Planning the Last Good Day: How Families Actually Do It

When a euthanasia is scheduled a few days out rather than happening as an emergency, a strange gift comes with it: you know which day is the last one. Most people don't get that with anyone they love.

Families use it very differently, and there's no correct version. But some approaches work better than others.

Start with what they can still enjoy

The most common mistake is planning the day you'd want, rather than the day they can have.

A dog with advanced arthritis does not want a two-hour beach walk. A cat with kidney disease does not want a party. Ambitious plans tend to end with the animal exhausted and the owner guilty.

Ask instead: what can they still do that they love? Then do that, slowly, twice.

For a lot of old dogs the honest answer is: lie in a sunny spot, eat something extraordinary, and be near their person. That's a wonderful last day. It doesn't need to be a bucket list.

The food

This is the part everybody gets right, and it's worth being shameless about.

Every dietary restriction is off. The kidney diet, the weight management, the no-table-scraps rule you enforced for eleven years — all of it is irrelevant now. Steak. Cheese. A whole rotisserie chicken. Ice cream. The tinned food they only got when they were sick.

Two sensible caveats: if they've had pancreatitis, very fatty food can cause real pain, so go for lean and plentiful rather than rich. And nothing genuinely toxic — chocolate, grapes, xylitol, onions. A last day should not include a stomach ache.

Small amounts often beats one enormous meal, especially if their appetite is poor.

The places

If they're mobile enough, revisit somewhere that meant something. The park you took them to as a puppy. The beach. The friend's house with the other dog they liked.

If they're not mobile, bring it to them. Open the windows. Carry them into the garden and put them on the grass. Cats in particular often just want to be in a warm patch of sun with the door open.

The people

Let people say goodbye. Adult children, the neighbour who fed them during holidays, the friend who dog-sat. Many people will want the chance and won't ask.

Keep the house calm. A stream of visitors is stressful for a sick animal. Two or three, spread out, beats a gathering.

The photographs

Take far more than feels dignified.

Not just portraits — take photos of the ordinary things. Their paws. The white on their muzzle. Them asleep. Your hand on their head. Take a video with sound so you have their bark, their purr, their sigh, the sound of their nails on the floor.

Almost everyone says afterwards they wish they had more, and specifically that they wish they had a video with sound. It costs nothing and takes ten seconds.

Consider a paw print in air-dry clay, or ink on paper. A lock of fur in an envelope.

The thing people forget

Look after yourself a little too. Eat something. Don't schedule the last day for a Wednesday when you have to be back at work on Thursday morning. Take the day after off if you possibly can.

Decide in advance about the practical things — aftercare choice, who's driving, whether children are there — so that none of it has to be discussed on the day.

If there is no warning

Plenty of goodbyes are emergencies. There is no last good day, just a Tuesday that turned into the worst day of the year.

If that's your situation, please don't add this to the list of things you failed to do. The last good day is a nice thing when circumstances allow it. It is not a requirement, and its absence takes nothing away from the eleven years that came before.

Afterwards