Monday, January 18, 2010

Seriously??

Good evening blog readers! Bryan and I took Linus to the vet tonight to get his last round of shots. He did beautifully (except for one scream that all of Reisterstown probably heard when they were clipping his nails). While we were waiting for his turn to go back and see the vet, we were sitting in the waiting room/entrance area with other pets and their owners. It's always fun to see people interacting with their pets, and it was especially entertaining because there was a dog getting one of those lampshade collar things and even his owner was laughing... Poor thing. Aside from lampshade pup, there was one other dog in the waiting room with us. Visibly old, he was having some trouble walking, and I could be wrong, but I think he smelled a little bit like pee. He was old, but he was cute and still a bit fluffy, so we smiled at him and did the whole "aww" thing. No. Not aww, because as we quickly learned, he was there to be put to sleep. Now, it's bad enough thinking about a pet being put to sleep. There is nothing happy about it. BUT it was worse this time. First of all, the dog's owners were old. I'm sorry if that sounds wrong, but the fact that it was two old people bringing their beloved dog to be put down somehow made it more sad. It's almost as if, had it been two young people bringing their dog you would look at them and know they had their whole lives ahead of them, more dogs to love, etc... With old people... Well... yeah. As if this whole thing wasn't bad enough, the old people were TALKING TO THE DOG! That's how we figured out why they were there. It went something like this.

Old woman - (puts hand on old mans shoulder) "Are you going to be alright?"
Old Man - Yeah, I'll be ok...
Both OM and OW look at the dog
OM - "He doesn't even know it's coming (or something like that)"

At this point they are both staring at the dog and talking to it telling it that everything will be ok, etc... and I'm sitting in between Bryan and Linus crying my eyes out. I was discreet of course, I didn't want them to think I was listening, and more importantly I didn't want THEM to start crying too.

It could be easy to feel stupid for crying about someone else's dog, but it was the most heartbreaking scene... I can't even explain it in words.

It made me thankful that Linus is SO young and we wont have to deal with this for another 15 years or so... But at the same time it gave me the feeling of "What the hell have we gotten ourselves into??"

The whole thing was just so upsetting, and I hoped and hoped that I would NOT have to see them walk out without that dog. Luckily, we did not run into each other after our appointments.

My point is that I think Vet offices need to have a separate room for people who are putting their animals to sleep. I mean, seriously... It was just all too much. If they had their own waiting room, they could cry or whatever, and it wouldn't upset the other people. In a way I felt guilty for feeling so upset, and I felt even more guilty for thinking that they shouldn't be allowed to be with everyone else... But seriously... Yeah. It was a bit much.

1 comment:

  1. I agree. It's one thing to bring in your brand new pet for shots and be all excited and whatnot, but to have that feeling of excitement be taken down a notch when you see someone bringing in their dog to put it to sleep is not cool. I mean, it's just not a good situation any way you cut it, but they definitely should take them to a different room.

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