anon6789

I am glad you got something important out of reading it! I hope you don’t either. ❤️ 🦉

I’m glad I could word it properly. I always worry about noy adequately capturing my feelings on emotional things.

I was a little bummed at first when the talk took the turn it did, because it was entitled something like “Minimizing Stress in Animal Patients” and I thought it was going to be things like covering birds’ heads to calm them down and such, but halfway through it took the euthanasia turn.

But the lady giving the talk presented it calmly and sensibly like I tried to do here, and I think framing it as the ultimate neutral position when that is the least worst outcome left was very helpful. It’s obviously the least favorite part for anyone involved in the care of animals, by occupation or as a pet owner, but it’s something we ultimately will be involved in, and should be an act of compassion.

In a different reply in this thread I touch on my experiences in hospital with humans as well, and tl;dr I think it is insanely cruel we cannot offer that compassion to our fellow humans.

Please don’t take any of this as being directed at you personally, I think your opinion is 100% valid, but you’re the only one I saw with this stance.

I think this is something very important to consider when it comes to things like living wills and just how we as a society feel that a medical system should operate, preserving life at all costs vs preserving quality of life.

I won’t go deep into details, but I have been there to witness the passing of both my wife’s parents in the last 2 years. Both were normal for their age and overall health conditions up to the very days they died. Both died suddenly, though not immediately, and one was upset they called the ambulance because they said they were fine, both those ended up being last words.

Both became unrecoverable very soon after being admitted to the hospital, as in less than 12 hours. The family made the decision to take them off the life support stuff, as there was nothing treatable. A fair decision. But what I witnessed afterwards was the cruelest stuff I have ever seen. It isn’t like on tv where they turn the stuff off and in a couple seconds it’s over. The sights and sounds of suffering were horrific, and all of us who were there just had to sit for hours, watching our loved ones in total unconscious agony while we were all just wishing for it to be over.

After I saw firsthand what natural death can look like, I thought it was a sin that with all the equipment and medicine in that hospital, that no one was allowed to end the suffering, either for the dying, or for the living. It looked and sounded like physical torture, it was undignified, and I sat there the whole time saying we would not leave an animal to suffer like this, so why are we letting it happen to our family?

It really solidified my thoughts on assisted suicide and the concept of keeping someone “alive” at all cost.

I get if you want to be in your own home instead of hospice someday, or that you shouldn’t have all your freedoms as long as you’re not a danger, but we don’t all get the luxury to die in a brief moment in our sleep. For a lot of us, it will be a long processes, and it won’t always be us conscious or able to make determinations on that process.

Again, just sharing my personal experience, nothing to argue against you in particular. I just find myself able to consider and discuss death more than most people around me seem comfortable doing.

I work at a wildlife rehab clinic. Just a guess, but we probably euthanize more animals than any vet, since for people to be able to catch and bring us wild animals, they are typically much worse off than most domestic animals. A third of patients are dead by the time they get here, or shortly after. The next third, we will have to euthanize within a few hours or days. That’s a lot.

We don’t do it because they are too hard to work on or anything like that. Our only goal is to return animals to the wild and have them survive. We try some far-out things sometimes to make that happen, and since most of us work for free, we do it because we love animals and want to see them survive.

I just attended a conference talk about the topic of animal suffering. It wasn’t specifically labeled as a talk about euthanasia, but it ended up being a large part of it, and attending made me feel a bit better about it.

When we’re treating animals, it’s like a balancing scale. We have their health conditions, stress levels, etc on one side, and we have our treatments and stress mitigating factors on the other. Ideally, we can either balance the scales or tilt them positive. But as time goes on, and if things are not improving, or get worse, even if we can stack more and more positive responses on the other side, that is still a lot of weight on the scale. It wouldn’t take a big nudge to make it crash. Or the negative side is stacking up and the positives have no chance to keep up or reverse things.

All this time, the animal is not living the life it was meant to live. Out in the wild, hunting, mating, etc for my animals, or being a happy, lazy, snacking, sunbeam soaking friend to you that a domestic animal should. And animals hide pain as a survival reflex. If they are sick or injured, they are always hurting more than you know, because they don’t want to be seen as that slowest wildebeest in the pack that the lions are chasing.

And the point of the lecture was this: no matter how hopeless the stack of negatives is, there is one thing that is guaranteed to instantly alleviate that pain and suffering. Euthanasia is not a positive or negative, but should be looked at as neutral, a zero point. No points on the positive side of the scale, but the negative side is swept clean. If you can do nothing to help your animal, or if the treatment itself is making their life miserable, you have the ability to take that stress and pain away. When to do that is an ethical question with no concrete answer. We address each case on an individual basis and come to consensus as a group. With your pet, that is you and your family. Are you keeping them alive because the animal is still happy or because you aren’t ready to let go to a hopeless cause?

I’ve tried to treat my pets, 2 of which died of failing organs, and for my cat, it was clear the treatment was making her suffer, and for my dog, she eventually has a seizure. Those were where I had to say to myself that what I was continuing to do was only for my sake, and it wasn’t helping me, and was certainly not going to help them. Looking back though, if I would have euthanized them a week or 2 sooner, I probably could have spared them days of pain, and I regret being what I consider to have been selfish acts.

Especially with a dog (I was not a dog person, but the death of my 2 dogs both crushed me immensely due to that pack bond they have with you as opposed to more independent cats) it can be hard to make the call. But when you learn they are that sick and are likely going to crash soon, don’t try to prolong that time, but do spoil the shit out of that dog. Take them on extra walks if they can. Take them to beautiful and smelly places like a state park or a sunset walk along water and walk extra slow so they can enjoy it in their dog ways. Feed them all the stuff they always wanted but wasn’t good for them. And when they start to not enjoy even that spoiling anymore, know you gave them the best life they could have dreamed, and accept that ultimate responsibility you took when you committed yourself to that dog the day you brought it into your home and made it part of your pack.

I hope that was helpful. I gave up having pets because it was hard to do that last step so many times. Now I work with wild animals and see death all the time, but it is less personal, so it is easier to see the positive/negative balance because it isn’t clouded by an emotional bond. No one wants to say goodbye to a loved one, human or pet, but it is a certainty of life, and because we live life at a different scale than they do (unless you have parrots, tortoises, etc!) that time is never going to feel like enough, even if you could keep that dog alive for 50 years. The length of their healthy days we have no say over, but we can keep the sad days to a minimum.

Make sure both people get tested before doing the deed.

Not one for spontaneity, eh? 😄

“I’ve had a great night, what do you say we keep this night going?”

“Sure, swab yourself here, here, and here and spit in this tube, and in a couple days, if all goes well, I will be so down for that!”

I got a vasectomy when I was already in for other surgery, but condoms were a mild annoyance with a more than acceptable tradeoff. They’re ready to go whenever, it’s a no-go for some if you won’t use one, and it’s as much for my own protection as it is for the other person. I wouldn’t necessarily expect someone to take my word on it that I got it done right off the bat either.

If you’re out dating, I think it’s just respectful to have them available. Different people have different comfort levels, so one should come prepared to accommodate.

The latex free ones aren’t a bad idea either if you need to keep some on hand. My partner has an allergy so I couldn’t use regular ones. They were more expensive, but I actually thought they were better, and it was still a low price to pay, considering what I got in return. She carried her own, but after we continued going out I wasn’t going to make her keep paying for them every time.

I’m with you. I’ve tried it a bunch of times since so many people seem to like cucumbers, cucumber water, cucumber in sushi, cucumber gin, and whatever else. I don’t like pickles either. I just cannot cuke.

I used to be about the slashers, but now I like stuff that makes you use your imagination. It’s hard to make something that will scare a large group of people, but if it gets you to engage your mind or feelings to fill in the gaps, it fills it in with things you do find scary.

I just watched Weapons last weekend. I wasn’t expecting much, it sounded like a simple plot, but it really created a disturbing vibe that was creepier to me than the on scene deaths. It kept my attention throughout and though the ending went gorey, I think it would have been just as good without showing the result.

I don’t like when people trash the OP in cases like this. Sometimes they are trolls or attention seekers, but at least at first, everyone deserves the benefit of the doubt. I appreciate you not crapping on him. He already has that covered, and more certainly isn’t going to fix him.

I only got out of my own mess because enough people were patient with me. If I can give some of that back, that’s just me passing some of that grace I was given forward.

Every day gives you another chance. It’s really freaking hard when you’re down in a hole like this. That’s why I said to check out that other post. Many of us have been in similar spots. We’re here to help, but we can’t give you answers cuz we aren’t you. You need to work every day to find what does work for you.

There’s no secret to being liked by women. It’s the same as being liked by anyone. You have to be someone likeable, not just fake likeable, and it starts with valuing yourself enough to lift yourself out of the mental place you are at. This is like anything else, you got to build from the bottom up with a strong foundation.

I don’t know your full story, but a skim through your posts makes it feel like you have some internal things you need to address, and I mean that in a helpful way.

You really sound like you would want to have a partner, but you seem to be chasing symptoms and not core issues.

I’d recommend reading some of today’s thread on overcoming incel-like behavior. I shared a bunch of my personal story on there in BodePlotHole’s reply, and reading that and some other comments in there might be of real value to you.

That’s about all the help any of these posts are going to get you, and most of it is not bad advice. There’s no quick-fix other than the stuff you’re already getting burnt out of trying. You’re going to have to put in real work and take yourself seriously if you want to get out of this hole you’re in and find a happier life.

Again, not here to lecture you, do what you want, but I think your solution is fixing you, not continuing to ignore things and smooth them over temporarily with prostitutes and substances.

I’d completely forgotten about the spray. I started with spray deodorants originally, but switched to sticks after getting tired of tasting the overspray.

After that I tried gels, but at least the early ones were always sticky feeling. Not sure if they got better as once I tried the basic green Degree, it had everything I’d wanted from an antiperspirant and thankfully they seemed to have never changed it in all this time.

I have almost exclusively used Degree Sport since it came out probably 20+ years ago. The sole variation has been sometimes I got the powder scent if the sport was sold out and I think I used 2 sample sticks of Old Spice for paid surveys.

The Degree just works, is dirt cheap, and has a texture that doesn’t feel funny. Don’t mess with success.

Aww so cute! It looks like it was its first Fourth of July, still small.

I’m right next to the park where they do the town fireworks and I always feel my terrible for the bats that seem to think it’s the end of the world.

The handful I’ve had to handle seemed very shy. For most, I’d be going to clean the juveniles’ cages, but after they saw me coming to pick them up, they’d usually climb the wall and I would just leave them there while I cleaned up and gave them food.

I had one run on me and be pretty feisty. It didn’t bite, but it did not want to be touched one bit.

We had a momma opossum have a surprise litter and since she was already in an outside pen, she got to raise the family there. They were all extremely pleasant and everyone loved them. Momma was a picky eater, but that was about it.

I’ve really enjoyed seeing how different individual animals’ personalities can be.

One of the last skunk babies we had sprayed someone 4 times before we figured out it was getting freaked out by the orange gloves. Any of the other gloves and it was fine.

I haven’t spent near as much hands on time with the oppossums as I had wanted, but the times I have had to grab them, they tend to act scary, but then not really do anything if their tough guy act didn’t get me to leave.

I’ve got tons of pics of them. I think they’re very adorable.

This is the last batch of joeys we incubated.

I grabbed this guy to move it to an outdoor enclosure.

This one is coming out after I dropped off breakfast.

It hasn’t been bad so far. The way I’m getting it is an interdermal shot instead of intermuscular, so it’s a shallow injection with a small needle. It feels like a bug bite, a minor skin bump, I didn’t have any itching, but it hurts really bad if I forget it’s there and scratch it by accident. The first injection is still visible, which I’ve never had from another shot, but otherwise I don’t feel it, so I’m thinking it’s not abnormal, but I’ll ask tomorrow.

I was extremely tired the next day, but I have been sleeping like crap all year and I had to drive 6 hours round trip, so it’s probably just that. The shots are very expensive, and the place I’m going is doing a clinic where we can use the same vial of vaccine for multiple people, so it’s saving us all a ton of money.

Even with all the gas money, I’m still saving at least $500 on the shots. Plus I stopped to see a pair of nice waterfalls and listened to a whole Discworld audiobook on trip one. Tomorrow I think I’ll hit up the state college’s store where they sell the ice cream they make in their special ice cream program and maybe hit up the wildlife rescue out there if the rain is light.

I always love to hear it. It makes my day better to talk to you guys about owls and misc other animals too.

Owl of the Year Qualifier starts sometime next month, so be sure to come play along!

Strictly not pets, but I’m getting my 2nd of 3 pre-exposure rabies vaccinations this weekend so I can work with skunks and the other rabies vector species (bats, coyotes, fox, groundhogs, raccoons) next spring!

While I haven’t been able to handle them, I have prepared their food. Out of all the baby animals formulas we have, skunk milk smells the best!

I joined up to work with the owls and other raptors, but all the animals we get are fascinating in their own ways.

Yup, just an excuse for many to be outraged. If the shooter was the most liberal dude on the planet, that’s not a reason to go after anyone deemed ultra-liberal, whatever that means anymore. Biden/Kamala is as far left as a communist or social democrat to these kinds of people, but as we see, those 3 groups don’t get along from a leftist perspective.

Plus the shooter was like 20 years old. How deep is your political ideology at 20? If his family is MAGA as nobody seems to dispute, he’s been raised Republican more than he’s had any chance to form any real opinions, so the excuse is really flimsy for either side to be placing much blame politically.

As unbiased as I can be, if you liked Kirk, it sucks that he was killed. But you know who did it, and you caught him and he admitted it. That’s more closure than most people who have loved ones murdered get. He broke a law, murder, everyone seemingly agrees is a no-no. Punish the dude according to law, the end. Any more than that, and you’re using it for your own selfish purposes.

I pretty much only knew the name and that he was a right wing propagandist like a Rush Limbaugh or Tucker Carlson or the like.

The vast majority of people I don’t think really loved or hated him as actively as they are doing right now. This is just a moment for both sides to radicalize over what they see as either proof the conservative haters are all violent and need to be dealt with in kind, or for those that do want anti-conservative violence to call it “a good start.”

I feel he met an end that isn’t really much of a surprise, as he encouraged “his people” to oppress others and/or yo provide extreme reactions from his opposition. He encouraged violence, but it backfired on him.

Never paid him much mind before and not planning to start now. I am worried about what unrelated people are going to suffer the vengeance for one random person’s actions.

My feelings on the public’s general reaction is it’s a more extreme version of what happens when a celebrity dies that most people probably already thought died years ago. People talk like they were the greatest thing ever when they either never watched the movies before or hadn’t seen them or thought about them in ages. They’re just fired up as an excuse for attention or to push an agenda.

But as I said, never listened to the guy, so I may be a little off, but he was filed under radical conservative in my mind and that was good enough for me.