This gave me a flashback to when I was 14 and interning for a week at the local vet.
Super eventful week where I got to observe operations on animals with everything from handball sized tumors to cysts and even one or two castrations.
Got to go with the vet to slaughterhouses and farms and all that jazz.
I also got to assist in euthanizing a dog and I think that was what made me second guess a career as a vet.
I still think I would have loved that type of work, but in my naive little mind, I thought that euthanasia would be done only out of mercy and necessity. If the animal was too old, too sick or too injured to save.
But I was wrong. It was an 8 month old puppy. I don't know the breed, but a smaller dog. Very energetic. He was so happy and excited. The owner came and dropped him off and didn't make eyecontact with either the vet or me. He left, almost ashamed.
I asked the vet what was wrong with the dog and either the vet didn't give me an answer or I have forgotten what he said.
To my 14 year old self, that dog looked completely healthy and normal. Why were we putting him down? I kept asking if we really had to do it. Couldn't we figure out a way to let him live and the vet let me know that euthanasia was what was going to happen today.
He asked me to hold the dog. He was such a happy puppy. I held him and he was very hyper. First the vet gave him sedatives. "Then he won't feel anything."
The puppy calmed down in my arms and I hugged his warm little body. I didn't want it to happen, but I was 14 and had no rights to the dog.
The vet filled a syringe with a neon purple liquid and I will never forget that because I didn't expect it to have a color like that. As an adult, I'm sure the color was to distinguish it from other fluids so that the vet would never accidentally push that shit into an animal that came for shots or sedation. But 14 year old me didn't know that. Just looked at that purple syringe as he pushed it into the dog and the dog became heavy in my arms.
I didn't cry because I grew up in the countryside and had already seen my fair share of births and deaths which are both brutal experiences, so I had an emotionally distanced approach to these things.
But I gotta say that it left a deep impact on me that I had helped killing a dog that looked so healthy and happy. I didn't think I could do that for a career. There was no mercy in killing an animal that had barely gotten to live and was so happy to exist. And maybe there was something wrong with him that I was just too young to understand or not allowed to know. Maybe he just looked healthy but was actually really sick. Maybe the owner didn't leave so much in shame as he left out of grief.
I'll never know. But from my perspective at the time, it was just so wrong to kill something just for the sake of it.
It's over 20 years ago now and I still remember the warmth in the dog's body and how heavy he became in my arms. He was brown and white. He was such a happy little guy. I don't even know what his name was, but I'll never forget.