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Originally Posted by Phalaris1913
I'm sorry, I too have to look to the side of questioning whether this treatment is the right thing for the horse. We humans have the idea that prolonging life at any cost, including physical discomfort, is the appropriate course of action. We fear death above everything, including pain and suffering, and consider it noble to endure anything it takes to get whatever extra time we can, no matter how much that time was tainted by physical misery.
We can debate whether animals fear death as we do. But if animals do not understand the concept of death, and thus do not fear death, it follows that they would never agree to the human notion of suffering in an effort to avoid death.
The domestic animals that serve us and share our company rely upon us to do the right thing by them, not by us. We have all known people who let animals with incurable conditions suffer miserably because they could not bear to part with their animal friend - though they would anthropomorphize this as a desire on the animal's part to bravely battle for every extra minute. Indeed, they would look down at those who don't take every possible measure, every last-ditch effort, until the poor animal dies on its own accord - its life extended, but filled with pain and discomfort.
When one of our own pets got cancer, we had her operated on. When the baseball-sized cancer had regrown fully within six months, we had her operated on again. We had decided that if it came back a third time, we would not subject her to further, pointless intervention, even if it bought her a few extra weeks or months. When, within some two months if memory serves, what was left of her stomach wall (destroyed from within by the still-growing cancer) ruptured, it was the end, even though we may yet still have gotten a little more time from her. It wasn't about the money that the emergency procedures would've cost; it was about the futility of subjecting a living, feeling creature to further torture with no hope of a cure or relief. I never questioned having the dog destroyed at that point; I only questioned how much she had silently suffered after the second operation and whether we should have done that much.
Clearly, today, this moment, LITF is not at any point that far advanced. If the horse has only brief, fleeting moments of discomfort due to his condition, then by all means, he should be allowed to enjoy the life he has left. If treatments could reasonably result in a long-term cure and caused only some discomfort, then it would be worth pursuing, just as it's the right thing to do to perform any veterinary procedure which has a decent chance of curing the patient. But if all you're doing is causing discomfort for a small delay of the inevitable, it becomes questionable whether it should be pursued.
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