A difficult dilemma…

This is a sad story.

A couple of weeks ago we found a beautiful and playful little puppy in the street. It was bitterly cold and the puppy was probably about 8 weeks old.  He had a bit of a cold but other than that he seemed in very good spirits, lots of energy and an incredible will to explore everything that life has to offer.

I could not leave it there. 

We were reaching freezing temperatures at night, there are tonnes of cars in this area and there is no discussion that it would die (possibly slowly but death was fairly certain).

We took the puppy home and called it Coffee

We fed it and then took it to the vet. The vet took some blood samples and he said he had some inflammation of the larynx and some diarrhoea (not that surprising considering he'd probably been eating rubbish). We took him back home and from this point tried to keep him separated from Mario as we did not want him to catch any infection.

In the mean-time I tried to find him a home. The reason for this is that we do not have the best environment for a puppy. Yes, they are cute, but that is an AWFUL reason to decide to share your life with someone - furry or not :op  

Puppies break things, are hyper, need lots of training, need lots of exercise, need lots of supervision. We both work (at the moment I work as much as 1.5 people and Christian like 0.75 but he takes care of Mario and needs to learn Spanish which brings him up to working as much as 1.5 people at least…)

We have space but we do not have the time to train a puppy. We also have Mario who is still settling into a routine with us and needs time and effort to help him socialise with other dogs and be trained.

I put him on a couple of websites and Facebook and turns out no one was interested in this puppy. In one week not 1 person even enquired about him. The streets here are full of dogs. In addition, lots of people make money by breeding dogs and many people still hold the belief that you need to allow your dog to breed at least once (otherwise they go mad… as of course happens to all other species that do not breed… including humans… :op) Also, people seem to think that getting a dog is like getting a handbag: the more exclusive the breed, the better (Coffee was not  pedigree dog but he would have made a good companion, not that this is of interest to most people that buy "designer" friends).

Anyways, it was bad news for Coffee. 3 vet visits and about €400 later (yes, the vet really enjoyed milking us but that is another story…) turns out Coffee has distemper (o moquillo). For those not familiar with this, it is a VERY contagious and often lethal virus. There is no cure for it, the vet only treats the symptoms. The only way of preventing it is vaccination but nobody can say that vaccination is 100% effective. The disease attacks the respiratory and digestive systems to start with and then it moves on to the nervous system. 

Most dogs die. The ones that do not are often left with nervous system damage (no-one was able to be very specific about what this means). In addition, due to how contagious it is, the dog needs to be isolated from other dogs for months.

I could be very politically correct and say several things: 

1. Coffee was euthanised 
2. Coffee was put to sleep
3. We avoided Coffee lots of suffering

The plain truth is, we decided to kill Coffee. I am still not certain that this was the best or the most ethical decision. What I am certain of is that it was not in HIS best interest to be given a lethal injection. 

We gave him a lethal injection because: 

1. We did not want him to spread this disease to any other animal (especially Mario but also any other dog) 
2. We could not take care of him
3. No-one would take care of him being so sick
4. Other personal issues regarding buying antibiotics and spending lots of money on pharmaceutical products   
5. Hopefully we avoided some suffering... but I think this one is lousy... he wanted to live, who are we to decide which suffering he was or was not prepared to endure to enjoy his life?

For about a week we have been really worried about Mario as he was in contact with Coffee and being a rescue dog we do not know what his vaccination history is like. Luckily, it looks like the incubation period has passed and he is ok. (Though we have been truly paranoid, listening to his every cough, watching every bit of nasal secretion etc)... not nice.

 My philosophical questions to anyone reading this... 

1. What would YOU have done and WHY? 
2. By having taken him in and eventually killed him... did we take away his chance of actually having a life? 
3. Should the individual's needs overwrite the greater good of a species? or should one give priority to the greater good? 
4. Let's hypothetically say that Coffee had the right genes to survive distemper without neurological damage (he certainly looked VERY healthy considering what he was suffering from), and we killed the individual that carried the genes for the species to become immune to this disease... would it have been better to leave him out in the streets?
5. Do you think it is ok to BUY a friend?
6. Do you think dog breeders have the dogs' best interests at heart? Or are they just making money? 
7. Do you choose your friends based on their looks? If not, do you choose your companion animal based on looks?
8. Do you care about the "race" of your friends? If not, do you care about the breed of your companion animal? 
9. If you care about the breed... where does this leave all dogs that have no "breed"?