Determining Quality of Life

Quality of life for your greyhound is too often perceived as what the adopter would like it to be. Too often we let our beloved pets linger too long for our own personal benefit. If your greyhound is nearing its final days and you are having trouble determining the appropriate time to give your dog the final gift, it may help to ask yourself the following questions:

Is my dog eating a good meal every day – at least one if not more than one?

Is it holding that food down?

Is it continent?

Does it urinate without difficulty?

Does it defecate without difficulty?

Is its stool normal in consistency?

Can it walk on its own?

Can it run in the yard, come back to you when it's called and wag its tail when doing so?

Can it take a reasonably good walk and come home without endless panting?

Does it still roll over on its back while its sleeping?

Is it walking normally, without limping?

Does it appear to be free of pain?

Is it free of any life-threatening illness from which there is no possible or realistic cure?

These are just some of the questions you should use to define if your greyhound has good quality of life. If you determine from the answers that your dog does not have good quality of life, you shouldn’t need or want to wait until you can check off every item on the list as a failure. You need to forget how difficult it will feel when your pet is no longer with you and remember that when it is gone, so is the pain, so is the upset stomach, so is that feeling of nausea, etc., that it can’t tell you about. Putting your dog to sleep sooner is always so much better than later.

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