Killing Your Best Friend

Death is an uncomfortable but inevitable topic often layered with euphemisms to cushion the reality of loss. Many people will outlive their beloved pets and must make the difficult decision to euthanize an animal. Killing Your Best Friend: A Veterinarian's Journal and Manual of Euthanasia is an unconventional look at issues surrounding end-of-life care for pets by Austin-area veterinarian Michael Mullen with his wife, Kate O'Neill. Their book presents an intimate, compelling journal and practical manual for euthanasia home visits that offers veterinarians guidance while informing pet owners of the process.

Mullen draws upon his vast experience of euthanizing more than 2,000 pets in their homes with the owners present, a practice rarely done before 1985. He was among the pioneers who began using sedation before putting an animal to sleep, which was an almost non-existent process when he started his career, to ease the death of the animal and the anxiety of the owner. More than twenty years ago, Mullen began writing "death notices" as his own coping mechanism. He organized these journal entries with further reflections, giving readers a front-row seat to how he performs euthanasia while deftly exploring the accompanying grief, loss, and wisdom gained, often from the people for whom he is performing this unwelcome service.

Killing Your Best Friend tells the story of how Mullen's attitude toward the most dreaded part of his profession has evolved over the last forty years to curiosity and even to perceiving it as a spiritual honor.