Heavy doses of barbiturates are used by vets to end a pet's life. It is a serum called Euthanol, and is more heavily restricted than any other drug available to veternarians and most regular doctors. It will stop the heart and lung function within seconds of injection. Their systems are depressed to the point of non-existance, and because they are insensate, they don't feel pain or the suffocating sense of their lungs freezing or their heart stopping. It is like being completely paralyzed, and drifting into unconsciousness all at once. It is not available in any way, shape or form to the general public, for obvious reasons.
In the real world, if you had a medical background and knew what you were doing with injections, you could probably use insulin to put the animal into a coma and death (hypoglycemia), you could cause a massive fatal heart attack with an air embolysm (anything over 50 cc in humans, less for small animals), or you could finds an opiate (like heroin or morphine) and give a large injection, effectively doing the same thing the Euthanol does. None of these is a great option, and they have a risk of causing a lot of discomfort, pain or suffering if done wrong. There are a lot of ways to end an animal's life, but I think decapitation or a broken neck for smaller creatures like chickens and birds, or a well-placed large caliber bullet in the skull for larger ones, like livestock or pets, is probably the safest, most humane, and most effective, without a lot of chances of something going horribly wrong.
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Originally Posted by cowgirlup  Well said!
It's a difficult thing whether you are taking the pet to the vet or putting them down yourself. You will know if it has to be done and you'll find the strength to do one last act of kindness for you animal friend.
Northwet mentioned something called Heiffer Calm in the thread about her puppy getting poisoned. It's been on my list of things to look into in case I need to put donw one of the cats. Tempest is diabetic. So there is a real chance that if I can't get vetsuiln or her kidneys shut down that I will have to do this.
My mom's husband put down their dog a couple of years ago. It was in bad shape and not going to get better. Mom was horrified that he took it out back and shot it while she wasn't home. At first I wondered how he could just do that but the outcome is the same. And the dog was at home. In it's yard. Still that would be very hard to do simply because in my mind I shoot dinner and enemies. Not faithful companions. 
But I'd do some reasearch online to get some ideas. Something that would just make them go to sleep and not wake up is ideal IMO. |