by Chris Bodenner A reader joins the previous ones: Recently my husband and I have been dealing with the decline and loss of our two beloved cats, Noot and Echo, who had been our “babies” long before we had human children. Noot entered our lives as a blue-eyed handful of white fluff in 1996. In 2000, Echo … Continue reading When Animals Grieve, Ctd
Readers continue to contribute to the popular thread: Thanks for this post about Dusty. I had to put my very first dog down a few months ago, and it continues to haunt me. Ike started to have issues with the steps in my home, then couldn’t make it without my carrying him, then his system just starting … Continue reading The Last Lesson We Learn From Our Pets, Ctd
Jul 2, 2013 @ 8:35pm As part of an ongoing Ploughshares series on writers and their pets, novelist Bill Roorbach movingly remembers his dog Wally, who was dying of kidney failure and had to be put down: I held my hand on his heart, felt the last beats. Later, I called my elderly parents. My … Continue reading The Last Lesson We Learn From Our Pets
last updated 5/6/2014 Listed in reverse-chronological order with the ostsost recent threads at the top: Most Recent: Do I Sound Gay? May 2014 Andrew and readers share their opinions of the sound of gay voices. The War Over The Core Apr – May 2014 Reader and the blogosphere debate on the pros/cons of the Common … Continue reading Thread Archive
Mark Vernon contemplates "futile care," for those "living with dying": Might a good death be defined as one in which the dying are helped and allowed to depart in such a way that they become peaceful, benign energies in the lives of the still living? The living, in turn, can say to the dying, we … Continue reading Death Needs A Place In Life
A reader writes:
The comparison one of your readers made between euthanizing a person and euthanizing a dog fails to consider one of the most prominent differences between man and dog: self-awareness. If dogs are self-aware, it is to a significantly lesser degree than humans, and that is what makes the death penalty such a feared, and inhumane, punishment. If execution is a kindness compared to life in prison, as this reader asserts, why do so many alleged criminals agree to pleas just to get execution off the table, and why do so many death row inmates continue to press to have their sentences commuted to life in prison?
