Should Pet Euthanasia Against Owners' Wishes Be Legal?

Recently, an individual in the United Kingdom contacted me after reading a post I had written here back in 2011, titled, "Is It Ethical to Euthanize Your Dog?"

“They killed my dog against my will,” she declared. “If I had known for one moment that they could legally do that without my permission, there's no way that I would have even brought him there.”

This pet owner said that she brought her 14-and-a-half-year-old golden retriever to the emergency vet late one evening after noticing some blood in his urine. The dog was subsequently diagnosed with a urinary tract infection, anemia, and dehydration. The vet recommended euthanasia, which the owner refused. According to the owner, although her dog had eaten before going to bed that night and had eaten breakfast the next morning, the veterinarian continued to recommend euthanasia because the dog was suffering. The owner denied that her dog had shown behavioral signs of suffering, however.

In the end, according to the pet owner, the senior vet contacted another vet at animal welfare who read the dog's chart and agreed the dog needed to be euthanized. The senior vet then disallowed the owner from getting her own, independent veterinary opinion, threatened to press charges against her if she continued to refuse euthanasia (in England and Wales, it is an offence to cause any vertebrate to “suffer unnecessarily”), and, ultimately, euthanized the dog. “I was forced to put my 14-and-a-half-year-old golden retriever to sleep…and I'm having a very hard time coming to terms with it. I feel consumed with grief,” she confided.

My purpose here is to shed light on some of the thorny ethical issues raised by this and other cases like it. In particular, are unilateral decisions by veterinarians to kill (“destroy”) an owner’s pet, without the owner’s fully informed and freely given consent, ethical, and, if not, should they even be legal?

According to the Code of Professional Conduct for Veterinary Surgeons of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (RACS), which is the association that sets and upholds the educational, ethical, and clinical standards of veterinary surgeons and nurses in the U.K.:

Where a veterinary surgeon is concerned that an animal's welfare is compromised because of an owner's refusal to allow euthanasia, a veterinary surgeon may take steps to resolve the situation, for example, an initial step could be to seek another veterinary opinion for the client, potentially by telephone (italics added).

Further, the RACS states:

If, in the opinion of the veterinary surgeon, the animal’s condition is such that it should, in its own interests, be destroyed without delay, the veterinary surgeon may need to act without the owner’s consent and should make a full record of all the circumstances supporting the decision in case of subsequent challenge (italics added).

So, in the U.K., it appears that, in a case such as the present one, where the veterinarian deems that a dog should be euthanized, for the purpose of relieving the animal’s suffering, but the owner refuses, the veterinarian can “seek another veterinary opinion for the client, potentially by telephone” and, if the other veterinarian concurs, euthanize the dog without the owner’s consent.

Making the decision to euthanize

According to the RACS, such a decision to euthanize an animal is based on several factors such as:

... the extent and nature of the disease or injuries, other treatment options, the prognosis and potential quality of life after treatment, the availability and likelihood of success of treatment, the animal’s age and/or other disease/health status and the ability of the owner to pay for private treatment (italics added).

In the above list of considerations, the term “treatment” appears four times. Curiously, there is not any mention of “palliative measures”; that is, not treating the patient and, instead, only providing comfort care, including pain medication. Instead, the bifurcated options appear to be to treat, if feasible, and to euthanize, if not feasible.

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There is also no mention of environmental considerations, as part of the decision-making calculus, such as whether the dog should die in a familiar environment, such as the home, or in a sterile veterinary clinic. “I feel so sad,” said the reader, “that in his final moments, he was in a strange place surrounded by strange people.”

Consider also that the veterinarian’s subjective idea of quality of life might be different than that of the owner. Is the quality of life for a dog acceptable when it requires a wheelchair to be mobile? Does a dog in its advanced years with kidney failure and, in need of dialysis, have a quality of life worth preserving? Indeed, such questions are largely subjective value determinations, not ones that can be answered by medical expertise alone.

The rights of owners vs. healthcare providers

In human healthcare, the patient, or the patient’s representative (in the case of patients who lack capacity), typically make such decisions, and if the physician is unwilling to provide a given intervention, the patient/patient representative is still free to seek another physician who may be willing to provide it. The physician, however, is never permitted to force a patient to be euthanized, even in nations where euthanasia is a legal option for human patients.

There is also lacking, in the above RACS statement, any clearly stated provision that the owner can seek his or her own second, or even third, opinion. Instead, it appears that, in the interest of preventing the animal’s suffering, the veterinarian can select the second opinion, for the client, without the owner’s input.

Undoubtedly, in the case of dogs and cats, many owners want to keep their pets alive because it is very painful to let them go. As a clinical ethicist, I have seen this quite frequently in the case of human patients, so there is often need to remind families that the decision is about what the patient would have wanted, not about what the family wants. However, we do not know what our beloved pets would have wanted because they are not (and never were) capable of expressing such wishes.

In this respect, our pets resemble very young (human) children. But for many of us, euthanizing very young children is unthinkable. Instead, we may seek comfort measures only, for children for which treatment would be futile and only prolong suffering. So, why are we humans so inclined to prescribe euthanasia for our pets? Could our double standard be based on a subjective bias, a form of speciesism that lacks consistent ethical justification? Why does contemporary human medical ethics recognize palliative measures only (including hospice) as an ethical alternative when treatment is not a feasible option, but not so much for nonhuman animals?

In the case considered here, it is arguable that the dog’s owner, and, therefore, his legal representative, had a moral right to seek her own, independent second, or even third opinion. Arguably, she also had a moral right to decide whether her dog was to die in his own home with loved ones by his side, instead of in a sterile veterinary clinic. Palliative care is both a legal and ethical option for humans. Should it likewise be a protected, well-recognized, universal, ethical alternative to euthanasia for our beloved pets too?