This week: Ethics
Vets face difficult decisions all the time, especially ones involving ethical issues. I don't mean professional ethics, which are pretty straightforward, but decisions of life and death and animal treatment that can be ethically dubious.
Like some ethical dilemmas, solving these questions is not straightforward, and one needs to know the contextual and technical issues involved before even trying to solve the problem. There may be many answers to the problem, and all those answers could be both right and wrong depending on your point of view.
Today I am going to challenge you with an ethical dilemma that involved one of my clients. This example is quite common and can be very controversial.
A client once came in with two Pomeranians, both over 10 years old and both poor behavioural examples of an otherwise excellent breed. Both dogs would bite without provocation and, more importantly, both barked incessantly at home. As a result of their aggression, the owner wasn't able to groom them and both looked like strays with matted fur and extremely long claws.
To put it simply, they were dogs that only the owner could love. Both dogs had a sad history, having been passed from one owner to another until they finally found a tolerant home where they were loved very much.