Hello, and welcome to The Bookma I'm Christine Brown, your host.

Today, my guests are Michael Mullen and Kate O'Neill, authors of "Killing Your Best Friend, a Veterinarians Journal and Manual of Euthanasia."

Thank you both for being here today.

Thank you.

Thank you to the audience.

If you couldn't tell why that title, this might be a heavy, heavy topic for some of us, but I also think it's an important topic.

And sometimes the ones we want to shy away from are the ones we probably should be talking about.

And I will do my best not to cry today, but I make no guarantees either, do I?

I want to start by just asking you to introduce this book to us.

Sure.

I'm Michael Mullen and I'm a veterinarian, 85, from the hoop.

And about five years later, I became a house called vet.

And at that stage, pretty much all kinds of people were wanting somebody to come to their house to put their animal to sleep instead of going to a stationary clinic.

And since I did house calls, that'd be no problem.

Gladly.

Gladly faded after a number of years.

The fact that I didn't want to do it anymore.

I just didn't like it.

Like so many people don't want to do it and so many people don't like it.

And and I tried all kinds of things to, to, to be able to enjoy the fact that I was actually very good at putting animals asleep.

The niche I wasn't really proud of.

And it wasn't until 2002 that Cate said, why don't you try journaling and seeing what you feel when you are doing what you're doing at the place of the animal.

And quickly I began to realize that I was doing I was doing something that no one else was doing, which is writing about every animal I would put to sleep after the fact within a day or two.

And after a while of that, it became more and more like, well, maybe I need to do more of this to see what what am I?

What have I been missing when I am putting to sleep an animal with the parents or the pet owners there in one of the most?

One of the most important moments of their lives as they put their dog the best friend to sleep.

The title is certainly provocative.

Can you?

Can you tell us why the title was important to have for this book?

I can I we both came up with it, but Katie came up with it.

Okay.

Do you mind?

It it for me.

Talking through all these issues as a couple over years.

I am, I am done with euphemism.

I am done with saying something vague about something real and important.

And.

And I have a fondness for double entendre.

And that title reflects what Michael was doing as a veterinarian and what the pet owner was doing as an owner, as a as a as someone who is responsible for pet, who is bonded to a pet and had to make the decision.

So it's about two events, two decisions.

And and it is, as I have said a couple of times, it's like liver.

People either say, oh yeah, that's a great title.

Are they?

Or they turn away.

And I understand that's that's reflective of a population.

There's a certain amount of population that goes, I see that reality and a certain amount of population that does not want to see that reality.

It's hurtful.

It feels that to them.

Well, hopefully by talking about it, maybe reading the book, we can we can meet in the middle.

We can kind of come around to understand both both points of view, wherever we're starting from.

If I made one more thing about the title, Killing Your Best friend, it's unlikely known.

Veterinarians do what they do, and they veterinarians have a higher death suicide rate than than the amount of people in the normal rate in the country twice as much.

And female veterinarians have three times the suicide rate as as women putting themselves to sleep.

We do not know.

We do not know how come this happens.

But I'm not I'm not I'm not at all uncertain that that veterinarian put themselves asleep because they just can't stand it anymore.

They they just it's just hard to it's.

Well, put it this way.

Veterinarians are the only profession that can heal an animal.

And within the same hour, put an animal to sleep.

And it's just hard to kind of not do one and not do the other.

And it's very difficult.

I'm not saying that's the reason why veterinarians have a higher rate of, of, of suicide than the national average.

But I can't help but think it would be part of it.

Some kind of connection, some kind of connection.

So where did the idea from, from taking all these these journal entries, these writings that you've done?

How did that.

How did that come into a book?

Where did you decide to to make that transition?

I want to start that one.

There were, as I says, there were.

He writes about every single one today in the very often in the mornings when it is you wake up, when you don't want to, he goes downstairs to make sure it's caught up because he doesn't want the event to get too far in the past, before he can write exactly what he felt, what he saw, what was happening there, and that created a great deal of content.

And the first thing we did was just log it, you know, because there was we were kind of looking for data, you know, who cries?

Who doesn't?

How old were the cats?

How young were the dogs?

What was the disease?

We were kind of doing a taxonomic thing.

And and the longer we did that and the more boring that became, because people have done that work, you know, they really we were doing work in, in an odd subset of an odd population.

And you started talking about, I think first you start talking about combining the stories of what happened when you were in a house call and how you had to had to shift and turn as a veterinarian.

Absolutely.

I think that you start talking about writing a book first, but I was all in pretty quick.

I got that, I got why it would be useful.

Yeah.

It wasn't at all like, I'm going to start writing about this and I'll make a book out of it later.

It was I started in 2002, like I said, and it was like a couple of years before Covid that we realized that there's something in there can be something in this book that has never been written about and, and that just like, whoa, maybe if I put it out there, somebody can can learn.

Somebody can realize what their feelings are.

Somebody can just turn it away.

I don't want to see this ever again.

But yeah, it became something that just could be helpful to people.

I, I find a lot of what you say, what I found in the book, there's a lot of different threads that this booked a lot of things.

It I think it could be a great resource for a young vet to see kind of maybe.

What is this?

What I really want to do is this can I, can I do this?

And then if you're a pet owner, if you've ever asked yourself, I don't know how they do it.

Here's here's how, here's here's how it is.

And and maybe you can walk away with a greater respect or greater understanding for the person who's caring for your animal.

But then, as you were saying, the taxonomic stuff still kind of exists a little bit because almost like the sociological look at how people react, how they deal with this decision.

That's a little bit fascinating, too, because we I guess we all we all feel it individually.

But there are patterns.

There are trends with how people come to terms with making this choice, how they react and act when the choice is happening that they've made, and then how the aftermath affects them.

It's just all here, all these things, all these disparate themes, all collected in, in a, you know, quite reasonable volume to, to read.

So I commend you on getting all that into, into one book.

I think one thing that that we, we imagined is that any vet, Darian or any pet owner would find themselves somewhere that's we imagined that it was it was a lot of description of the veterinary, of the process of euthanized and animal and and that was that was both intended to be informative to the pet owner ahead of the time, because I don't know that that happens always.

And to be to be descriptive for for veterinarian who was just starting to do these things.

And so and then the, the stories themselves were about finding yourself, finding yourself reluctant, finding yourself composed, finding yourself afraid.

However you had to go through.

However, each one of us has to go through this.

Do you agree before?

Do you grieve after?

That's that's something we've not talked about, which is you're describing the animal and the people putting, the being, having just this thing, doing that.

They have to do this.

And I was hearing that this is what veterans have to do.

We have to be we don't have to be.

It would be very helpful to be in path.

Be empathetic.

Be very helpful to be to understand and be quiet and just listen.

And it can be to be in one of the quite possibly the most intimate moment of of somebody putting this, putting asleep the dog, the cat killing their best friend.

And to be for me as a veterinary to be present.

Holy holy crap.

That's.

And when I at first I didn't know what to do with it, but I but I accepted it and I've been able to to become an even better veterinarian.

But being more closer to the people who are going through what they're going through.

Yeah, this is the dual viewpoints.

The dual audiences are are important, but hopefully it helps us see each other as a pet owner.

Maybe it'll help me appreciate what my vet has to go through.

I'm just, you know, coming in on on a happy day with an animal and maybe they've just done something, had to witness some bear witness to something very emotional and awful.

And we're just here to get a checkup, you know?

Isn't that isn't this lovely?

Here's.

Here's a kitten.

Here's a small animal.

But but there's there's the other side.

Or I'm having the worst day of my life, and and here's this person who has has seen it before, but they're still going to be empathetic and still helped me through that process.

I think it's wonderful that we could hopefully get to understanding each other's point of view and perspective.

And as you say, finding ourselves, whoever, whatever side we may be on, finding ourselves in the narratives of it as well.

And as an owner, just learning if you're a if you're somebody who seeks out knowledge and information, which I want to know everything about everything the, the, the manual part of it demystifies a little bit.

It helps me understand what has happened or what will happen someday when I have to, unfortunately, go through this process.

So I think it's a very useful it's a very necessary book that you've written.

That's something to be commended.

I do want to talk about.

You write in the book about how and you mentioned it briefly here, how at the beginning of your career, you don't you don't remember a lot of them because you kind of just like blocking it out or compartmentalizing in a way.

But that wasn't working.

It wasn't working.

And can you talk about that?

And then and then maybe you can talk about why you gave the suggestion to journal.

I would think about it long after I should I should have been able to let it go, and how my colleagues seem to be able to let it go.

And maybe they could, maybe they could, and I don't know.

But but it just it just hang on with me what that person said with that and then again, of course, did I do it as well as I could have done it so that the pet did not suffer in any way, shape or form, nor did the owner, nor did the child, nor did the friend who was over there do the same thing, had to do the same thing.

So so I no one can do that.

It's not.

It's not a perfect world or we wouldn't be here.

But but knowing that, how can I learn it?

And writing it said, yeah, kind of messed up on that one when I gave too much of the drug and no one else may have even noticed.

But I noticed it and it was writing it down.

I was able to not just go home and, and and like I said, drink heavily and have some old friends from long ago to help me with it, to just go ahead and just I'll get rid of that, that that issue.

Well, it didn't it didn't go away.

You were haunted, I was haunted, I was I was killing best friends.

I didn't even know that that term yet was like, yikes.

Yeah, I didn't want I didn't want to do that.

But they were asking me to do that.

And there had been told by other people he does a really good job because.

And now I can say, well, thank you.

Yeah.

You bet.

And I'd like to think many of my colleagues can be the exact same way, and maybe even better that.

Where did the idea to recommend the journaling come from?

Michael and I are both, in different ways, open to change.

We've both been in therapy.

We both have attended Al-Anon.

We both have read important books about how to be a better human being and still do.

We still do all those things.

And I watched I watched my husband, who I had, you know, had not been married to for very long.

I watched him really struggle with two things.

One was traffic and one was euthanasia.

And I didn't know how to help with the traffic.

But but I did know that for me, putting pen to paper regularly, you would start at point A, but you never knew when you were going to end up.

You never knew what was going to show up when you got to line five, line 25 or page six.

It always worked for me.

I believed in it, and I suggested that Michael just try, not what I thought of as lots and lots of writing, but just note each time what was haunting him, what was staying with him, what?

What judgment against himself he was carrying because it had worked for me on other in other issues, the the traffic he worked out himself.

He started meditating and that fixed the traffic.

That helps.

Meditating helps with traffic.

That's not going into book.

That's not going to be a book.

Just so you know, as an aside.

But it was it was true, especially when I started doing it, because when I started writing, writing about it, about them, it just was just writing.

Okay.

So I was I could be angry and I could be judgmental and and did I mention angry?

So sometimes so so I wasn't interested in being compassionate or empathetic or just, just just get the job done and leave and just a couple of short ones because I didn't feel like writing much.

I just didn't feel like it.

So one in particular was I went there and the people were going, you know, the cat was obviously time.

I won't explain why, but it had issues that it was no longer it could not be comfortable ever again.

And always at time.

This is what I wrote.

Is it time?

Is it time?

Is it time?

And then the cat came over and said, where is the needle?

As opposed to being able to help somebody get to the point where they called me over to come over to the house.

So they'd already wanted to needed or understood it.

And but it's just it's just so dang hard the complexity in those emotions to make that call for an animal that will you describe it.

You know, it can't speak necessarily, but sometimes you get there and from it, maybe having never seen it before, it's speaking pretty clearly.

But when it's our pet, when we're so close to it.

We can't hear it, you know?

We don't want to hear it.

We're not ready to hear it.

All this is in here.

This is this is the hard part of it is making that decision.

But it's also the kindest thing we can do.

Unfortunately, to end there.

I see this is this is difficult, but it's important.

This is kind of the the covenant we make with an animal when we take it into our home is to care for it up to the end.

And this, this ending is still care.

Still care.

Very well said.

Yeah.

And there's the mirror here.

When you look at the veterinaria the owner adopts a pet for companionship and affection and a bond.

The veterinarian takes on a pet for shot and fixed that thing and diagnosed that other thing.

And make sure this pet has enough right dosage of this thing so that pet can live a good physical life.

Both the owner and the veterinarian are are completely directed in one way for a long time years with an animal.

And then it arrives slowly, sometimes quickly, that you have to do the thing that you haven't been even trying for.

You even trained for sufficiently to me, in my mind, and for the pet owner, not really been anticipating.

Every day you don't think about.

You adopt this gorgeous little kitty and you don't carry the thought of their end through this whole do its whole life.

And you have to make a U-turn, a heartfelt U-turn.

I think we're all going to cry here.

Which I don't want.

But such is the topic, you have a lot of excerpts from your writing in the book, and it's called notices.

I didn't know what it was to call it.

I think you were going to maybe read one for us to lead you into that, though.

Why were why was it important to have those words directly, not just kind of summarizing them, but to to actually input your text into the book?

It's it's because there's so many things that has to do with, in this case, you putting your pet to sleep and me coming over to put and there's just so many that I would just find something that I would hear or something that someone would say that the the dog still looks beautiful.

How could and and then say then right about that is right about that.

I couldn't write about the whole thing at all.

In fact, many times it's like, yes, I put it was time for the animal we put to sleep.

And when I came back from the van that I just, I would skip this whole because that was just that was just one part of it.

It was much more important about what somebody was feeling, but somebody was dealing with the the quiet, the quiet, the silent words that they would say to their pet as, as as the pet would go from life to non-life.

And just that was meaningful to me.

And so I would write about that when somebody else might say, well, you went over and put the dog down.

Yeah, I did, that's true.

Did you want to?

Oh, sure.

There's a couple.

There's a couple of these are going to be short, but there's a couple of them that from the beginning that that I have separated into a visit and the phone call to visit the the sedation, the death and what to do with the body.

And that's just it wasn't like all these other animals that I had taken care of.

And the time where they're born, to time they died.

No, it's just when the when an animal is about euthanasia and some of them just actually kind of there was this gentleman who had a question that that needed an answer.

Mr.

C met me outside and asked again how this worked.

I told him again what the procedure was, and he asked, well, what did the humans do?

I said that different states have have different ways.

And he said, no, no, what do we humans do?

Why you do what you do?

I thought for a second and said, well, I just love them.

He replied, well, we've been doing that.

Yeah, I wrote about that one.

Not not about everything else that went on there, that one as well.

And then yet some of them are.

Oh, I like that one.

Thank you.

She's good.

The tract of young lady with blue hair was sitting out front with a big dog with leg cancer.

She tells me that the dog had got her from a 22 year old dropout to a 35 year old adult with her own business.

There's others in there, she said, pointing back to the house.

But this is the one.

What more to write, what more to be a part of.

I'm already about what more will come about from this relationship that we now have is very, very, very close relationship.

I didn't know that lady.

I didn't know Mr.

C, but but the bond we had was is remarkable.

Yeah.

I imagine I don't know if, if these if these people you've animals have cared for have read the book.

If I read an account that my vet or a vet I've seen had written like that about, or the knew that the care was there, I would I would be so touched, so moved.

I hope every I hope every vet I've ever visited feels this way.

I do too, about my animals.

I do because respecting my emotions, my feelings at the end, that would that would be very valuable to me.

So I hope this is a shared.

And the crazy thing is, the first time I've agreed this is what happened.

I did this for me.

I didn't do it for all the people who needed somebody because it's their animals, their pet, it's their best friend.

And yet I'm doing this for me.

Well, well.

But sometimes the things you need to do for you can pass on benefit.

That's why we should do things right.

We should try things.

We surprised us when I started, after a year or so of doing of doing death notices.

It's like, oh, oh.

And then they said this and I said that it was it was lovely, these moments of human connection and and holding space for each other.

It's a it's beautiful.

It's hard to read sometimes, but it's valuable to, to record.

Well unfortunately we are running short on time here.

So in our final three minutes.

What would you hope our audience takes away from the book?

I hope that people who have there I think I'm right about this.

There's 93 million pet owners in this country.

I hope that the people who have put a pet to sleep and things weren't so lovely can find some forgiveness in it.

Of the people that are just fixing to take care of this now can find some comfort and guidance.

And I hope that people are going to have to do it later because we outlive our pets.

I hope that they find a memory reading this book that they go back to four years later when their pup is not so well or their kitty can't eat anymore.

And I really hope that veterinarians find a way to make peace.

It's one way to make peace with the part of a profession that is, is not what they largely are taught in school.

I'm not, I'm not.

I don't believe that.

You heard got any training or information about euthanasia when you were in vet school?

I think so, as well as if I did get any.

I put it away as fast as I could perhaps.

Yeah.

And I just for all the vets out there, my, my my favorite, my my favorite, something that somebody said, very kind to me was a big old cowboy.

I miss big old cowboys.

I lived here for a long time.

Big old cowboys.

And he had the cat and he goes, he was not sure about this.

How this going to work.

And and at the end of it was done.

And he's holding the very recently departed cat.

He's crying and he looks at me and says, that was a lot less sucky than I thought it would be.

I went, that's what I'm hoping for.

All veterinarians and for all people who who own their animals, that when the time comes that it can not be as lucky as they thought it would be.

Well, I can't say it any better than that, I know, so thank you.

We're going to have to leave it there.

Thank you so much for being here today, for writing this book, for putting this message out.

I really appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

That's all the time we have for today.

The book again is killing Your best Friend.

Thank you so much for joining us and I will see you again soon.