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Speaker 2: Hi, everyone, welcome to the Human Animal Connection Podcast. I
have a really good show for you today. It's kind
of a special topic, not the easiest topic, but sometimes
we like to tackle subjects that aren't so easy on
this show since we do so many warm and fuzzy shows.
And we're going to be talking about behavioral euthanasia, euthanizing
a dog because of behavioral issues. And my special guest
is Meredith tell Uson. She is an animal communicator and
also a behavioral trainer, so she has seen this issue
from many size and many angles and has felt it
deeply and personally in her life, and she's going to
kind of tell us her thoughts about this. So Meredith,
welcome to the show. Thank you.
Speaker 3: Janie. It's always a pleasure to be here with you.
Speaker 2: Yeah great, Well, all right, where should we start. Let's
give the h in case the audience isn't familiar.
Speaker 3: List.
Speaker 2: It explains some of the behaviors that might lead to
a decision of euthanasia. Based upon behaviors.
Speaker 3: Well, there are there's a myriad of terrible situations that
could require someone to make the decision for behavioral euthanasia.
You know, it could be cases of aggression towards other animals,
towards people, towards children within the home. It could be that,
you know, there are animals who who truthfully are so
ill mentally that they just can't be They can't be
I don't want to say trusted, but it's dangerous to
have them in a home. You know, as animal professionals
and as animal lovers, we all want to believe that
every single dog, hat, horse, lizard, whatever can fit happily
into a human world, and some of these beautiful creatures
are not able to do that. And it's such a
difficult topic because if you've got a physically perfectly physically
healthy animal, a lot of people can't accept the fact
that behavior of euthanasia is even an option, and it's
anyone who's been through it knows. Anyone who has not
might not yet have the personal experience to understand that
sometimes this is absolutely necessary and actually more humane for
the animal.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've been on both sides of that equation, you know,
I've been on the not understanding it, and then I've
been in this situation with a foster animal from a
shelter where that was what had to happen, and so
I've really seen it from all sides. Yeah. Yeah, So
I think it's very challenging because some people are even
struggle with euthanasia period, even in cases where dogs are
physically ill or suffering or in pain. Just the notion
of do I have the right to make a choice,
you know, do I have the right to play god?
Of course, And as animal communicators, you and I both
are animal communicators. We've talked with animals and they are
not as attached to the bodies as we are, you know,
they I equate as like going through the doggy door,
you know, it's like from one world to another. So
it's for some people just euthanasia is challenging, But then
they could understand it if there's physical pain, physical illness,
suffer not quality of life. But here we're talking about
dogs who are physically healthy but not mentally and emotionally healthy. Yeah, yeah,
so yeah, tell us a little bit about your experience
if you don't. I know, this is not an easy
subject to share. It takes a lot of guts to
talk about something like this because this is not pretty.
It's not pretty to be in those situation. But would
you like to share your story what happened? And while
you've made this decision.
Speaker 3: I'll be happy to It is a difficult conversation. It
is a difficult topic. I'm almost three years into having
unfortunately had the very personal experience of behavioral euthanasia in
my own home, and I've been through it with clients,
and I think that I have a special particular way
to offer myself to clients who are going through such
a thing because of my personal experience. I wouldn't wish
it on anyone, but having been through it, I've learned
a whole whole lot, So I will. You know, I'm
kind of verbose, so I'll try and share a little
bit of my story. And I'm sharing this in the
hopes that I can be of some service and comfort
to other people. Who might find themselves unexpectedly in this
situation because it is always unexpected. Yeah, I hmm, okay,
So almost eleven years ago I adopted two puppies. Their
names are Quenton and Barnabas. At the time, I had
two older dogs. These are all black lab mixes who
were strays who we took into our home. Vader and
Zod were my older dogs and they were definitely getting
up in years, and Vader started having seizures when he
was about thirteen. We were concerned. He and Zod had
never been apart, and we were concerned about how Zod
would respond after Vader's death. So we decided we should
get Zod a puppy, you know, as we often do,
but we weren't going to go look for one. We
were gonna wait for one to find us.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 3: Shortly thereafter, a dear friend had an unexpected litter of puppies.
Mom was a full blooded chocolate lab, relatively young, and
dad was I don't know, a traveling man. We're not
quite sure who dad was. But our neighbor called and said,
we've just had nine puppies, all of them one solid black,
one solid white, and the rest of them some version
of black and white. We know you love black animals,
so would you like to come meet them? And we said,
of course, we'll come meet them. And of the nine puppies,
the first one that toddled out was Barnabas, the solid
black one with his big, fat, little puppy belly and
his little pink tongue. And we said, this is this
is him, this is the one. And then what do
you know, out from under this ottoman crawls this tiny,
little shy puppy with this enormous white paw, and I
of course fell in love with him. So we accidentally
ended up with two. Okay, And then in Vader lived
another year and a half. I think he felt like
he needed to take it upon himself to try and
help train these puppers, and he stuck around for a while.
Ultimately he did pass and then zod Not long there after,
at about six months old, Quentin and Barnabas got into
a terrible fight. We had been through training, and I'm
in Mississippi. We have a lot of very old school trainers.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: There was a lot of four space training, etc. And
there was something in me that just said, this is
not going to suit these puppies, but I went through
it anyway because I didn't know any better at the time.
They started fighting each other, and I mean terrible, horrible fights,
ditches and staples and tears and slover and everything else
just awful. But then they would call up on the
sofa together and look each other's wounds. It's just like
they played off of each other very very strongly when
it was just the two of them. And after about
the third really good fight in the first year, I
contacted my trainer, who essentially told me it was all
my fault and that I had not trained them properly,
that I had not socialized them properly. And we socialized
this stew out of these dogs. I mean we really did.
We tried to take them everywhere and give them good
experiences with lots and lots of different things. So I
broke up with my trainer she heard answering really really badly,
and that's when I went and started studying to become
a certified dog trainer, which is another complicated aspect of
the story, because here I am a dog trainer many
years later an animal communicator, and I was at a
complete loss with these two, at a complete loss, but
we did it for nine years. Our role got smaller
and smaller. The pippers couldn't go anywhere, We couldn't travel
because they were not allowed to board. They weren't allowed
to play with any other animals. We stopped talking in
the neighborhood before they were a year old, so it
was basically just our home and our backyard. But even
what was going on that you had to do that narrowing.
I know you they were fighting with each other about
what was happening out when you took him out. Wlenton
was so reactive that he would and he I truly
believe it was a lot of feury activity, but he
was so reactive. If we saw a cat, another dog,
a person, a car, a ups truck, anything, he would
just go nuts, and then the two of them would
redirect on each other. So it reached the point, even
with just their experience in our backyard, that everything was
an emergency. If a squirrel ran down the fence, if
a bird landed in the yard, god forbid, a neighbor's
cat had come over to visit. It even reached the
point we had a young couple that we shared a
fence with their backyard backed up to our backyard and
they had dogs, and for over a year we texted
each other every time one of us needed to take
the dogs out because they couldn't be on opposite sides
of the fence.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I did not realize the level of personal anxiety
and fear that it was causing in me. We couldn't
have people over to the house, you know. We had
neighbors with small children that were afraid to come over.
Not that either of them ever went after a person
except me because I foolishly tried to get between them
and many fights, but everything was a possible emergency.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And then they went after one of our cats. We
had five cats in the house at the time. Unfortunately,
over the course of a couple of years, they killed
two of our cats.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: And one night they went after a third, and I said,
that's it, That's all I can do. I realized I
had reached the point where I would come home from
work just questioning whether everyone would'll be alive and okay
in the appse whether there would be blood or fur
or any of these things. So I have a lot
of wonderful support in the animal world, and I contacted
an amazing behaviorist that I've trained with in the past,
Trish McMillan more on her later, but contacted her, did
several consultations, contacted every vet I know, every trainer that
I had access to, and really really struggled with what
I had to do at this point, and ultimately, after
taking over a week off work just to stay home
and make sure everyone stayed alive, over the course of
the day, I realized that the more humane thing to
do would be to let Quentin go.
Speaker 2: Was Quinton more of the instigator in these situations and Barnabas,
so that was clear that there was a difference.
Speaker 3: It was clear, and it was clear that he was
he was the most reactive. Barnabas is not without blame
because he would he would redirect, he would get in
the middle of it. But they really played off of
each other to a great extent. But it was obviously
Quentin that was struggling the most. So I'm very fortunate
to have my oldest, dearest friend who is my veterinarian,
who also lives across the street, and he could come
to our home and make a euthanasia a good death,
as good as possible, and even in this situation, There
are a lot of veterinarians who are very opposed to
behavioral euthanasia and say you should try something else to
if done at all, can you rehome him. We could
not responsibly rehome him because of his behaviors. So on
the day that my friend came over, we gave Quentin
a big spoonful of peanut butter while he waited for
the sedation, and I realized in that moment that that
was the very first time in over nine years that
I had ever seen this dog truly relax.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 3: So I gave him the whole jar. I gave him
the whole jar of peanut butter, and there he was,
with his entire long snoop up in that jar of
peanut butter, and I wept. I wept for so many reasons,
and realized in that moment that yes, this was this
terrible thing. It was a horrible experience to have to
go through, but it was the most humane option for Quentin.
He had never been comfortable in his own skin, had
never been comfortable in his own body, and this moment,
only moments before his passing, was the first time that
he ever truly relaxed. And that was with the first sedation,
the first shot. Yeah, yes, the space between the first
sedation and the second.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's quite a powerful, beautiful time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is. It is. In the couple of years
since then, Barnabas is the only dog left in the house.
We've gone from four black dogs and five black cats
to one dog and two cats, which is a very
reasonable number for people's mouth. And Barnabas's life has gotten
much much bigger.
Speaker 5: Oh.
Speaker 3: He he did develop pretty severe separation anxiety because he'd
never lived alone, you know, he'd never not had another
dog in his life. But we've learned to manage that.
We go on walks in the neighborhood, we have play dates,
we have other dogs that come over to our house
to play. He goes to Awfleish daycare and plays all
day long. He's he's almost twelve years old and he
runs and rots and plays all day every day. So
there's the flip side at the coin. Yeah, Arnabas's life
was very very small because of his brother, right, and
now his life is huge, and I'm committed to just
making his senior years as beautiful as possible. And the
really relationship that we have developed is incredible.
Speaker 2: How long after Quintin passed, did Barnabas come around and
start becoming himself.
Speaker 3: And it was several months, but I will admit that
as much of that was me as it was him.
Because I was terrified. I was terrified. I scheduled him
for a private consultation with a dear friend here who's
a beautiful reinforced positive reinforcement trainer. I signed him up
for Peppy kindergarten, and he and I went to a
group class with puppies. And here he was nine years old,
this old man up there in kindergarten. But I did
that as a reinforcement for him and as a bonding
experience for us. And then we did some agility courses
for fun. And then I decided that I needed to
find a way to make him as comfortable as possible
during the day so that my husband and I could
actually leave and go to and so we tested out
this awfully staycare and the very first day that I
dropped him off, of course, I cried like someone mom
dropping kid off at kindergarten because I was so afraid.
And they assured me, we'll introduce into one bulletproof dog
and then we'll introduce him to another and if the
three of them do okay, we'll let them play a
little bit. Now, got tied up at work and left
him much much longer the first day than I had
intended to. And when I went to pick him up,
they have a big screen TV in the lobby and
they were like, look at this. He was in the
middle of the baby pool, surrounded by twenty thirty dogs,
holding court and having the time of his life. So
he came around pretty quickly as soon as I opened
up the opportunity for him to do so, because I
was so afraid.
Speaker 2: Yes, I was so afraid. Yes, Okay, Well we're going
to take a short little break and would come back.
Maybe you could help other people who might be questioning
if they are if they are in a situation where
they need to consider this, and what are the things
to look for.
Speaker 3: So we'll be right back.
Speaker 2: In just a moment.
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Speaker 1: Hey friends. If you like what you're hearing and want
to learn more, check out doctor Joseph's book The Human
Animal Connection, Deepening Relationships with Animals and Ourselves, or visit
the website The Humananimalconnection dot org to book an online consultation.
Thank you for loving animals. Now back to the show.
Speaker 4: Let's Talk pets on Petlife Radio dot com.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to The Human Animal Connection. My guest is
Meredith Tollison. She is an animal communicator and a behavioral trainer,
and we're talking about a difficult subject, the subject of
behavioral euthanasia. So, Meredith, I know that you and I
are not the only people to effaced this issue. So
what are the things that you could give people as
a kind of a reasonable way to evaluate this if
they're wondering, what do you think? What are some of
the signs that behavioral euthanasia may be warranted and that
it's time? And you know, how can people look at
this horrible decision, difficult decision?
Speaker 3: A lot of the things that I said in my
own personal story, the level of reactivity, the level of
anxiety that I felt personally in dealing with trying to
manage my two dogs and make them as happy as possible.
If someone's feeling that, I highly recommend that they consult
a professional. I have multiple, multiple dear friends here in
my area who are veterinarians, and I contacted every one
of them, and sadly, every one of them said, you know,
they don't give us a lot of behavior training in
that school. So what we know is from our own
personal experience, there are some amazing veterinary behaviors out there.
As I mentioned, I worked with Trish McMillan. I did
some training with her working with aggressive dogs years ago,
and so she's the primary behaviorist that I reached out
to because I had a personal relationship with her at
that time. She was incredible, incredibly supportive. She unfortunate had
been through this situation herself with a puppy that growled
at her when he was three weeks old. She knew
then that there was something wrong, and she worked with
him for eighteen months and then he had her and
her boyfriend cornered in the house like ready to attack them.
That's a terrible experience and I'm glad that never happened
to me. But she created a remarkable community on Facebook
called Losing Lulu, and I highly suggest that anyone who
is facing this possibility or has been through this experience
find that Facebook group. It's a member's only group. You
have to request to join, and they're very, very strong
in their desire for it to be a safe and
supportive place to share your stories. There's so much grief
and there's so much shame in this experience. As an
animal professional, can you imagine myself? It's a failure. Yeah.
And truth is I stopped taking training clients at that
time because I thought if I couldn't fix my own animal,
who am I to expect someone to pay me for
my professional services?
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: So if you believe that you were facing a situation
with a dog that could be dangerous or could be
affecting your life in the way that this experience affected mind,
please please please reach out to a professional, reach out
to veterinary behaviors, reach out to a counselor for yourself. Yes,
because you know, as you know Genie, there are people
who are going to criticize you should have done, how
you should have tried more, how can you kill a
perfectly healthy animal? Well, we have to remember that this
type of mental illness illness, illness is an illness. And
I am of the belief. I work with a lot
of people who are in grief, who are making a
decision about medical euthanasia, an end of life decision for
their animals, and I firmly believe that euthanasia is an
incredible gift, a humane euthanasia. While it's so so sad
for us to have our animals leave their bodies, it's
so much a gift that we can give them to
keep them from having to suffer while dying. And God,
I wish we could do it for our people. Yep,
I wish we could do it for people too. I
wish we really had that.
Speaker 2: I know it's such a powerful experience, every phase of it.
And I know Lulu, of the dog that we fostered
from the shelter. We knew that the dog, you know,
had twelve pages of rap sheet of difficulties, and fell
in love anyway, and thought I could handle it, thought
I had the skills, and she made tremendous progress. But
there was the day, the day when you know, she
got a thorn in her foot, my housemate try to
take it off and she almost lost her thumb, and
you know, ambulance and you know, uh we you know,
it's very severe. She's still to a year later, doesn't
have full use of her hands. So you know, this
was and I had to walk Mulo out to the
truck for the sheriff and the animal control and you know,
unfortunately they let me come to the shelter for the euthanasia.
But I shelter. Euthanasia is not a never easy and
good It's nothing comfortable or sweet or tender about it.
It's it's so it's yeah. So to be able to
do it at home is such a such a tremendous blessing.
So I'm glad you had that. But I was so
glad to be there with her and give her her
last whip prem and you know, spend a few moments
and and you know, I know I still work with
her now, I still communicate with her. And tell us
about communicating with Quentin since how how has your relationship
been since?
Speaker 3: Well, I say it took me a while communicate with him.
It took me a while to ask him to to
come and work with me because I did feel so.
I felt guilty. I felt like I had failed him.
I felt even more guilty for feeling relieved on so
many occasions, so many aspects of life with Barnabas that
were easier, and I felt terrible going, Oh God, if
Quentin were here, this would be an emergency, right. You know,
Barnabas has decided which bank drive through is his favorite
because he gets treats at the bank drive through. I
could never have taken Quinton in the car like that,
you know, So it took me a while to call
him in. And I do say that Quinton is my muse,
that Quinton is my biggest teacher. I named my training
company Quintessential Dog Training because it was a little tribute
to him. It's not for Quentin I wouldn't have gone
and studied behavior. As I said, I'm not necessarily taking
training clients anymore. But the knowledge that I gained in
doing all of that coursework really comes in handy with
my animal communication. So how do I communicate with Quentin?
I honestly, I call him in as a helper animal
when I'm dealing with clients who are making difficult decisions,
I call him into to remind me that I am strong,
that I do have wisdom, that I can rely on
the wisdom of animals to help me, and to also
learn a lot about self forgiveness. Yeah, a lot about
We have a joke in my family, digness dog. You know,
who's working the hardest, who's doing the most, who's pushing
through a hard situation. And that's just part of my nature.
I call Quentin and when I'm having those dignest dog
moments and feel like I need to step back and
let it go a little bit, you know. So he's
still very powerful. It's very powerful in my life.
Speaker 2: And that's such a wonderful experience, the realization that not
all animals are destined to live in physical human homes,
in physical bodies, in human homes. You know, who knows
how he would have been if he had been you know,
a street dogs. Who knows? I mean, I don't know.
But the point being is that now he has a
rich life and can be with you in a way
that's very profound. That he couldn't be in normal life,
Like you said, you couldn't take him to ordinary places
that you can now take Barnabas too, and there's a
lot of freedom in being out of the body, you know.
And as animal communicators, I think we're very lucky that
you can talk to Quentin and I can talk to
Lulu and we can still have a very full and
rich and ever developing relationship. But I know that not
everybody has that, and not everybody has that ability to
communicate with animals. And this is where you really want
to get some help all upon a good communicator. And
the thing like you mentioned you had the first I
think the trainer person that you went to was not helpful,
you know, just filled you full of guilt and crap.
And you know, so if anybody fills you with guilt
and crap, go to the next person. You know, absolutely
that's just got yeah that you're.
Speaker 3: Going to connect with. Here's an interesting tid that I
love the way that you said, some animals are not
destined to live in this body in the human world
in retrospect. As I mentioned, Quentin was one of Quentin
Barnabas were two of nine puppies. When they were about
two weeks old, Mom dropped Quentin in the swimming pool.
Oh the people saw it, and I'm obviously rushed to
rescue him. But isn't that an interesting thing? Yes, mom
had nine puppies and that was just one too many,
and this one, yes, maybe needed to be yo and yeah, yeah,
and pixel do that, you know, like I've seen, you know,
farm pigs, that there's one that's not quite right, the
mother will.
Speaker 2: Do away with him. And it's it's scary and horrible
to think about things like that, but it's like there's
a wisdom there, you know. I think that in the
wild that's not uncommon if there's one that's not ready
for the world. And to us that seems perfectly awful.
Speaker 3: It seems so so wild and so barbaric, and I
just wonder, I think, Yeah, if I had trusted her wisdom,
if they had trusted her wisdom right, had released Quentin
from his torment years earlier, not only would it have
been more humane for him, but how much different would
Barnabas's life had been. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's it's very
it's a very interesting view to think not only about
an individual life, but the pact life, you know, to
the wisdom of the pack. You know, sometimes the individual
gets sacrificed for the well being of the pack. It's uh.
Speaker 2: And as humans, where this is pretty rough stuff for us,
we don't we don't like to have that kind of responsibility.
But some in some if we take the responsibility of
bringing an animal into a human world, you know, into
our home, having them domesticated, then we also have to
be equally prepared for the exit strategy. I think is
in the wild, a sick or injured animal would go
off to the mountaintop or the coyote would have them
as lunch. That's what they would do. But because they're
living in our houses, they can't go off to the
mountaintop or the tree. And and yeah, yeah, so it's
it's it's the wildness of life, you know. And also
just the recognition that being in a physical form isn't
the only possibility of consciousness. That as animal communicators, we
we have the belief that consciousness extends beyond past physical form.
So it's a little bit easier for us. But even
you and I, even with all of our knowledge, we
still went through the grief. We still went for the guilt,
we still stopped training other people, we had to take
a real time out. But our lives were torture. I
mean Lulu when she was here, she was here in
our house for ninety one days. She destroyed all the
Venetian blinds. You know, she scratches on all the table,
she got on top of the dining room table. We'd
come home and see, you know, it just it was
it couldn't leave the house. You know, she had terrible
separation anxiety. And I remember just like the first few
days of leaving after she was gone, It's like, Wow,
I can close the door. I don't have to worry
about what's going to be destroyed or what's going to
happen when I leave. And it's it's pretty tough to
have a dog where you're basically a prisoner of their
emotional states. And like you said, not every issue can
be trained out or fixed out or healed out or
talked out. I mean, sometimes we're dealing with dogs who's
wiring came street brain chemistry or whatever is just not
suitable for this world.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, And well, it was such a horrible experience,
a horrible decision to have to make, and some of
the experiences along the way were horrible. Friendships were suffering,
my marriage was suffering, everything was suffering, not the least
of which Quintin was suffering. And I miss him every day.
I miss his sweet moments. When he was good, he
was very, very good, and when he was bad, he
was horrid. I'm lucky in a way that there was
no physical damage to me or anyone else other than
the other animals, no damage to humans, physical damage. There
was a lot of emotional damage, yes, but we're all healing,
We're all healing in a different way. And I know
that there are so many people out there who were
questioning such a thing, and I encourage everyone to find
the support that you need, because it can happen, and
sometimes it needs to happen. And I feel for anyone
who's actually had a personal experience in this way, because
it's awful. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so again, that resource that you offered people up
is called Lulu's Love, losing losing on Facebook, Losing Lulu. Yeah,
and yeah, I have a video called Lulu's Love, which
that's why I got confused, Yeah, that we made about Lulu.
And yeah, well, I'm so delighted that you were willing
to share a story. I know this hasn't been easy
even think about sharing it. It's a it's a lot,
it's a lot to heal and it's a lot to
offer up others. And we know that we're we want
to help others who are in this situation. So reach
out to Meritis or myself or to give me the website.
One more to the Facebook again, losing a lot of
Facebook is a private group that you can get a
lot of support and if you're being face with this
decision and life can be easier when if you're being
held captive by you know, a relationship with an animals.
So thank you Meredith Hollinson for being a guest here
on the Human Animal Connection.
Speaker 3: Thank you Jeanie.
Speaker 2: We'll see you again next time.
Speaker 3: Bye for now.
Speaker 4: Let's talk Pats every week on demand only on Petlife
Radio dot com.