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'Most terrible decision': Woman explains why she had to euthanise her dog

A dog trainer has explained the “painful” decision to have her poorly behaved dog euthanised.

Katie Rogers, from California, wrote on Facebook on Wednesday she made the decision to have her dog Tanner put down five years ago.

Ms Rogers, a dog trainer, wrote she and Tanner had lived together for three years prior to his death.

“Tanner was a behaviour euthanasia,” she wrote.

“He was a bad dog. And yes, I believe in bad dogs. He wasn’t fearful, he was dog aggressive.”

Katie Rogers pictured with Tanner the dog.
Katie Rogers had Tanner put down after becoming worried about his aggressiveness. Source: Facebook/ Katie Rogers

The woman added if her management of Tanner failed “he would have killed a dog and he would have injured any human who got in his way”.

Tanner never hurt anyone but her, Ms Tanner wrote, and the day she chose to euthanise him “the decision became crystal clear”.

“(It) was the day I saw him put the fear of god into a child,” Ms Rogers wrote.

“In that moment, I realised I was waiting for something bad enough to happen that I would have an excuse to euthanise him.”

Abandoned dogs are pictured in a kennel.
Ms Rogers said her decision to have Tanner put down was a difficult one. Source: Getty Images (file pic)

The woman spent 10 days consulting “every professional” she knew on how to go about euthanising Tanner.

She cried with her mum about making the decision to put him down. Ms Rogers also took the dog to a mentor of hers who told her she was proud.

Ms Rogers wrote the euthanasia was “handled so well”.

“I couldn’t have done it without the woman who coordinated everything for me,” she wrote.

“I had made my final decision and I couldn’t make anymore, so she did. I thank you for that, and for so much more.

“To the woman who actually performed the euthanasia, I know it was hard for you too, thank you for letting me be present and hold my dog and to my mother, who had to fight into the clinic and behind closed doors so she could hold me while I held him.”

Living with “a mentally or behaviourally unsound dog is life altering”, she wrote.

She added her mum compared her relationship with Tanner “to that of an abuser”.

“I did everything for him, changed my entire life to be good enough for him, and got nothing but heartbreak back,” Ms Rogers wrote.

“I strongly believe in euthanasia. It is the most terrible decision I have ever made.

“The most painful, but I’ve never regretted it.”

Her post has been shared more than 2,900 times but has divided opinion.

“He loved you and you shot him in the heart,” one woman wrote.

A dog is pictured in an animal shelter.
The decision to euthanise Tanner has divided opinion. Source: Getty Images (file pic)

One man called her “hopeless” at looking after animals.

However, most people were far more sympathetic and wrote her decision to have Tanner euthanised must have been a difficult one.

“I had a dog like this and made the same decision. It was heartbreaking, but necessary,” one woman wrote.

“I have never regretted it, but the rightness of it did not make the loss I felt any easier.”

Another simply wrote: “you did the right thing”.

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