If I Were A Dog, Would I Want To Have My Leg Amputated?

Animals and humans are afflicted by similar diseases, such as infections, trauma as a consequence of accidents, cancer, hormonal disorders, mental disorders, etc. The animal health care system has not reached the level of technological sophistication of the human health care system. However, modern veterinary hospitals offer nearly as much care as human hospitals do. Animals now routinely receive chemotherapy for cancer, undergo orthopedic procedures, tumor extractions, skin grafting, alternative therapies, (homeopathy, acupuncture etc), physiotherapy, physical rehabilitation, and so on.

For some people the question of whether to opt for an indicated treatment is simply economic feasibility. Sadly, some simply cannot afford a treatment for their pet and choose euthanasia. However, more often the question is whether the treatment is morally justified. People wonder if they should put the animal through surgery, chemotherapy, rehab or whatever treatment, knowing that such therapy will be physically and mentally taxing, that there is no guarantee of success (it is unethical for any doctor to guarantee results) and that, particularly in cases of older animals, it may prolong the animal’s life for just one or two years. Is it better to stop the pain right away with euthanasia? Should we extract a cancerous tumor from the bowel, knowing that it will likely recur within a year?

We know that animals are sentient beings. I do not think that anybody in the animal health field can operate without this assumption. They have emotions with which we can empathize. They feel happiness, sadness, fright, boredom, loneliness, etc. Therefore at a primordial level they are very much like humans. A great difference between humans and animals is language. Some may argue that animals have a language but that we cannot understand it because we are not of the same species. That is a fair suggestion but it helps us very little in deciding the questions at hand, because as much as I would like to, I cannot become a dog.

Animals have a body language that gives us, and other animals, clues to what they are feeling. Technically body language consists of signals. A mad horse pulls his ears back, stretches his neck, and turns his head sidewise as he is preparing to bite another. Any horse or person seeing those clues flees or prepares to defend himself. A cat blinks softly at another to indicate friendliness; I use that clue to indicate to my feline patients that I am not going to hurt them. If the cat starts flicking his tail, I know that he is getting annoyed and I’d better let him be for a while. However, the body language is useful to know what the animal is feeling at that particular moment.

Most animals have very little objection to having acupuncture. Some refuse it outright. However if they are given treats while having the treatment, they are happy. In the long run they receive the benefit of the treatment and become happier animals. But I could equally trick them into letting me do something that would not be good for them. Trust plays a big part in this. The animal – and its guardian, for that matter – trusts that I won’t hurt them.

Clearly, body language is not helpful to indicate to us how the animal feels about the long-term implications of a treatment. For this you need a highly sophisticated language, with words and a structure that can be used to express feelings outside of their context. For instance we must be able to understand the word “pain” or “pain-free” and what it describes without actually feeling it. We also need to understand time and how a sequence of events may lead to a situation. Primates that are taught sign language may get close, but most of the animals we deal with do not reach that level of sophistication. At best a highly intelligent animal may reach the abstract understanding reached by a human toddler. Yet a human toddler may not be capable of making a decision regarding a medical procedure, so parents decide for them, and sometimes courts intervene against the will of the parent to force a medical procedure on a child. Furthermore, humans with mental disabilities may not have the capacity to understand the full implication of refusing or accepting medical procedures; courts and governments are often called upon to make decisions for disabled people.

To decide for others who are unable to make their own decision, we have to theorize what that person’s wishes would be. The only way to get there is to think “what would I want somebody else to decide if it was I who was unable to make a decision?” I think that we should consider this when deciding on a medical procedure for an animal. That is what I do when I am asked to make a decision for an animal. If I were the animal and understood all of the future implications of the treatment, would I want to go through with it? I also keep in mind that animals live about seven times as fast as humans do, so one year of life gained in an animal’s life would be like seven years of my life.

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