Pajiba

Christ, Dustin, that is AWFUL. I had a kitten suddenly start seizing and die on our living room floor. That sucked in itself, but then the vet thought it would be a good idea to start the autopsy with my entire family in the room. I was seven at the time. Hate vets to this very day.

Ok but remember you asked for it.

Last March, my daughter and I were sitting in our front driveway with our Wheaten Terrier in my lap. Two huge pit bulls came into our yard and made a beeline for Hannah. I stood up as fast as I could and tried to snatch her out of their way, but they were too fast. I yelled at my daughter to run in the house and call 911 and to NOT open the front door no matter what, and she did that, sobbing and screaming.

I tried to fight off the dogs as they mauled my 18 pound terrier right in front of me. I can't get the sounds she made out of my head. The police showed up quickly and got the two pit bulls away from her and we took her to an emergency animal hospital but they had torn out her throat. The vet put her to sleep in front of us.

Needless to say, we were a mess as a family for a long time. It wasn't just a pet death but a bloody violent one right in front of us. My daughter listened to my screams in the front yard the whole time. We slept in the same room for a while, couldn't go in the front yard for a while. The pits, as it turned out, had attacked another dog before that, but it was bigger and lived. This time he was charged, the city slapped thousands of dollars in fines on him and put down his dogs as a danger to the community. At the trial they showed the post-mortem pics of Hannah and I had to identify them while on the stand.

We won't ever get another dog. They just die and break your heart. She was my constant buddy.

My cat had a litter of kittens one time, and my little sister, about 4 or 5 at the time, picked one up and hugged it to death. Afterward, completely oblivious to the carnage, she covered up the baby kitty with a blanket and went merrily along her way.

Yeah, she wasn't informed of this until like last year....

Oh geez Theresa, I can totally see why. That's awful!

jesus h. christ, Dustin. are you trying to incite some sort of mass-catharsis in all of us with this?

I'm already afraid i'm going to end up a cat lady altogether too soon, i can't even watch that trailer for fear of it being my future unfolded before mine eyes.

we weren't allowed pets beyond some fish as children, but it was kinda traumatic to come home occasionally and find one had committed suicide and was on the basement floor.

My Godtopus, Snuggiepants - that's horrific. I'm so sorry for your family and your dog.

Dustin, this diversion sucks! Reliving pets being killed???

My younger sister wanted a chicken. We had a dog, but since we already had ducks (one of whom, I will talk about should we ever have 'most insanely brutal animal' comment diversion), it was all good.
Unfortunately, our existing dog passed away (natural causes, I promise!), and after a year or so, my parents bought a puppy.
Who, within a few weeks, had chased down and taken a bite out of the chicken. It died of shock. Dad buried it in the backyard, we told the dog off as best we could, and I guiltily enjoyed early mornings that didn't include squarking.
Three weeks after the death of the chicken, I walked outside to find a filthy, decomposing (Something was wriggling! arrggh!) chicken corpse on our back step. Also, a big hole where the chicken used to be, and a filthy puppy looking very proud of itself.
We ended up having to rebury that chicken twice. The puppy has fortunately grown out of it's corpse-excavating habit.

My in-laws had a shitzu that was old, crabby and needed a bath. The only way to get her to sit still was to feed it treats. She still freaked out, but it was manageable. Until my sister in law started screaming from the kitchen.

The dog was choking, and everyone was panicking. We cleared the airway, but she had stopped breathing, so I tried my rusty seventh grade CPR skills. I vaguely remembered the technique for babies, and that was as I found out similar to the technique for dogs. Really, there's a technique for dogs. Go figure.

So, I'm in a speeding mini-van, trying to resucitate a dog, on the way to the 24 hour vet. We were about halfway there when she died. Yeah, I got to feel her little body shudder, tense up, then relax. Among other nastier details. We took her into the vet, but he only confirmed that yes, she was dead.

The in-laws appreciated the effort, but my sister in law was convinced she'd killed the dog with a milk bone, and I ws still kind of freaked out about the whole thing. It was the second time I'd performed CPR and both times ended in death. The other time was a person though, so I'll save that story for some other comment diversion. Just keep in mind if any vital organs are gonna fail, get someone better than me.

Mine’s not sad, but still traumatic. I’ll start in the middle of the story: I was staying in a room on a Thai island for a week, and I could not get rid of this funky smell. I finally took everything out of my pack, trying to determine the source, and found it to be my muddy sneakers. Figuring I had stepped in something weird, I took them out back and scraped them off with a rock, then left them to air in the sun for the next few days.

At the end of my time on the island, it was time to catch my boat for the mainland. I had only a few minutes to go, and wore my sneakers instead of flip flops so I’d have more room in my pack. Stuck my right foot in my shoe and felt a squoosh. I froze. I picked up the shoe and shook it upside down, at which point a slimy, grayish blob fell onto the sidewalk.

Now let’s backtrack about a month, when I was living in a shared house on the mainland. We had a cat, and I should mention that, as you do in Thailand, we kept all of our shoes outside (in the sun). One day, our cat found a nest of baby rats. He killed them one by one and dragged them across the front yard until someone moved the nest. We also took the dead rats from him and tossed them—except, apparently, for one, which he left in my shoe as a present (he always liked me). That dead rat sat inside my sneaker, baking in the Thai sun for almost a month—and later, inside my pack—until I stuck my foot into it and dropped it to the sidewalk. It was completely unrecognizable by that point, but I knew what it was immediately.

What was I to do? I was hopping on one foot, screaming, “What the FUCK!! What the FUCK!!!” over and over, but I had a boat to catch. So I picked up a pamphlet, scooped up the rotted-rat-goop, tossed it in a plant, and threw the sneakers away. Then I ran, but limping, feeling like if I even put too much weight on that foot, the dead rat slime would ooze up into my body until it reached my heart and killed me.

All thanks to my loving cat who only wanted to bring me something to remember him by. There you go--hopefully that's a bright spot among all these tales of heartbreak.

Oh my god Dustin, almost the same thing happened to my dog's lover. Sheba had this romantic interest from a couple blocks away that used to jump into our yard. I heard yelping in the middle of the night and found him hanging by his front paws on our back gate. He had kicked his toenails off trying to get free. Just my mom and I were home, and we tried to get him off but we couldn't. We ended up calling the cops, who helped and the dog lived. Our gate looked like a murder had taken place.

All of my family's dogs have met untimely deaths. One got hit by a car, one (completely out of character) jumped out of a moving truck and punctured her bowel, and the dog that replaced the last one had a heart murmur, so he wasn't even going to live a full life. We lost him after only a year. Now we have a 5 year old adopted lab who we're hoping will meet a natural end, even if it means we only have her in our lives for a couple more years.

I'm with meaux on this one. Can't read anymore.
I'm definitely an animal person, and I was a vet tech for seven years, much of that in an emergency environment. I'm far from being a squeamish guy (though I saw plenty during those years that will haunt me to the end of my days), but reading traumatic pet stories just undoes me, since I have experienced them with some of my own pets; not to mention being on the treatment-side of situations like what many of you have detailed above.

My condolences for your losses.

So does penis size explain this diversion?

So, I'm guessing none of these comments will make the EE then.. What an utterly horrifying start to a godawful depressing thread. I'm gonna go find meaux and plan our minicon this weekend. The helmets are Halifax-bound...any maritimer jibans are welcome to try join in! Debauchery! Drunkenness! Anyone?
...
...
Anyone?

Grew up on a farm and we always had lots of barn cats. The cats were completely tame since there were four kids and we would play with them as kittens. One evening I went outside with my dad to finish up the chores. As soon as we open the door we heard this horrible, pained meowing. We walked around the house for a bit before finally finding the poor thing. It had been on top of the garage door when my mother had taken the car and closed it. The cat had been pinned at the top of the door with its head outside and its back end inside. We pushed the button to open the garage and the cat fell to the ground and attempted to run away. Unfourtunately its spine had been crushed and its back legs were paralyzed. It kept trying to run away dragging its useless legs behind it. Needless to say it was a heart-wrenching sight to see an animal with such a terrified look in its eyes. I wrapped it in a blanket and put it in a box while my dad got his gun. I have to put a lot of animals down, growing up on a farm, but as long as you know it has to be done it is not too hard to do. Especially in cases where you are putting something out of its misery.

(er, thread)

I'm not going to beat out anyone, especially Snugglepants, because I have no sad stories of animal deaths. But I was almost killed by a monster dog once.

It was back when I was about 8. I weighed about 80 some pounds, and was about two heads shorter than I am now, likely more. I was staying in a house of a friend of my dad's on a vacation, and this dog was enormous, jet black, and had a bark like a demon. Every time it came out, I was afraid I would be eaten, and I was afraid of dogs for years afterwards.

Even if I met it now, there'd be almost no way I could kill it, or even stop it, unarmed. And I weigh 160 pounds, and am roughly 5'10 in height. I'd need a shovel, or hopefully a shotgun, to even survive.

Oh, and you'd better believe I'd kill a dog like that if I ever saw the fucking thing again.

Holy crap people, I believe we have a heaping pile of horror movie scripts. My tale dates back to when I was 12. We had a beautiful black cat who might have had epilepsy. I say might have because we never did confirm it with a vet; blame on third-worldness. One sunny Saturday morning I went outside and peeked my head over the tall pila (an oversized concrete water basin, about 4 feet tall) that was only partially filled. There I saw the poor dead cat floating. My brave father fished him out, put him in a plastic bag and tossed him. We figured he seized, fell in but couldn't manage to get out. Needless to say, I'm terrified of drowning.

UGGH!! While on the one hand, I am very much an animal person (very, VERY much), and reading these things makes me about 10,000 sadder than watching the evening news, on the other hand, I'm compelled to read about horrible shit! For the same reasons I love horror movies. Except when it's about animals, it messes with my emotions something fierce. And yet: CAN'T... LOOK... AWAY...

Fortunately, I don't have any personal traumatic pet stories, only sad deaths from old age. Although when I was a kid, I had a fish tank where one of the fish swam down the air tube thingy and was somehow decapitated trying to get out. I was upset because he was my favorite, but I didn't dwell on his suffering.

Oh boy. My first dog lived to the ripe old age of 14 and was put down for the pain - that was bad enough. Worst was my younger brother's dog who had been rescued from the animal shelter. It took the longest time for him to just trust that we were going to pet him rather than strike him. He was finally truly happy and trusting after about four years. One day my youngest siblings found him in the fern garden at the bottom of the yard. He had been hit by a car taking a corner too fast, and somehow he had managed to drag himself back into the safe haven of our backyard before he passed away. He was buried right there. I still love dogs, but the next I get will not be the same breed as either of those two. They break my heart, still.

I had two budgies. The first was the stereotypical blue head, speckled wings variety. I wanted to name him "Pudgy". My sister liked "Pepper". Everyone except for me called him "Pudgypepper". I thought that was the most retarded name ever conceived, so I relentlessly called him "Pudgy"... until the day he died.

I live in Toronto. One day, in the dead of winter, our furnace broke down. For some reason, only me and my mom were at home. It was actually kind of fun. We both got into our sweats and then snuggled in bed with an extra duvet.

So, in the morning, imagine my guilt when I woke up, ran over to the cage, and voilà-ed the blanket off to find ol' Pudgypepper dead, frozen, on the floor.

I don't post very often, but this comment diversion is tailor made for me - so many dead animal stories, it's ridiculous. The worst and most traumatic was watching my dog's sister (who belonged to our neighbor) kill my cat by basically shaking her to death. That one, I can't make light of because it was horrific and basically, the whole neighborhood saw it happen.

But...I grew up on a farm, and basically, death was just another thing that happened.

However, at some point, a sort of black humor settles over things and you have to laugh. Take one of our old horses. She was 35, which in horse years works out to be old as dirt. Her kidneys were failing, she was blind in one eye, and basically couldn't walk anymore because she was in so much pain. So we made the decision to put her to sleep. Farmer Fred from down the road came with his back hoe and dug a hole, and then the vet came (who was four feet tall if he was lucky), lead the old dear to the hole and gave her the shot. Well, she had a reaction to the shot - not only did she have a massive seizure that basically caused her to rear up involuntarily and fall on her back, twitching on the ground, but she almost killed the vet by falling on him. He ended up having to give her 3 times the normal amount of drugs to finally put her out, an by that time, she was abotu 20 feet from the hole. Farmer Fred tied some chains around her legs and dragged her into the hole. Needless to say it was a hideous, traumatizing, and yet somehow comical undertaking.

The vet didn't charge us.

Sometimes pets just seem like nasty little sociological experiments to prepare children for death. I've got two stories of note:

1.) Hamsters are FUCKED UP. Did you know that they eventually turn into territorial cannibals and start killing and eating each other? I went a little batshit on the Habitrails (sp?) when I was a kid and at one point had about 8 hamsters inhabiting my Habitrail kingdom. Until they all ended up killing one another. I was eventually left with one hamster who I let wander my room without a cage; she eventually chewed through a screen on the window and plunged to her death 2 stories below. Suicide? Or...MURDER?

2.)The really messed up one though is when I was about 6 years old we moved into a house that had an alley cat living in the garage that we adopted. She was pregnant and had her kittens and we were thrilled until the little beebees started dying one by one and we couldn't figure out why. Y'all ready for this? The kittens were born without assholes. WITHOUT ASSHOLES!

I personally don't like being without assholes, hence my addiction to Pajiba.

After college when the missus and I were settling down and looking to get our first pet, we went to the local humane society and got a young cat. The cat was perfectly fine for about 5 days or so, and then stopped eating. After a few days of no eating and becoming more and more lethargic, we took the cat to the vet. They put her on IVs to sustain her, and eventual diagnosed her with feline panleukopenia - basically cat leukemia - which is as contagious between cats as the common cold. It is supposed to be extremely rare, and cats almost never survive it.

Two weeks after we adopted the cat we had to put her down.

The vet told us to clean anything the cat had used with a bleach solution, or get rid of it altogether, and still wait another six months before getting another cat.

7 months later we got another cat. It was behaving perfectly fine at the humane society and and for the first day when we got it home. The next day it stopped eating. This time we didn't wait and went immediately to the vet. Same disease. Same result.

Seems the humane society itself had a horrible outbreak of the disease. The vet told us this disease was so rare that in his 20-year career he had only seen 4 or 5 cases of it, but in that 6 months or so he had seen 2 dozen cases of it.

We never went to that humane society again.

Wow, what a horrible idea for a comment diversion. No offense.

So time to divert from the diversion...

Did anyone else think that the "youngish" cat lady was kinda hot? Maybe not hot, but definitely date-able. Plus, her self-esteem is probably non-existent so you could treat her like crap and it wouldn't ever matter.

When I was in college, I worked full time. It was tough and I was tired a lot. One Saturday morning, after having been up for 36 hours, I came home wiped and ready for some sleep. As I was climbing the steps up to my apartment I was distracted by this loud, plaintive meowing. It was the most sorrowful sound I had ever heard. It was haunting.

I turned around and headed back out to the parking lot to find where it was coming from. When I did, I saw one of the most pathetic sights I'd ever seen--a tiny white kitten, stained brown with mud, shivering, crawling through a puddle, mewing for it's lost mother.

It must have been only a couple weeks old and it's eyes weren't yet open. It wasn't just shivering, it was displaying more of a full body shudder...spasms of cold, and hunger, and fear.

I won't lie. I had a mini crisis of conscience. I knew that kitten would die if I left it. I also knew that I was overextended with real life concerns, in every possible way. I just didn't think I had the time or energy to try to save this sad little life.

But of course I had to try anyway, didn't I? I decided that I just wasn't the kind of person who would turn away. So, I picked up the little guy--he fit in the palm of my hand, with room to spare--and I took him inside to see what I could do.

It wasn't easy. It was six weeks of bottle feeding. It was weekly visits to the vet to make sure he was gaining weight appropriately. It was trips home between classes and on dinner breaks to feed him.

For those first six weeks, little Luke's universe consisted mostly of an old bathtub, where a stuffed animal squirrel was his surrogate mother, and I his surrogate father.

He was a skittish little guy...afraid of every new sound and situation. But, that fear seemed to evaporate once he saw that I was there. He would immediately perk up, tail straight in the air, and he'd mew hello. I was always amazed at the change in demeanor I'd observe, each time he realized he was no longer alone.

I think that what I remember most is that change, and the contrast--between that scared shivering kitten I found, and the content purring one that would fall asleep nestled in my arm as I fed him each night.

Luke is 10 years old now and is asleep beside me as I type this. I find him waiting for me at the front door each day when I get home from work. He still seems happy to see me.

Well, I won't be adding to this diversion, no way in hell. But I couldn't participate in the humiliating sexual encounter diversion, either, because I'm just so damn good in bed.

Sorry, we all need a little humor after reading these stories.

Oh God, this is a horrible, horrible thread and like many others I now must avoid it. But first, Snuggiepants? I am more sorry than I can say for the loss of your Hannah. All of the stories I have read have saddened and horrified me but yours really touched me. Perhaps because we have a Hannah dog ourselves? I don't know. But I can't imagine how frightened you must have been and I want to say how terribly brave I think you are for trying to save your Hannah.

Anyway, I won't be reading anymore. Despite the fact that I work in a vet office and have seen more horrible things that people do to their animals than I care to remember; I am still a complete and utter pussy when it comes to animal deaths and traumatic stories and stories like these haunt me for years.

Can we maybe next time do a "wonderful pet story" evening comment diversion? Now that one I can get down with.

Oh my god... I could only get through a couple comments before I felt like killing myself. And to think I was going to post about my runaway kitten.

I am so sorry to everyone who has a story for this diversion. I cannot read them.

I'm going to hell for the number of tropical fish I've given cancer. A watery hell in a small glass tank in which the temperature fluctuates wildly for no good reason and everything has caught some deforming disease.

Not necessarily pets, but there was a bird nest in a planter on the (higher than average, our house is attached to a motel) second story porch of my house. Baby birds born, mother tries to get them out of the nest one by one, weren't ready, every single one died on the pavement.

This is an odd time for this diversion, since my friend's boss and all around amazing guy almost lost his dog in an accident today. Here's a bit of uplifting news though, for all us poor souls. From the accident, the city police officers told him they could not transport his severely injured dog, and he was about twenty minutes away. He says fine, he'll get there and gets on the highway. His vehicle is an enooormous truck and he had his flashers, high beams, and one of those flashing orange lights you can put on top going, and passed a poilice officer going 140 miles per hour in a 65. Cop obviously immediately pulls him over and he gets out of the truck (big no-no, typically) and the cop tells him to get back in the truck. He lifts his hands up and says "I'm going to get my license out of my pocket very slowly. My car's registration is in the glove compartment. My dog was just hit by a car and the biddeford cops said they can't transport him to the vet. I don't care if you need to give me a ticket, that's fine, but no matter what I'm leaving right now." The cop hands him his license and says "Go." And my friend's boss gets in his car and is up to 90 in seconds, and the cop followed him with his blue lights on until he reached the next town, where he promptly turned off onto a different road and let him go. Luckily, Bear (huuuge puppy) is going to be okay. :)

This diversion is kind of totally sick, until I think back to my own childhood and think about how nonchalant animal death was. Like some other posters, I grew up on a farm and we had a cat. That cat would have kittens like every year, and every year a goodly number of kittens would die in horrible ways and we found find them all over the farm. I mean, seriously, it was like a kitten horror movie where they would all go out, one-by-one in different ways--drowning, farming equipment death, horse-stepping-on one death, tomcat, foxes, dogs carrying them off or just killing them.

Oh, and now I don't believe in pets. Animals are for utilitarian purposes only!

I am crying now. This is such a terrible thread for an animal lover slash masochist. Fuck you, Dustin. Fuck you so much.

Parvo is the WORST. There is nothing you can do short of spending ten thousand dollars and hoping the dog is one of the 2% or whatever that survives.

A friend of mine is a Vet Tech, and when it's Parvo time (every year around this time, actually), she has to leave her sneakers at work, strip in the entryway of her house, and show before even LOOKING at her dogs. I could never, ever do that job.

Oh man. I've got some

5th grade. We had a dwarf rabbit that we kept in a pen with a removable top. My dad had just put the rabbit back in and was pushing the top closed just as the rabbit tried to jump back out. The result was a broken neck and dead bunny. Poor Hunny.

7th grade. My parents came home from bowling one night, my dad rather tipsy. My father, drunk dope he is, walked in with a big grin on his face to my 12 year old self and 17 year old sister.
"Guess what?"
"What?"
"Cutie is dead" Cutie was our beagle mix.
"WHATT???" We screeched, starting to cry
Again, stupid grin on his face, he continues "Yeah, she got out of the gate when we came home
and ran across the street. All of a sudden I hear this 'thump thump!'"
Thanks, Dad!

Ugh. I volunteer at a shelter now and today sat with a dog before she was put to sleep. Horrible, horrible experience.

I have more stories about terrible owners that do shit things to their dogs than anything from shelter work.

Like a sweet, big lug of a pit bull in the shelter right now who was tied to a park bench and abandoned. He remained there for two days through the worst storm my city has seen in years with tornadoes moving through. Awesome.

Or the pit/shar pei mix thrown out of a moving car while his owners laughed. The couple driving behind them picked him up and brought him in.

Or all the 9,10,11,16!!! year old dogs abandoned by their lifelong owners.

Ah christ, I can barely type. I recently spent over a thousand dollars I never had trying to save my cat Valentino. I did everything I could, except apparently get him to the vet early enough (Oh I so understand and sympathize over the pain of not being able to afford treatments/surgeries).

I had a great vet (a cheapie, but he was in it for the animals, not the owners) and he came to my house and put him to sleep on my bed. My cat rallied and looked at me with fear and upset at the end, and I'm still gutted. SO. MUCH.

I swear to god, I loved that cat more than my significant other. What a doll he was.

I've always been the one to put the pets down in my family, but it will never be easy. The only thing that has ever rivaled it was trying to resuscitate my much-loved father-in-law.

If I can gather myself in a bit, I'll write about the only slightly humorous event I could tell about...the night of the 36 gerbils. And to lighten what I typed out, I had two family cats, mine since I was six months old, Olliver and his mom Tara, and they lived to 19 and 25 respectively. There is a chance for luck in this pet thing, so have a hope if you are holding your tight right now.

I once had to drive for more than 4 hours as my German Shepherd's respiratory tract and whole head swelled to the size of a Buick because there wasn't ONE. FUCKING. 24 hour vet around to advice me that she was having an allergic reaction to some lizard or something she had eaten (my dogs kill AND EAT.... anything that dares step into our yard).

A pharmacist at Walgreen's told me to shoot up her up with 10ccs of Benadryl.

She lived and I cried like a little girl.

It's a decent person who can love a stray dog, feel outrage at some poor creature's needless suffering or reach out to wounded pets and people, to heal them, ease them on, or just be with them while they hurt. The best are strong enough to keep doing it.

Scratch a cynic, and you'll find an idealist who still sees the world clear. "Scathing reviews for bitchy people" come from banged-up romantics, battered but unbowed (and unashamed of descending into the occasional cliche.)

I almost cried at work..

Thnx Dustin, you Bastard!

I was about 12 when I watched 3 stray dogs rip a cat into pieces. That picture is now in my mind, never forgotten it.

I vote that we never let Dustin revieuw a Bay film again. Never. Ever. Who knows how far he wil go next time? "Your favorite nuclear disaster?"

My "best" cat death was that One Big Cat you grow up with. In the end his hind legs were paralyzed, but the vet lived in our street, so she came by. We put him to sleep with the whole family, in the sun in the garden, and burried him on his favorite spot under a tree.
It broke my heart, but he had a good life.

Now i'm going to have a sigarette and a little cry outside.
Grouphug

I totally should have read this properly before posting, seeing as most of the other comments are heartbreaking. I take it back! I love all animals! I don't have any anymore, promise!

WHAT THE HELL is up with all the horrible animal stories lately? I was just saying to the bf last night that I feel like every day I am hearing about another one. A puppy gets flushed down the toilet. My friend posted something on facebook about finding a beaten and shot dead dog in a bag on the side of the road. A local kennel was shut down and animals taken to shelters. A psychopath was just arrested for "serial cat killing".
And now this comment diversion.
Seriously...make it stop. I have to change the channel whenever these suffering animal stories come on, otherwise I'm a sobbing mess and can't function b/c I can't get the images out of my brain. I've had to change the news channel more times than I can count this week.
It's like when I donate to animal rescue groups...I can't actually look at the websites or literature because it's just too damn hard.
I can't read this thread. I just wanted to vent b/c it's starting to make me crazy.

When I was a kid I lived on a hobby farm adjacent to my grandparents' hobby farm. My grandparents owned the barn at the back of my house, and in that barn lived the world's nastiest Banty rooster. He'd strut around the fields doing his thing and I'd give him a wide, wide berth.

One day I arrived home from my dance lesson and decided to lay out the foundation for a fort at the side of the barn. Then as I was laying out my basement (ambitious fort) the fucking nasty bugger came ripping around the corner and began cawing and flapping his wings in cock fighting-style anger. I freaked and fell onto my butt, at which point the Banty rushed me and tore off my boot. I burned back to my grandparents' house, tears streaming down my face, bootless, and told them the whole story. Then my grandfather, who was really the most gentle man in the world, grabbed his shotgun, walked down to the barn and put one right between the Banty's eyes.

My grandparents didn't believe in wasting anything, so the Banty was promptly cleaned, packed into a Mom's Margarine container and frozen for future consumption. Nasty!

I can't believe I actually read all the way to the bottom. And endless pit of heartbreak and sorry, it is.

I don't have any stories ending in animal death, thank god, but I do have a traumatic one where my family's dog got hit by a car, but lived to tell the tale, and now has mostly metal hind legs. I've told the full story on another thread here so I won't type it all again. He's a good doggy.

My wife's dog is a little shit-head Dachshund. Serious attitude problem, and we've tried everything they recommend to get her to behave. It's just not going to happen, we've realized.

Anyway, she likes to destroy things, and eat pretty much whatever she wants. Three times now she has gotten into my wife's purse or my bag, and eaten a whole pack of Orbit gum.

For those in the know, Orbit gum contains xylitol, which is extremely fatal to dogs. A dog the size of mine can get liver failure from just a couple pieces.

Three times now I have had to force either hydrogen peroxide or ipecac (vet recommended, of course) down my dog's throat so she can vomit up the gum. The first time was bad, with her squirming and fighting and generally disagreeing with the whole procedure. The second and third time were each exponentially worse than the first, because she knew what was coming and was going to fight it. Even with gloves on she was able to shred my fingers trying to hold her mouth open, and I have scars on my arms from her trying to kick and scratch me.

It's a horrible, horrible thing to have to do, but it's much better than watching her die a slow agonizing death due to organ failure.

Now I leave all my gum at work.

This didn't happen to me, thank Christ, but to someone I know:

My friend was an accomplished rider, and spent three quarters of her life at a breeding facility for prize-winning Hanoverian riding horses. After years of working at the stables for free, the owner gifted her with a beautiful filly, who she raised until the age of three, when she began working on the basics of saddle riding with her. Appperently, the filly took to it well, and grew into a magnificent young mare with a lot of show potential. Two days before her first big show, my friend took the horse out into the ring just to trot her around a bit and get aquainted with the area. Apparently, in the midst of trotting around the track, completely out of the blue, the horse had some sort of violent embolism, reared back completely, spraying gouts of blood out of her mouth and nose, soaking anyone nearby, and crashed down almost on top of my friend.The filly seized and died on the track before anyone could get a gun or a vet to put her down. My friend still has problems even looking at horses.

My own sad pet story is not nearly so dramatic, but was still horrifying to me when it happened. I was about twelve, and had a betta fish named Pippen, whom I loved, and was convinced was smarter than the average fish (he totally was). Good pet owner that I was, I took him down to the kitchen one evening to wash his bowl, which was uneventful. I left him sitting in his spanky clean bowl that night on the kitchen counter, and came down the next morning, started a load of dishes in the dishwasher, and went on my way. That afternoon I came back to find Pippen's bowl empty. As betta fish have a nasty habit of jumping out of their bowls, I looked everywhere, but coulden't find him. Upset, but figuring he had died during the school day and my parents had flushed him, I started to unload the dishwasher. Pippen was stuck inside the silverware compartment, cooked and flash-dried by the dish dryer cycle. Apparently in the night he had jumped out of his bowl and flopped into the open dishwasher, where he was washed along with everything else. I cried all afternoon, and was convinced I was going to hell for accidently murdering my fish.

Holy shit. I can't even read all the comments at work because I am tearing up.

I have a couple different stories. I grew up on a farm, and we had lots of animals, and lots of horrible animal deaths. The only one I will even mention has probably happened to some of you...may even be in comments above....I'll keep that short.

Winter=Cold. Cat=Cold. Engine=Warm. Cat gets up into engine to get warm, goes to sleep. Dad starts car on Sunday morning to go to church. Horrible scream from inside engine as cat is ripped apart. Dad opens engine to find mutilated kitty just as 8 year old me walks out to the car...needless to say I did NOT go to church that day. Kitty joined many others in pet cemetery by the barn.

2 more recent events....my oldest daughter was about 4. We wanted to get a pet, so we adopted an adorable puppy from the local shelter. She named him Cookie. Cookie came home with us, and temporarily moved into a box, with a blanket, a stuffed bear with a wind-up clock inside, and some food. Brittany would take Cookie out and cuddle him, and we would take him outside to run in the sunshine. But, Cookie never really wanted to run. As a couple of days went by, his eyes got cloudy and runny, he coughed and wouldn't eat or drink. We took him to the vet and discovered he had kennel cough from the poor conditions in our local shelter. There was nothing we could do, so the vet put Cookie to sleep. We had him about a week, and Brittany, now 22, still talks about Cookie.

Just a couple of years ago, my younger 2 children wanted an unusual pet, so they each got a pet rat. I know, RATS!!! But, honestly, they were wonderful pets. Kate and Sara were friendly--you could pick them up and carry them, we trained them to do tricks, they even nuzzled your neck. They never bit anyone and were really fairly clean. They make great pets.
However, as they aged, they started to bicker. They had lived together, but we had to separate them. They both continued to live happily in their own separate cages for quite some time, but after living with us for about 3 years, they started to slow down and show signs of deterioration. We found Steven's rat, Sara, dead in her cage one morning, and had a very nice funeral that evening. Amanda's rat, Kate, lived some time longer. But eventually she started to have seizures. We knew the end was coming, and Amanda took her out of her cage to hold her as she continued to seize. She seized so severely that she fell out of Amanda's hands. Amanda was in tears, nearly hysterical. Finally, Kate died in her hands. I hope I never again have to see the heartbreak that was on my 11 year daughter's face that night.

The day before Mother's Day last month, I let our two dogs out to greet my mother when she got home from the store. The car had something wrong with it--the key wouldn't come out of the ignition. My mom let her dog into the car, but didn't see mine, and when she slammed the door closed during an attempt to get the damned key to come out, she slammed my dog's head in the door.

I heard her say, "Oh, God, Shika!" and I ran out to see what had happened. I had just gotten out of bed, and I was still wearing my nightgown. Shika, a four pound chihuahua, and one of the most loving and grateful dogs you could ever hope to meet, was writhing on the ground with blood gushing out of her ears. We scooped her up and drove straight to the nearest vet--which happens to be the town's 24-hour emergency vet. I was holding her, and I felt it when she died--just one last quiet breath and no more. We brought her in anyway, and I ended up standing in the vet's in a blood-soaked nightgown with no shoes on, sobbing and waiting to be told I was wrong and she'd be ok, it was just going to cost a lot.

The vet gave her two adrenaline shots, tried to clear her airway...there was nothing they could do. She was gone when we got there. They cleaned her up for us and sent her back home, and didn't even charge us a penny.

She was a foundling, and she was always terrified that we were going to give her away. Now she's buried in the front yard, and she never, ever has to worry about leaving us.

Not a week later, my cat was sick. I'd found him as a three or four week old kitten, and raised him. He'd never been very healthy, and he had these gimpy legs because they'd been broken and healed before I ever even found him.

I took him to the vet on Tuesday. I'd go every day, and he'd sit in my lap for hours, just snuggled up close. I kept waiting for a turn around, for some kind of good news, but on Thursday night, right about midnight, I got a call from the vet. He had died all alone, just a few hours after I left for the night, and after I'd been wondering if I should go back because he had taken a turn for the worse and needed me. It was the Friday before Memorial Day. The month of May this year sucked ass.

I buried him with a pint of his favorite ice cream. He was only seven years old, and I'm still a little lost without him.

Worst. Diversion. Ever....

Having lost one of my furchildren to cancer this past weekend, this is a tough one for me. I won't talk about her, but here's a slightly melancholy tale about a lost kitten.

Many moons ago, I was living in Italy. My wife and I had a ground-floor apartment, which we had fitted with a screen door and a home-made catflap (because such basic inventions seem not to have made it to the little town where we lived). We took three cats with us to Italy- which is why we needed the catflap.

For those of you unfamiliar with the boot-shaped peninsula, Italy is literally sinking into the Med under the weight of all the stray cats. There are zillions of cats- mostly strays- roaming around Italy, and a seacoast town (such as the one where we lived) attracted even more, because of the fish markets. Many Italians take the trouble to put food out for the cats, but otherwise pay little attention to them.

Our three cats immediately took pains to notify the local strays that they were the new bosses in town, so most of the usual cat problems never materialized while we were there. We took to lowering the persiana blinds over the door to the top of the catflap, so our cats could come and go as they pleased at night. I got up one morning to go to work, and walked into the kitchen to get breakfast. As soon as I turned on the light, I heard a little screech, and saw a small, fuzzy rear end disappearing out the catflap.

Being wise in the ways of kittens, I stayed put and purred at the doorway, hoping to get a response. When a reply did come, however, it was at my feet. A soft mrrow? caught my ear and made me look down. Sitting on the kitchen floor, literally between my feet, was a small tabby kitten. He stared back at me with no sign of fear and curled his tail in front of his paws.

I shook my head, then reached down and picked him up. He immediately started purring and kneading on my shirt. I was now officially hooked. I promptly named him "Muttonhead", and carried him into the bedroom, where I woke up the wife and handed her the newest addition to the family. I ended up being late to work, but that was cool.

Muttonhead was with us for three weeks. He charmed me, my wife, and even our original three cats. He slept with us, met me at the door when I came home from work, and escorted me to the door when I was leaving for work. We took him to the nearest vet (about a two hour drive to the south) for his shots and other care, gave him a collar and tags, and generally made him one of the family.

One afternoon, my wife called me at work. Muttonhead was suddenly very sick. I left immediately, and we hauled ass to the veterinarian. Muttonhead coughed and choked and mewled piteously the whole trip. He died shortly after the vet started examining him. The vet said he had probably been fed strychnine, which was how some Italians dealt with the unending tide of cats.

He was only with us for three weeks, but he left a huge hole in our lives when he was gone. I missed him, the wife missed him, and our other cats spent days searching for him, calling softly at his usual sleeping and hiding places.

I still miss him, more than ten years later.

Good God, dudes! Alright, my dead pet stories are nothing compared to you guys. Condolences, all.

Starting my morning by reading ever one of these posts may not have been the pick me up I needed, given that I'm practically in tears. However, pktechguy, wins the cake for the only story that made me smile too. I like traumatic pet stories with happy endings.

Ok, so I couldn't read anyone elses. I know I would cry. For the hell of it I'll give you my worst pet story;

December 08 - My husband and I had been doing IVF, and had just undergone retrevial from what had been a horrible cycle. I was waiting at work to find out how the 4 eggs that we got were doing. I had waited most of the day to find out that everything had failed...I left work hysterical.

I came home and let the dog outside. I went upstairs and got out of my scrubs, and get into something confortable so I could eat ice cream and cry my sorrows away. I came back to let the dog in and say hello to my two ferrets in their cage by the door - as was my routine.

It was then I saw him laying in the litter, gasping for breath. My 7 year old ferret - the frist pet my husband and I ever owned, lay dying in his litter. I freaked...Calling my husband, I couldnt remember the vets number, I hung up and went to the car - the ferret in my arms - I'm HOWLING. I Drove to the vet - the ferret barely breathing.

My husband never made it to say good-bye, so I had him euthanized by my self. I felt horrible and I held him for an hour.

When I got home, the dog had puked all over the carpet. I had to go out to get a carpet cleaner...please keep in mind im wearing monkey pants and an oversized gap sweater - and Ive been balling. I got the cleaner and came home to find my husband crying in the garage.

I rank that day up there in the worst day ever stories..

I've read all of these, which I probably should not have done. Some of these stories are way horrible. Far far worse than mine. But it does seem cathartic to talk about it.

My aunt found our dog wandering by the side of the road in North Carolina. She'd always been someone who saved dogs and cats, and so she lured our Arrow into her dog with some food and took her to the vet. It turned out that Arrow was the sweetest dog that actually ever existed, and my aunt kept her. We all loved her more than anything in the world, and about a year after rescuing her, my aunt gave Arrow to us. Our family had had difficulty finding a dog that suited our lifestyle (basically, lazy and always in the car) and Arrow was perfect for us, as she was essentially a big lazy cat. She was a border collie/husky mix and she was gorgeous. We always joked she was our supermodel, and everyone loved her. I have one friend who hates dogs, and she proclaimed that Arrow was the only dog she ever liked.

Anyways, we had Arrow for a few years before I went off to college in the UK. I missed Arrow terribly, and I had a picture of her by my bed. Every time my parents came to pick me up from the airport, Arrow was in the car. Once, she apparently peed herself she was so excited to see me.

This year, about a week before I was due to come home for Christmas, I got a call from my dad. He said that he didn't want me to worry, but that Arrow was a bit sick. I called my aunt (Arrow was visiting her other mom at the time) and asked what was wrong. She just started bawling and said that Arrow had stomach cancer and she had a massive tumor in her abdomen and that she was in surgery just then but the chances weren't good. We'd had no idea anything was wrong. She died on the operating table.

I still cry about her. She was my best friend, and I never got to say goodbye. It worries me that she thought I had abandoned her when I went off to university. I know she was a dog, and probably didn't think anything of it, but I still worry. I wish I'd been there to tell her how much I loved her, and how much she meant to me. I don't believe in an afterlife, but I wish I do, and I wish that Arrow would be there, chilling and playing with our recently deceased cat (and her friend too) Mr. Bigglesworth.

Stupid animals. Why can't they just live as long as us?

This comment diversion made the Thanksgiving sandwich I purchased for lunch completely bland and soggy.

Later, as I was driving home from work and thinking of stray kitten legs under my desk, my sister called to tell me a great story she was was certain I would appreciate--our favorite family dinner conversation topics include "what would people taste like?", "would people be nearly as good as muppet?", etc.

Last night she helped cremate her friends' dog in her new fire pit.

Yes, the fire was hot enough. Yes, dog meat smells tasty. Nope, the only thing left was a jawbone.

sister: Why aren't you more excited?
me: I'm sorry. Any other day...
sister: Whatever, when are you coming to our next fire pit party? We'll have tons of food! We can grill!

Wow, I'm really late to this party. My brother gave me a cat he had rescued from his workplace. Brother worked for a chicken distribution warehouse, and refrigerated trucks came and went all the time. Apparently this cat had stowed away in the refrigerated tractor trailer, and rode in from Mississippi to Alabama.When my brother went to take the frozen meat off the truck with the pallet jack, he ran over the cat and broke his leg. Brother tried to adopt this cat himself, but the cat was too crazy to live with the cat my mom and brother already had, so I took him.

Given the traumatic life the cat had had, he was understandably skittish all his life. It took a long time to domesticate him, and he often hid under the bed. After a while, I noticed he wasn't eating, and was losing a lot of weight. I took him to the vet and he was determined to have feline leukemia. By that time, the cat was in such distress that the vet euthanized him then. It was the first time I had an animal die since I was grown.('Cause mom had taken care of sick pet issues then.) I felt guilty about missing how sick he had become. I'm a nurse, and I thought I should have been more observant and aware of kitty's condition. The vet assured me that cats hide their weaknesses, and it was not surprising that I didn't realize how sick he had become. Feline leukemia is fatal, so it would not have made any difference in the long run.