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I hate to sound cold, here, but while this is a good dog, it is still just a dog. And I say this as someone who has owned several dogs, each of which I dearly loved as pets.

There comes a time in all dogs lives when we need to let go, to stop clinging, not to expensively insist on keeping them alive for our own vanity. And for every dog that we know and love, for however long, there are thousands who were put down, that would have been our friends, and we would have also loved, but never had the chance.

This article says the dog was shot five times. Yet, almost nonsensically, if you know bullet wounds, they continue to say “...he will likely not suffer any long term medical problems from the shooting.” I do not believe this for a minute.

Dogs will generally tough it out without complaint. I had one dog that got Valley Fever, and though I gave him the only medicine at the time for it, his agony was so great that he found a tree branch and chewed out one of his molars with it. Yet you would not know of his pain from his behavior.

As a last favor, I asked the veterinarian to give him a shot of morphine, so that he would have some time of painlessness prior to his being put down. But that was the extent of my vanity, wanting for his suffering to end, so he could die not in pain.

Dogs are not human children. People anthropomorphize them as being near human, and pretend that their short lives will never end. But if you have a family, a human family, you must accept that while you love your dog, they are expendable. Your family is not.

The dog might be noble and heroic as all get out, but if you want to impoverish your family to honor your dog, your priorities are wrong. I will not criticize this family for accepting that they cannot pay for their dog, and I question the motives of those who would go to such lengths to preserve him.

Say that all his surgeries cost $10,000. Imagine how much better this money could have been used for other dogs. Perhaps to offset the cost of spaying and neutering, or even buying food for animals in “no kill” shelters.

I think that everyone in my family, children included, would have scraped up every cent we could to have been able to have even a few more months with our sweet Emma; whom we had to put down 7 days ago. Knowing there was little we could do to ease the pain she was suffering from liver failure - each of us is in tears several times throughout the day.

It sickens me that humans can easily throw away these selfless, sinless animals due to costs adding up.

Don’t freaking adopt them in the first place.

I truly believe that how people regard their animals is very indicative of how they value their fellow humans.