My dog is goin going to be 15 in a couple of months. She has an abscess tooth and the veterinarian said she will need to be given anesthesia and surgery to have that tooth, and possible a couple of others extracted. I've never had to consider a procedure on a dog of this age, and am very skeptical. Is it going to cause her more pain and suffering then she needs to be put through? She is otherwise in moderately good health, she does have what the doctor described as a "tick" in her heart and described it as sounding funny. But that's apparently not altogether uncommon in a dog her age. She is a 62 pound shepherd mix. And in the past year she has had a couple of episodes of nystagmus which has caused severe, and partially permanent balance issues. The vet said in some cases anesthesia can exacerbate that kind of issue over the long term. I have her isolated to our basement, which is our family room where the family spends most of it's time at home anyway. So she is rarely alone if we are home, and generally has at least me for company. She greets me happily when she sees me, and waits expectantly for me to return, and looks for her treat. She does have quite a few accidents on the floor during the day, but that's to be expected at her age. And she has isolated to a specific area which at this point I'll need to deal with once she is gone anyway. I guess I'm just looking for ideas or advice on if this is really too much to expect an older dog to go through. The veterinarian did give me pain killers, and antibiotics to try and get the swelling down. She said once I run out it could be just a few days, to months before the swelling returns. But either way, it's going to happen probably again at some point. Have any of you ever anesthesized your 14/15 year old dog? I don't want to be one of those people that keeps her around for my benefit, but as I said she still seems to have a fairly good quality of life. But I also don't want to torture her with a procedure like this, or even worse have the last few moments on this earth dealing with this kind of suffering. When I do have her put to sleep I intend on taking her to our family farm, and the veterinarian is going to come to our house to do it so she doesn't have to be in the office. I'm just really up in the air here, and looking for some advice.
