's still gonna have the megasophagus. So, why are we putting this dog through this massive life-changing operation when the outcome is likely she's still got the thing that will kill her anyway? And and she's got like eight to twelve weeks of recovery from having a breastbreak. Minimum minimum twelve, they said. So minimum twelve. And yet the recommendation is to go ahead and do that. And so for me, I think probably my final thought on all of this is you're okay to ask questions, and don't feel that just because your vet gave you one answer, that that is the right answer. And I'm not saying I I've got some fantastic vets, but I've also had some vets that I feel ill-advised by, and I feel that sometimes the advice might be based on the norm, but actually, you can be different and you can ask questions, and I think for me, my animals are typically put to sleep at home if I can, if there's an option to, but that's right for my animal, it's not right for everyone's animal. I just feel like my dogs don't go to the vets a lot. The vet comes here, we have a farm, we have a bigger place, and I feel like actually you get to make those decisions for your pets, and I think we're very privileged to be able to do that.

SPEAKER_00: 26:54

Yeah. My my only uh squeamishness is that I don't actually bury my dogs at home. That's because when I was a toddler, they buried this dog and I don't know where it was. And I spent my whole childhood at that house going, I don't, I don't want to do it in the garden because I might I might dig Susan up.

SPEAKER_01: 27:15

What a name for a dog. We're gonna end on that. Our dogs, our dogs, we have a little uh burial site here because um we've got we've got the end and and you know where that is. And it's it's ended up being a really beautiful place. But I agree. I think uh sometimes I wonder when we move how we move them with us, but I'm a huge believer in the spirit, and I think the spirit the spirit carries on. So, Linda, thank you for talking something really difficult with me, and thanks for lightening it up with Susan. I'm glad you brought her uh to the forefront of the end of uh our podcast. You're welcome. Bless you. So that was this episode of the Sex and Squirrel Podcast. I have actually recorded, as I said with Easy, I've recorded all of her final sort of stage, really. And I didn't do that meaning to do that. I did that because we were planning to do something completely different that day, and she took a turn for the worse. And I felt that that was okay to film in case we ever wanted to show people. And I just feel that sometimes it's a really hard space to be in if you've never done it or seen it or understand it before. And I'm very happy to share that level of vulnerability with all of our listeners. So thank you all for listening. I will make sure that you guys get access to that somehow. I'm not sure where we'll place it, but we will. And you guys make it a great day and appreciate each and every one of you.