Andrew Bolt: Here I am, pushed into playing God, and I can’t stand it

How does God manage this business, deciding who must die – and when? There has been no more agonising issue for my wife and I than whether to have our faithful old dog with dementia, put down.

I am pushed into playing God and I can’t stand it, writes Andrew Bolt.

It started again last night, well after midnight, and now from our living room. The howling, again and again, like a soul in despair.

Again I got up to check it out.

This time our oldest dog, Kees, now 14, had somehow rolled his hindquarters under the coffee table, and seemed totally convinced and dismayed he was stuck.

The time before, 4.30am last Monday, he’d just been howling at the dark, and then at me when I turned on the light. Rubbing his ears – his favourite – didn’t help.

I now lifted him to his four paws and put his dinner, barely touched, before him again.

He stumbled for the door, I thought to do his toileting. Instead, he hooked a left and did a wobbly lap of the dining table before heading towards our bedroom.

I pointed him back at the door and he just managed to get outside before emptying his bladder.

Andrew Bolt's dog, Kees.

And so here I am, pushed into playing God, and I can’t stand it.

How does God manage this business, deciding who must die – and when?

For my wife and me, there has been no more agonising issue these past two months than whether to have Kees, the keeshond, put down. I write about the danger of the Voice, and the farce of this country running short of electricity, but none of that worries me more than my dog.

Kees went totally deaf last year. Now he has dementia.

Two weeks ago I took Kees and our other dog, Ralf, for a walk – a very slow one – and Kees twice lost sight of me and seemed to forget why he was there. Both times he turned back for home until I stood right before him.

The days when Kees had doggie fun are long gone. No more play-bows with us or Ralf. No more hide and seek, or fetch the toy. No more sniffing posts and trees – checking for doggie emails – on his walks.

But worse is that howling, punctuated by barks. It usually starts around 5.30am, and tapers off with breakfast. It starts again around 4pm and ends with dinner. In between, he mostly sleeps, but the Sunday before last the noise was non-stop, almost all day.

The howling at night got so bad that we’ve lately left him to sleep in the lounge and not by our bed.

Yet look today! We got our daughter to come down – maybe say her goodbyes and forgive us if we give Kees the forever sleep – and suddenly he looks almost alert and sleepily content. No howling.

So what do we do?

Have you ever been in this position? You’d know this is much harder than simply deciding whether your dog would be happier dead.

Kees in the sand with another dog.

For a start, dogs don’t think that way. Humans do. I’ve never known a dog to try to kill themselves in despair, unless you count a dying dog going off its food.

No, we’re really thinking for them, and imposing on our dog our human notions of a good life.

But there’s something scarily more.

When we wonder whether it’s time to take Kees to the vet for you-know-what, we don’t just think how awful we’ll feel losing a dog that’s given us and our children so much love. How that little ball of fluff would come bouncing over the grass to grab a cuddle. The happy barking when we got home?

Worse is that – forgive us – we’ve sometimes thought that without Kees, our lives would be easier. We could sleep in. We could listen to TV without Kees sobbing. We could go on holidays without wondering who might house-sit a dog too fragile now for a kennel?

That’s where it gets ugly. Confusing our own selfishness with concern for our dog. Are we considering Kees’s happiness or our own?

I know, it’s just a dog. Some people really do think that way.

But our dogs are family. We’ve done everything so far to keep Kees alive and happy – three operations on his dodgy leg, three medications a day to keep him alert and his joints oiled.

What would our kids think of us if we now killed Kees to suit ourselves?

For some other parents facing this choice there should be this worry, too: how they treat their dog might be how their children one day treat them, in their own demented and howling state.

No, playing God would actually be easy. What I’m doing with Kees is much harder – making a call that is only too confusedly human.