We’re all well aware by now that we should be careful what we wish for. And yet, it looks like we’re about to invent a daily pill to make dogs live longer anyway.
Developed by San Francisco-based biotech startup Loyal, the drug LOY-002 is moving through the regulatory process and is on track to receive conditional approval by the end of the year.
On paper, at first glance, our pets lasting longer seems like a lovely idea: too good to be true. We adore them. They absolutely become members of our families, and it’s devastating when we lose them. But part of growing up is eventually being forced to acknowledge that you don’t actually wish it could be Christmas every day, because then it wouldn’t be special. Delaying your pet’s death misses the point.
Pets are meant to die. It’s an intrinsic part of the deal. That’s one aspect of why it’s so good for kids to grow up with them – to teach them about loss as (no offence, Rover) in a best-case scenario, it will be their first experience of it. Pets enrich your existence, show you unconditional love (well, not cats obviously) and move on, having taught you a profound lesson. Like a little four-legged Mary Poppins.
Grief is the price we pay for love, and death is all that’s certain apart from taxes – you can hear these famous cliches over and over, and accept them as truth, but until you go through it for yourself you don’t truly understand.
When my childhood cat Coco went to the great cushion in front of the fireplace in the sky, I genuinely believed I would never get over it. Perfect storm-wise, at school we’d recently learned about Queen Victoria endlessly mourning Prince Albert and wearing black for the rest of her life, so I even had a grief role model. I simply did not see how I could ever be happy again. Spoiler alert, etc.
Now we have two cats, who are both about to be 12. Ever since he’s been able to speak, my 10-year-old son has blown out the candles on his birthday cake and wished that they will live for ever. Every year, my reaction to that heartbreakingly sweet, extremely understandable desire becomes a little more realist, in a hopefully age-appropriate way.
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I dread the day we have to say goodbye to them (admittedly less so at the moment, as one has started waking me up at 4am every morning, on the dot, like he has a watch). But I’m also determined to try my best to handle it as well as possible.
We are so bad at death and grief generally as a society, so weird about it, I would love to set my kid on a path of being able to deal with it. Who can forget Richard E Grant recounting how his friends of 25 years crossed the street and pretended not to see him after his wife died? Presumably they didn’t mean to be cruel, but just didn’t know what to say, and panicked. I want my son to know what to say.
However I’m currently haunted (pun not intended/Freudian slip) by a post I read on Fesshole, the social media account where people confess their sins anonymously. It said: “Vet here, if you bring in your beloved pet for it’s [sic] final time and you walk out of the room, we do judge you, the fear in that pet’s eyes when you leave it is worse than the actual euthanasia. I waive the fee for owners that stay. It’s not often enough though.”
Other vets disputed this opinion in the comments but the damage was done. I’ve had to take quite a few beloved pets to the vet for their final time – apparently cats rarely die on their own and usually need to be put out of their misery, brilliantly stubborn to the end. I have never been brave enough to stay.
Obviously I didn’t chuck them out of the car window with the engine still running or anything – there was a lengthy, tearful farewell speech and cuddling. But still, I feel awful now. I suppose it’s about progress, not perfection – I will aim to do better, and be more courageous in future. Especially if my vet operates the same fee-waiving policy.
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