WTF? A woman's will states that she wants her very alive, healthy dog to be killed and cremated so its ashes can be buried with her.

Nothing to discuss. There are wackos everywhere. Some more dangerous than others.

People are weird.

Seems like Bela will have to follow her owner unless a benevolent animal lover covers the cost of moving her to the other animal shelter. What a weird lady!

I do not think this is entirely “wacko”. That all depends on the particulars of the situation and the woman’s reasons.
If I had no friends/family that I trusted and who would take my pet, I might consider the same thing. (not necessarily the ashes part, but the euthanasia). When you die and have no one left to help your pet, who knows where it will end up. There are many things worse than death.
He could end up in a kill shelter and be stuck there first for however long before being euthanized. He could end up in a no kill shelter for years, possibly in a cage, which is no life for anyone. He could end up being adopted by someone who treated him poorly. He could end up a stray who is hungry, cold and hurt and die slowly and painfully. He could even end up being picked up by someone who needs a dog for fighting or experimentation
Once you are gone, your pet’s life is left to fate.

This was perfectly normal.
Thousands of years ago.
In Egypt.
When the leaders thought themselves to be gods.

Quality if life is more important than quantity. If I was dying and couldn’t find an amazing home for my pets I might opt for euthanasia too. The woman should have had this done prior to her own death. Many elderly pets are placed in shelters after their owners die and end up euthanized anyway.

They are terrified and emotionally distraught. Simply being alive is not always the best outcome for people or pets that might be non-living in substandard and soul killing circumstances. I’d much rather see a cherished pet humanely euthanized than living in terror and misery in shelter cage.

I know someone who when she contemplated suicide also thought she would kill her cat at the same time. She also had willed her life insurance to a particular person solely so she would have money to take care of her cat. The point is she really worried about who would care for her cat if she died.

I like the saying that it is not about the years in your life but about the life in your years. This is true for animals as well. Better 5 amazing happy years than an extra 10 years of fear and misery.

If you read the article she suggested a no kill ranch, but her attorney says there is no money for it. People are willing to offer money.

I have never heard such a narcissistic idea. As if only one person can care for an animal in a special and loving way. How selfish and not to mention inaccurate. Everything living, sentient being has the right to life. And it’s a dog. Dogs love everyone.

@tinyfaery: “Everything living, sentient being has the right to life.”

I thought everything is just subjective?

Many animals are very much one owner types and would not not adjust well. Many dogs and cats would not adjust, especially elderly animals. I have a dead relative that left behind his elderly and very timid calico kitty that he lived alone with for 16 years. She was euthanized because she would not adjust, and nobody wanted an elderly cat that lived under the bed. She stayed in her home alone for several weeks and was a basket case, poor thing. Euthanizing her was the highest choice.

Planning ahead for your pets welfare is altruistic not narcissistic. Wanting to spare a beloved pet the trauma of displacement, shelter life, fear and emotional suffering is a very caring gesture. One size does not fit all and every situation is unique.

I don’t understand the selfish bitch at all, her ashes don’t need to be buried/scattered so soon.
They could be kept in store at a crematorium until the dog dies a natural death, her wish would then be granted, no harm done.

In my answer I wasn’t saying I think it’s ok, I’m just saying she isn’t the only person who thinks that way. Mothers who are losing it even kill themselves and their children at once so their children aren’t motherless. Clearly these women are having some sort of psychological break. They aren’t holding it together well.

cont…Some old folks who were married for forty, fifty+yrs wish to have their ashes kept in storage until the surviving spouse dies, enabling both sets of ashes to be “reunited”
Should one be murdered at the behest of the other? Of course not, I see little difference here.

I’m surprised the executor was able to find a vet that would euthanize a healthy animal, considering the publicity this is getting. I know that some vets do, but the negative publicity that this would generate would likely close their practice.

All those “arguments” about how the animal could end up in a “kill shelter” or with an abusive owner, are nothing more than rationalisations for a selfish position, because you do not have the courage to admit it.
Those “concerns” are easily laid to rest. Find someone who you can trust, who will take the animal in. Family. A good friend. Place an ad and do a check on the applicants.
Do not just casually violate the animal’s right to life, when so many better alternatives are so easily found and readily available.
Sure, a small risk still remains.
But the risk of a bad life is still better than the certainty of death.
In any case: Not your decision to make. It is the animal’s.

I don’t know all the facts, but I consider quality of life much more important than length. If this dog is one of the many animals who bond with only one human, he will go through a lot of grief before hopefully trusting someone else.
In the words of Albus Dumbledore, addressing Voldemort: “Indeed, your failure to understand that there are things much worse than death has always been your greatest weakness.”

If, on the other hand, the dog in question is a happy-go-lucky guy who loves everyone, then it’s wrong to kill him.

I’d say the same thing about a human.

@tinyfaery “And it’s a dog. Dogs love everyone.”

That is simply not true.

@ragingloli animals cannot speak for themselves but if they could many would choose death over ending up in a cage, mistreated after having a caring home, or otherwise traumatized after the death of an owner. Possibility vs. probability and the probability of ending up caged in a shelter and euthanized anyway is extremely high. I adopted a 5 yr. old cat a few years ago that had been in the shelter for months and months hiding under his bed. He got lucky, most adult pets in shelters do not.

Most shelter animals in general do not end up in good forever homes period. young or old, especially the older ones.

^ Yep. In my opinion, there simply are not a lot of truly good homes. We don’t pay enough attention to our animals’ emotions yet.

@longgone Totally agree.

“animals cannot speak for themselves but if they could many would choose death over ending up in a cage, mistreated after having a caring home, or otherwise traumatized after the death of an owner.”
I completely disagree.
Survival is the most important and powerful biological imperative an organism has.
And again, not your choice to make.

@ragingloli Disagree. We are stewards of animals and making choices to amend their suffering is our responsibility. IF an animal was given a choice between mere survival of physical needs but living a captive life in a cage or a life of abuse and neglect it would choose death as would the human animal.

@ragingloli The ego is too strong in some to admit that they are not the be all end all of anything or anyone. Pfft. How do we know she treated her dog well? Maybe she didn’t. More ASSumptions.

Oh, and now we know what animals think. Ahahahaha.

@hominid You can compare apples to oranges, but it still has no meaning. Get over yourself.

@tinyfaery: “Get over yourself.”

What did I do? :)

@Coloma
So why did all the Concentration Camp inmates not commit suicide?
They had access to all the rationalisations you have rolled out in this thread.
Facing torture and abuse at the hands Nazi guards. Starvation. Backbreaking labour. And at the end of the road, the gas chamber. Likelyhood of being saved: slim to none.
And yet they did not come to the same conclusion that you presume non-human animals would reach. Suicide.
The instinct to survive in them was powerful indeed. More powerful than their intellect.
So when you say that animals would choose death, I submit to you that not only do you not understand animals, you do not understand humans either.

Weird? No, not weird, sickening.

The following are bullshit reasons to kill a perfectly healthy animal because the owner died:
– It might never bond with another human.
– It might end up in a kill shelter.
– It might end up in a bad home.
– It might suffer.

I don’t see any difference between this and a parent saying, “When I die, I want my child to be killed so our ashes can be mixed.” Hey, the child might end up in foster care and might end up being very unhappy going from home to home because I have no family to take him or her. Maybe the family they end up with will be physically, emotionally, and/or sexually abusive.

We shouldn’t kill healthy living things because they might be unhappy down the road. It’s completely ridiculous. People are offering money to find this animal a home and that’s not going to happen because it was against some old bat’s wishes. If allowed, the dog might find another loving forever home.

Euthanizing an animal that is suffering, in pain, and dying is one thing – I have no problem with that if there’s nothing that can be done to save the dog’s life. However, this dog is perfectly healthy, and anyone that says killing a healthy animal because of the possibility that it might not fare well without its dead owner has got to have some screws loose.

@ragingloli Some did, some didn’t for religious reasons, most probably wanted to die. Who knows how many actually did take their lives in one way or another.
The difference is choice, something an animal doesn’t have. As someone else said, there are things worse than death. I am a firm believer in quality of life over quantity, nothing wrong with that. Surviving vs. thriving…no contest.

Playing devil’s advocate here, perhaps she didn’t know who would look after her dog and knew she didn’t have the funds to ensure it was taken care of. Perhaps rather than selfish, she was trying to ensure it wasn’t left uncared for. Not something I condone or agree with, but people do weird and wacky things with the best (if misguided) intentions.

I’ve been ruminating over getting another dog recently. My oldest is 13 and his friend is 11. I’m concerned when he (or she) goes, the other will be lost and it also occurred to me there must be so many older dogs that are left without carers because their owners end up in homes or die. I don’t know if I can realistically manage three dogs right now, but absolutely when one of my beloved puppies dies, I will try to find an older dog as a friend for my remaining dog from the rescue shelter.

So go with the second option that was specified in the will. Send the dog to Best Friends Animal Society in Utah. The information that I read on the organization is that it is a non-profit organization. So to the lawyer saying there is no cash? Set up a charity fund to send the dog to Utah, lots of people would probably contribute to the fund. Problem solved.

The moment you take an animal as a pet you remove any decision making, such as it is, from them.

@Darth Algar Animals are incapable of making decisions for themselves when it comes to their fate, period, has nothing to do with taking them as pets. Domestic animals are meant to live with humans and do not survive without them.
The point is that not every animal is adoptable and this may be the reasoning behind this womans sentiments.

I have a 16.5 yr. old goose I raised from a gosling, he is highly imprinted and when I lost my home on 5 acres after having him for 15 years and was forced to move back into a city environment for 14 months until this last August, I was fully prepared to euthanize him and his special needs companion rescue goose.
( Badly broken, never set leg, blind in one eye and needing daily meds. )

At the 11th hour I found a home for them both on a 10 acre ranch with another mother goose ( and duck ) lady that was educated on their needs, a doting owner and had plenty of cash and time to give them what they needed. Euthanasia would have been preferable to giving them to ignorant people that would have just tossed them out on a pond somewhere or locked them in some crappy chicken yard. These are very special and bonded birds and an animal few people have experience with, not to mention highly intelligent with great memories.
During the 14 months that I was in the city again working I became great friends with this woman and now am living, happily reunited, with my feathered friends on this 10 acre ranch property.

The birds have a huge barn that we clean daily, a beautiful lawn to swim in their pools on and doting attention. As it should be. There was NO WAY I was letting my beloved bird go into a horrible situation just to say he was still alive out there somewhere.

It was a very rare bird that could care for him in the manner I have for years, and had I not found my good friend I would have chosen euthanasia because I cared enough to secure a good future for him.

@Coloma

Do you often argue with people who are essentially in agreement with your view?

@Coloma I prefer to argue with people that can see many of points view. That is what discussion is.
The fact is every situation merits a unique response, again, no one size fits all. Animals are as unique as people, and as their caretakers we often know best because we know our own animals.

Yes @Coloma. If you paused for a moment and actually considered what I wrote you’d realize that it’s a statement supporting the point of view you’re espousing here.

@Darth_Algar Saying that adopting an animal relinquishes it from decisions it can’t make in the first place is agreeing how? I’m confused. Never mind.

What the article didn’t state, and what would be helpful to know is how much that animal sanctuary requires for an animal to be sent there. Even if the cost were a few thousand dollars, I’m sure that some benefactors would be (and maybe already are) donating cash toward the cause.

Well, she’s dead. Who cares what she wants?

@Michael_Huntington: I think legally there’s an obligation. The article states that animals are considered property, as far as the law is concerned.

I was with a much older man for a while and he had some bad health problems. For a while, he was concerned that he would have a cardiac event. He told me that if he did, he wanted me to take his 2 dogs to get euthanized.

I agreed and thankfully, did not have to do that as he didn’t die. But I did not morally have an issue with it. The shelter in his area was not a no-kill shelter and it was packed. Dogs were killed a lot. His dogs were healthy but older and would probably not get adopted. I would not have been able to take them and he knew no one that could.

If the alternative is putting the animal into a crowded shelter, especially if the animal is likely to be killed and not adopted and will die alone and sad, I can see why people choose this option. I probably would myself.

Comparatively, my father and I took my childhood dog to the vet this summer. She was almost 15 and was going through active heart failure. We sat on the floor and talked to her and pet her until she fell asleep and twitched, and she stopped twitching after the drugs did their work. She was at peace and was well loved all through the end and she was not alone. Had my ex needed me to do that for his dogs, I would have.

@Coloma “Saying that adopting an animal relinquishes it from decisions it can’t make in the first place is agreeing how? I’m confused. Never mind.”

I did not say “adopt”, I said “take as a pet’. There are a couple of folks saying that this is the animal’s choice to make. What I’m saying is that when you take an animal as a pet you remove that animal from nature, you assume any and all decisions for it and all responsibility for it. I am in agreement with your side and you’re arguing with me.

@Darth_Algar I was not arguing, I simply did not understand the statement you made. “Taking as a pet” and adopting are the same thing, the wording is just semantics. I get what you are saying now, we don’t take domestic animals from nature anymore, we made them dependent on us eons ago and hence they no longer have a choice to either stay in the wild or come down to the human campfire.
Absolutely, all responsibility for said animal is ours, totally agree.

One of the drawbacks of internet communication, the need to clarify, clarify, clarify. haha
In conclusion the only thing I have argued about is for those that are adamant about not killing a pet to consider the unique, individual animal and it’s circumstance based on the individual animal, it’s age, personality style and temperament and the argument for quality of life over quantity.

I don’t see a problem. We kill alive and healthy cows to eat and make leather shoes, among other things. Animals are property which means minimal animal suffering is necessary whenever it benefits humans. The benefit in this case is based on spiritual reasons.The only legal way out of this is if there would be animal cruelty involved. No evidence of that, so legally they have to abide by the will.