The Last Walk

The Last Walk

This is a very thoughtful and thorough book, including a lot of references. It's well written, but it's painful to read because the topic is the againg and progress towards death of your dog (and many of same issues are relevant to your own aging and progress towards death).

The author, Jessica Pierce, kept a diary of what she suspected would be the last year of her dog Ody's life. There are chapters on topics like pain, quality of life, hospice, the blue syringe. Ody's last year was more difficult because he was an anxious dog by nature and this combined with rear end neurological problems (rear legs weak and often failing him) made his life and lives of his people difficult. It's a good illustration of how the dog's temperament and personality can affect his quality of life and affect what kind of help owners are able or willing to give. eg he would try to bite, but since he had essentially no teeth left, that was less of a problem than it would be normally.

This book that makes you ask many many questions. knowing that there is no one set of answers for all. We all have to struggle for the best and most honest answers for ourselves and our own dogs.

• One might also read this together with "How We Die" by Stewart Nuland MD, which is about the natural roads towards death for humans. The kinds of suffering involved towards the end stages, something humans can talk about and thus communicate to other humans. One has to assume similar suffering for a dog or cat in same medical stage of same diseases. The message is that peaceful dying is rare. Unfortunately in most countries and almost all states of the USA, we humans are not allowed to get our doctors to give us the same merciful release and peaceful death that we are allowed to obtain for our beloved dogs.