Originally Posted by Tock
Well, this was at the City pound, not a humane society.
We'd give 'em 1 cc of sodium pentabarbitol for each 15 lbs of bodyweight, and try to get it into a vein. 50% of the time things went ok, the dog had a good vein, didn't struggle, our aim was good, and the dog had a peaceful and gentle end. The other 50%, something went wrong . . . the dog would fuss and struggle, or the poor malnourished dog had lousy veins, and one of us would have to hold him down and inject straight through the chest directly into the heart. And judging from the cries of the poor dog, that was a painful death.
Some places use chambers of various types to kill dogs . . . the City of Dallas had one (before I got there) where you put a few dogs in it, and you hooked up a hose to a car's tailpipe, and the hot exhaust killed 'em. Dunno how that was for the animals, but the local humane folks campaigned against this sort of gas chamber, dredging up images of Jews in Hitler's WW2 Germany, and the public outrage got the city to go to needles.
Ha . . . if only those folks knew what it was like to watch dogs get shot in the chest with sodium pentabarbitol . . .
Other ways of killing dogs include vacuum chambers, where you put a few of 'em in a chamber and pump out the air. These are unpopular with a lot of folks, especially after images of eyeballs popping out and animals gasping for air circulated . . . and there are chambers where you pump in various gases, which brings about the desired effect. If you pump in something like carbon dioxide, the CO2 makes animals breathe harder and faster before suffocating. But you can use stuff like helium, and it doesn't do that, and results in a peaceful death. But, the good stuff costs extra money, and taxpayers don't want to spend the extra $$$ on that sort of stuff, so to make a long story short, that's how needles and toxic drugs became the favored method to kill animals in the City of Dallas.
Now . . . if you were to take an animal to your vet to have it put to sleep, that's an entirely different story . . . they usually use the same method -- a needle full of sodium pentabarbitol -- but the environment there is completely different. Our PTS (put to sleep) room was noisy, most dogs were frightened, and we were on a tight production schedule, so we didn't have time or the inclination to be nice to the dogs we killed. It was (1) up on the table, (2) torniquet on the muzzle to keep it from biting, (3) torniquet on the front leg, (4) hope the needle got inside the vein, and if not, (5) hold the struggling dog down and get him in the chest.
But your vet takes his time, comforts the animal, uses a fresh needle (we'd change needles once a shift, so it was pretty dull after a dozen injections), and things go much better overall; so if you ever need to take a dog to a vet for such a service, rest assured that it will be a very easy final few moments, no muss, no fuss, no pain.
So . . . to avoid needless situations of this sort, to avoid creating unwanted animals, I highly recommend spaying/neutering your pets.
--Tock