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Featuring Demian Dressler, DVM and Sue Ettinger, DVM, Dip. ACVIM (Oncology), authors of The Dog Cancer Survival Guide

Was There Anything Else I Could Have Done?

Updated: March 2nd, 2020

Summary

Was there anything else I could have done? This is an inevitable question we all face. And the answer is always the same.

As editor of The Dog Cancer Survival Guide, I’ve read thousands of emails like the one below. And they break my heart, each time. Over the last decade, I’ve done some deep thinking about the guilt that comes (Inevitably! For all of us!) when our dog passes away. So if you’re asking “was there anything I could have done for my dog?” … here’s my best answer. (Details have been changed for privacy and this has been edited for clarity.)

Molly Jacobson, Editor


Letter to the Editor: Was There Anything Else I could Have Done?

I am struggling to come to terms with this right now as I wonder if there was more that could be done for her.

Belle was diagnosed with metastatic tumors in the brain and spine. Specialists gave her approx 3 months to live and I committed to try anything and everything for her so long as she remained pain-free and happy. I really believed I could help save her for a little while longer than the 3 months.

What did I do wrong?

She was treated with conventional medicine and also natural medicine too … My family and I remained so positive. Initially, she did really well, surprising the vets. She was given all our love and I took her outside as much as possible. We played games and told her all the time how much I adored her and so on.

It seems that all this was not enough. Was anything else I could have done? I would appreciate any comments you might have as I desperately want to know that I did do the right thing by her. I felt I was given a little window to make a difference and I missed something or did something wrong by her.

I kept my promise to her and put her to sleep the day after she was really uncomfortable, she had lost her mobility again and cried throughout the night she seemed in pain and I could not ease it…

The vets told me they could give nothing to ease this pressure pain and that they felt the time had come for her. The worst words but I could not see her in pain.

Would be nice to hear any feedback. I will keep your book and recommend to others – really well written and helpful.


It doesn’t matter what type of your cancer your dog has: this book is a must-read.

Molly’s Reply:

Thank you for writing, and I am so sorry to hear about your loss. Belle sounds like a wonderful, brave, warrior of a dog!

Now, to your question, and I’m going to put this as gently as I can without coming across as preachy. In fact, imagine that I am giving you a big hug, and are looking at you with big, earnest eyes that are brimming with tears — because we’ve all been exactly where you are, and I really understand the urge to go over everything, over and over, wondering if there was more you could have done.

We all understand second-guessing everything about our dog’s cancer, treatments, and ultimate outcome.

Here’s my answer: There was nothing more you could have done.

Cancer is clever and crazy, and a mighty foe, and no matter what we wish, there is NO MAGIC BULLET for it.

We can manage some health issues, such as a broken leg, or an ear infection.

But cancer isn’t straightforward. It doesn’t happen in a linear fashion.

Cancer zigs and zags, and it darts around corners and hides in dark places.

Sometimes, we can manage it for so long that it feels like we WIN, which is probably what you were hoping for.

And sometimes, if we’re lucky, we can cut it out and be DONE with it, that’s what I’m hoping for now, with my Kanga.

But too often, particularly for harder to treat cancers, or for cancers that have metastasized, we do the best we can.

And then we worry the universal worry: did I do everything I could?

Everyone asks if they did everything they could. All of us!

There are always things that can help, as you found out, but does using any of those treatments, supplements, or lifestyle choices guarantee that cancer won’t win?

No!



No One Has a Crystal Ball 🙁

Even if you HAD found the book sooner, or done every single little thing that Dr. Dressler recommends, there is no way to know you would have a different outcome or had more time.

You will never get an answer to that question, because, as my grandfather once told me, asking yourself questions that only God can answer is a sure way to drive yourself crazy.

Stop asking questions that have no answers. That will drive you mad!

So stop asking that question. It will drive you crazy, because you will never, ever get a satisfying and definitive answer.

No one has a crystal ball. No one can tell you for sure if there was something else you could have done.

Here’s the Truth

You did the best you could, and that is enough and perfect and loving and excellent. Your dog would tell you this!

You cared and made changes, and when it was time, you helped her to rest. I have no doubt that you did right by her.

There’s a truth I find difficult to face but helpful:

Our dogs experience pain, like we do, but also not like we do.

When a dog is in pain, that’s all they are — in pain.

As far as we can tell, they don’t have the thought “This will get better.”

So when dogs fill ill, they just feel ill.

It’s hard to accept that you did the best you could and your dog died anyway. But that’s the truth.

If they feel ill for a long, long time, or if they are in chronic pain, they may actually feel more miserable than we would in their place.

Because they don’t have a sense that the pain will end (as far as we know). In their world, pain may seem endless.

One minute of pain for a dog might feel as bad as a month would to us. They might be constantly thinking “when will this end?”

A human with brain cancer could take comfort from knowing that something — some treatment, some drug — might help reduce the pain, at some point.

It’s a little easier to bear pain when you can look forward to and imagine a time it ceases.


Looking for support? Our private Facebook group just for readers of The Dog Cancer Survival Guide is amazing. Thousands of people just like you, dealing with dog cancer and leaning on each other for comfort and advice. Join us!

But dogs just can’t do that. Their world is NOW.

So sometimes, if we can’t hold out hope for a future without pain, we choose, as dog lovers, to ease their pain. That’s the loving choice you made for your Belle.

Guilty Feelings are Biological, Not Logical

We tend to assume that if we feel guilty, it’s because we could have done more or better.

Not true!

Those guilty feelings are not necessarily there because we didn’t do enough for our dogs. Those feelings come up even if we did “everything right.”

That’s because dogs trigger parental patterns in our primate brain.

Primates, and particularly humans, give birth to helpless infants that we MUST protect at all costs. Our dogs and other pets depend upon us so heavily that they remind our primate brains of our own babies!

That’s why we start to feel that same fierce protection toward them, the feeling of “I must keep this creature alive.”

These feelings are biological and evolutionary in origin, and there is nothing we can do about them.

Of course, our dogs are not human babies. They live far shorter lives than we do. When our dog is ten, our brains may think of him as a ten-year-old child, but he’s not. At that point, he’s a senior citizen!

Think about it: the death of a ten-year-old is unthinkable. Just the thought makes us queasy and upset and panicked. It is unnatural for our children to die so young.

But it’s not unnatural for our dogs to die “young.” If we are really lucky, we get a couple of decades with them.

And yet when they die, we can often grieve as if for a child. That’s because those evolutionary and biological feelings are triggered.

Extreme Emotional Pain Is Normal 🙁 and Not a Sign You Did Too Little

Be Gentle, Be Loving, Be Kind

This extreme pain you’re in, and the second-guessing your doing, is completely normal and natural when you look at it from this evolutionary mindset. Belle triggered these parental feelings, now she’s gone, and you are beating your head against a wall trying to figure out if it’s your fault … because your child is NOT supposed to die so young.


Dr. Dressler’s advice on grieving the loss of dog cancer is profound and loving.

Your job now is to be patient with yourself. It will take a while for your primate brain to unwind the events, traumas, and facts. It will go over this territory again and again until it finally figures out that you did nothing wrong.

Meanwhile, try to relax and observe this happening. Watch your brain as it tries to make what’s wrong, right. This is normal and natural. … for a while. After a bit, you MUST stop this cycle of wondering.

For your own sanity, please, don’t beat yourself up. Get the support you need to grieve and talk this through, and then let it go as one of the great mysteries of life. Was there something more you could have done? No. Why? Because even if there WERE something you could have done different, you didn’t know about it. So … you couldn’t have done it!

You are off the hook, free and clear of blame.

You are off the hook and free and clear of blame. You were Belle’s best friend, and she knew it, but I guarantee she would NOT want you to feel this bad and beat yourself up.

She wants you happy and content and comforted.

Grieving is terrible, and it comes in waves. Get yourself the support you need, so the next wave doesn’t roll you over.

You did not hurt Belle.

She loved every minute of her life with you.

Many, many blessings.

Molly Jacobson
Editor
The Dog Cancer Survival Guide



 

Leave a Comment





  1. Andrea on November 9, 2021 at 8:25 am

    Thank you for this! My dog just died of what we think was cancer. We had her put to sleep yesterday. She had all the warning signs. Your blog is helping me get through this terrible time.

  2. Elaine Osgood on May 15, 2021 at 10:11 am

    My husband and I lost our 3 year old rescue (we got him when he was 4 months old) to Stage 5 Lymphoma two weeks ago. What started out as lethargy, decreased appetite and rapid breathing (we had friends tell us it was most likely Lyme Disease, which is very prevalent in Maine, or some sort of infection treatable with antibiotics) turned into a visit to an emergency vet visit 120 miles from home. When we got the treatments options of either chemo (2-4 month survival) vs taking him home on prednisone to keep him comfortable (a few days-a few weeks survival) we brought him home. After only one week after the diagnosis of lymphoma, our precious baby died in a very traumatic way, on the floor of our bedroom after bleeding out throughout the whole house, at 2 am in the morning. Devastated doesn’t even come close to our emotions. The diagnosis had barely set in…much less our way of how to handle his end of life decisions. Thank you for all the info in your articles…just wish we had known we had so little time.

  3. John Abair Jr on October 20, 2020 at 9:39 pm

    Emotional and Biological. Sounds good. However, there were three things we could have done differently over time, but my other half didn’t want to cause her more pain than she had already experienced and was always on about the vets just wanting to make money.
    Well, it cost us differently. Now I look at it as this: Pain me now, pain me later.”
    The forth was not taking a friend up on the olive branch he extended. At that point it may have not changed the inevitable, but it certainly would have been one less thing I would be regreting to this day and for the remainder of them to come.

  4. Christine on March 4, 2020 at 10:05 am

    Great article. It’s been almost 10 years since I lost my Lab to bone cancer. I’ve lost other dogs between then and now, but his death sticks with me, because I had more control over it and thus, more guilt and second-guessing. I still sometimes play the “what if” game. I have to tell myself that I did the best I could for him with the knowledge that I had at the time.

  5. Lea Stone on July 30, 2019 at 9:41 am

    This was excellent reading. I liked best when you said how Grief will come in Waves. It certainly does, big waves and you feel like your stomach is going to fall apart. I hate grief and loving our dogs so much. I think talking about it to someone else who has been through this helps out a lot. Just remember that time will dull the pain, takes awhile but it will happen eventually. It is just bearing the grief in the meantime and missing them so very much.

  6. Esther Flores on July 30, 2019 at 6:28 am

    Hi Molly, once again you have provided those of us that on a daily basis ask ourselves what could I have done to safe my pet, an excellent article. Thank you for being there for those of us that feel so much guilt because we tried everything we could and now have to work through the agony of asking ourselves “why my pet”. When I think of my beloved Lee V I try to remember her as that happy go lucky shih Tzu, always so loving and happy. I try not to think of how she looked before we had to put her down, cancer is cruel, and I loved her too much to see her suffer. I am glad that for 11 yrs I told her how much I loved her, we had that certain connection almost as though she knew what I was thinking, if I went to Sonic’s to get a coke she would go with me, she knew that the young ladies would give her a treat, a little milk bone, they asked about her and were saddened when I told them she had gone. Thank you Molly

  7. Jackie Hollander on July 30, 2019 at 3:48 am

    Dear Molly,
    I’m a Grief Support facilitator for people grieving the death of a loved one and your advice is spot on for this difficult death as well. I also have had dogs with cancer and the guilt is so present after even if you know logically you did everything. Times fortunately does heal these feelings. I also work in animal rescue and am going to combine the two soon and provide Grief Support for those who have experienced the death of a family member (dog).

    Thanks for sharing.

    • Molly Jacobson on July 30, 2019 at 2:03 pm

      Jackie, thank you so much for this amazing feedback. I’m so happy I got it “right,” when the whole subject just feels so very wrong. 🙁

  8. Emma on July 30, 2019 at 3:24 am

    This article is very helpful to me because I also loose my dog chewy he had lymphoma and I did everything I could to safe him but like you said at the end he was in pain crying and I end up putting him to sleep break my heart but I can’t see him suffering my veterinarian said he only we live for 3 more weeks and he end up living for 3 more months just to be with me I cry every day because I miss him so much and thinking if I did enough efforts to save him thanks for this article
    Emma

  9. Brenda on April 8, 2019 at 8:07 pm

    I lost my sweet, loyal, beautiful companion and best friend, Hannah (a golden retriever), two days ago to mast cell cancer. As you mentioned above, my brain is processing, going over every detail of what I would have done differently. But what if there WAS something that you knew you could have done….should have done—and didn’t—even though your gut knew better….like having a lump checked instead of convincing yourself that she would be okay waiting until you could better afford a vet visit (and knowing you probably could have if you tried hard enough).It’s hard NOT to beat myself up for that, now knowing that it was a mast cell tumor that I left in her too long for surgery to be able to remove it all….long enough to metastasize and take her life.. I am profoundly heartbroken and angry with myself and now struggle with guilt and how to navigate the journey to forgiving myself.

    • Molly Jacobson on April 8, 2019 at 9:31 pm

      Hi Brenda. I’m just so sorry to hear about your Hannah. My only suggestion is to just stop trying to feel one way or the other. A good friend once told me the only way to get through a painful emotion is to “experience it away.” You kind of have to just feel rotten in order to start feeling better later. It’s the nature of emotions. Get some support so you can talk it through and “experience it away.” I’m sending a big hug from here.

  10. Quandomama on June 23, 2018 at 9:39 am

    Thank you for this; it helped me make the hardest decision I have ever had to make in my life. When my chowhound of a dog didn’t eat for six days, even with tempting restaurant meals, and had all the other signs on your list, I decided it was time to say goodbye in the best possible way I could. I still am not sure if I was relieving my own overwhelming pain and fear of finding him gone when I came home from work, but I also know that he was surrounded by love and peace on his last day. He was a rescue and I think his early life had been really hard. I wanted to make his last years and goodbye the best they could be. Your list helped me.

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