Going to extremes for animals
How far is too far when it comes to what people will do for their finned or furry friends?
A small goldfish with a missing jawbone gets plastic braces to help it eat and breathe. A kitten missing back legs gets Botox treatments in preparation for a pair of artificial limbs. Chemotherapy and radiation treatment are now available for Wags the dog and Kitty the cat.
How far is too far when it comes to what people will do to save or help their animal companions? And can they go too far in anthropomorphizing their furry friends, such as fitting them with jewelry, cosmetically altering them, giving them decorative tattoos or even adding “neuticles” — testicular prosthetic implants for neutered animals?
In Canada, at least, the line seems to be defined. It doesn’t matter how small or short-lived the animal might be, if medical care can benefit it and give the animal a pain-free life — and if the owner can afford it — then veterinarians are up to the task. But there is less acceptance now for the equivalent of vanity surgery.
Just ask Janne Potter, a west side Vancouver veterinarian who specializes in small animals, about that bond between owner and pet. She still gets emotional remembering the 10-year-old deaf child who, when it came time to euthanize his aging mouse, signed the animal goodbye just before she injected it with a sedative.
“He had his final conversation with his mouse in sign language. Emotionally, I just about lost it. Actually, I did lose it. Ten years later and I still feel all weird thinking about it,” said Potter, who has operated the West Boulevard Veterinary Clinic since 1977.
It didn’t matter that the average mouse lives just 18 months. To the boy, his mouse was his best friend.
Potter knows personally about that bond. She recently had one of her dogs, Rolls, fitted with a pacemaker. When her other dog, Karma, ruptured its gallbladder on a Sunday, she rushed her to a specialist veterinary surgeon. A month later, she got a bill for $45,000. And that didn’t include the six weeks of personal vet care she provided.
“If an owner has the emotional tie-in and the financial reserve to offer a pet the best chance at life or good quality life without undue pain and suffering, they will do that,” Potter said.
“I mean, you are talking to somebody who this time last year took one dog down to Corvallis, Ore., to have a pacemaker put in for him and another dog of my own was in critical care for 28 days with four major surgeries.”
The extremes people will go to help their pets was exemplified earlier this week when a Pennsylvania veterinarian showed off a small goldfish named Mr. Hot Wing that he’d fitted with tiny braces because the fish couldn’t hold its mouth open, making it hard to breathe or eat. Rather than give it a swirly ride in a toilet bowl, the owners picked up the $150 tab.
The vet, Brian Palmeiro, had recently fixed the fin of an aquarium fish with part of an old credit card.
Potter said it all comes down to emotions. “We have clients who do this. They love them. There is only one reason, and that is you love them. You would do the same for them as you would your children.”
It is not infrequent for some of Potter’s patients who have animals suffering from cancer to take them to the University of Washington’s College of Veterinary Medicine hospital in Pullman, Wash.
But there are limits to what can and should be done to animals. Jim Berry, former president of the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association, draws the line at cosmetic surgery that doesn’t benefit the animal.
From docking puppies’ tails to cropping ears to even anesthetizing animals so their owners can apply tattoos, Berry says veterinarians are saying no.
“We’ve had people who want to have neuticles put on their dogs. It’s a macho thing. We say no,” said Berry, who operates Douglas Animal Hospital in Fredericton, New Brunswick.
“We’ve had people want us to anesthetize their animal so a tattoo artist can put an artistic tattoo on them. That’s not right, and we’ve said no.”
Berry authored a position statement for the veterinary association in 2014 opposing the “alteration of any animal by surgical or other invasive methods for cosmetic or competitive purposes.” From tail-docking of dogs and horses to cropping dogs’ ears, cosmetic surgery for reasons other than animal health are inappropriate, he said.
The position challenged animal breed associations to change their breed standards to not require cosmetic surgery. It noted many countries do not allow cosmetic animal surgery and that their breed associations allow animals to compete in shows in their “natural state.”
In October, the College of Veterinarians of B.C. became the seventh provincial veterinary association to ban ear-cropping. Its animal welfare committee is still debating the practice of taildocking, said college president Brendan Matthews.
The declawing of cats — essentially the amputation of the tips of the front paws — is still under debate, according to both Berry and Matthews, because there may be legitimate reasons, such as stopping an aggressive cat from clawing its owners. The alternative in those cases often ends up being the extreme sanction of euthanasia, Matthews said.
But both veterinarians say declawing a cat so it won’t scratch the furniture or peel the wallpaper is not right.
People are changing their views about animals, Berry said.
Even though the law regards animals as chattel, many now see them differently. So what may be a $1 goldfish to one person may be a treasured friend to another, he said.
“The value of an animal to the pet-owning public has really nothing to do with value. They are part of our culture, part of our household and considered part of our family,” he said.
Sometimes, however, people can go too far trying to keep their beloved companion alive. Berry, Matthews and Potter said they’ve all had conversations with owners who don’t want to let go when clearly the animal is suffering.
“It is always driven by the emotions of the people when you get into the extreme,” Potter said. “People get angry and we try to get them to a place emotionally where they can let go without falling to pieces. But it doesn’t happen very often that people put themselves before their pet.”