If you saw a pet suffering and their owner wouldn't do the humane thing and put them down, would you feel it necessary to step in and have them put down without their knowledge?
One netizen did just that when her boyfriend's sixteen year old pup was struggling to function without being in intense pain and she's now asking Reddit if it was the right thing to do, as her boyfriend subsequently broke up with her.
Using the alias IPutHisDogDown, the woman says: "My boyfriend had a dog that was 16 (from what he told me at least). I loved this dog beyond words, let me make that absolutely clear."
"This dog was an absolute gift to the world and I loved them unconditionally. They were 16 though and had countless medical problems (rotated front legs which prevented them from getting up, jumping up, being moved, just completely unable to walk among other things)."
"This dog was in CONSTANT agony. Every time the dog tried to get up he would be screaming in pain. There's nothing the vets can do."
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The woman explains that the vets had advised her partner to put the elderly pooch out of its misery. "I thought about it for a week and decided that I had to. This dog was suffering so much. The quality of life just wasn't there."
She continues to reveal that after her boyfriend went out one Friday night with friends, she called him to let him know I was putting his dog down: "I had his dog put down at home with his family. I was sick of watching my boyfriend dismiss the pain this dog was obviously in; he ignored vets telling him to get this dog put down because it was borderline abuse keeping him alive."
She continues to express regret for the situation while defending her actions: "I wish my boyfriend was there to say goodbye to his best friend, but he wouldn't of let me go through with it. He rushed home, saw his dead dog and packed up all my stuff. I've been living with my dad for the last few days."
Many folks have chipped in that she shouldn't have intervened without her partner's consent, and understand why he kicked her out.
TheTurtleShepherd commented: "You did the right thing putting the dog down but you can’t expect him to get over you putting down his dog without giving him a chance to say goodbye."
"That dog was probably his best friend for 16 years and you took away his only chance of saying goodbye to it. Now he will never be able to. It would be one thing to tell him it had to be done another to take his dog and put it down without letting him have a chance to say goodbye. I wouldn’t expect to hear back from him ever."
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@marisathemighty thinks the original poster was 100% in the wrong for not having her boyfriend's consent: "No matter what your good intentions were, you took someone else's dog and you put it down. Not only without the owner's permission, but without him even there. It doesn't matter how much you loved the dog. That doesn't make it okay for you to do what you did."
The original poster weighed in, admitting that she didn't feel comfortable with the situation, but maintained that she needed to put the dog's welfare before her boyfriend's feelings.
"I don't feel good about it. I don't think he'll ever forgive me and I'm looking for a new place to stay. I don't think there were any right moves in this whole thing. Don't put the dog down? It suffers for however long - It was still going strong, just in constant pain even with strong painkillers being constantly given to it. Or do what I did and put it down."
Others, however, disagree and feel she did the right thing by her boyfriend's pet.
@shipcaptian said: "You believed the dog was in unbearable suffering and you did the humane thing. That doesn't mean that your relationship will ever recover from this. I imagine you already knew that this decision was going to jeopardize your relationship with your boyfriend, right?"
"I would sacrifice any relationship to end an animals suffering. Giving the dog peace was all that mattered to me," IPutHisDogDown replied.
What are your thoughts? Would you put down your partner's pet if they were refusing to end its suffering?
