Six is not old for a dog. Many dogs live until 14 on average and some smaller dogs live up until 20 plus years.

I think it was not only harsh and rash, it was cruel and completely unjustified. Someone would have adopted that dog. At the very least, they could have sent it to the pound and let the dog have a fighting chance.

It's absolutely horrid and makes me so sad that an animal is treated as disposable.

My dog is my child... I love him pretty much as much as I love my kids.

Oh, absolutely! This was no reason to put any dog down, I don't care how old he was! He could have been put in a new home or an animal shelter. Even if it wasn't a no-kill shelter, the dog would have at least had a chance to be adopted. Six years old is not old for most dogs, just middle-aged. Their action also shows little regard for life, and what example does that set for the children?

I think the action taken by your parents was excessive. A dog, especially one as young as 6, one that had been I assume a loyal and friendly pet deserves some effort from its owners to find a good replacement home for it if the situation calls for it. If the only reason to put it to sleep was the allergies experienced by your sister, even though I feel they have the legal right to do it, on the human level I think the action was mean and unforgivable to anyone that has had a loyal pet.

If the dog had a chronic illness, or if it was a threat to the safety of others, then I could see the action being justified, but just to do it out of convenience? That is needless and very, very cruel.

I hope that at the very least your parents arrived at the conclusion of all of this that they should never take on the responsibility of pet ownership ever again.

Dogs live for 14-15 years. Unless the dog is having health issues, it is not human to put him to sleep, when he is just 6 years old!

You may want to give your parents the benefit of the doubt and ask them if there was something else wrong with the dog, that they didn't want to tell you as children. Maybe he was really suffering, and they used the allergy excuse (albeit perhaps foolishly--I can't even imagine how guilty your sister must have felt!) to cover it up. If that is not the case, your parents are a bit callous when it comes to animals, and should not have any more. There are many options for rehoming animals, especially ones that are child-friendly and housebroken. I'm actually surprised the vet was willing to put a perfectly healthy animal to sleep.

Some people have very distant relationships with animals. I've often heard from people who grow up on farms that animals dying is just typical life, so they never emotionally attach themselves to them, but it is unacceptable for someone to take responsibility for a pet and kill it for no good reason.

There are some reasons why it may be justified to put an animal to sleep if it poses a danger to a child living in the same household. Personally, I don’t think a pet allergy is justification enough to euthanize the dog that has lived with the family for such a long time. A six year old dog is not old yet, and likely did not show too many (if any) symptoms of old age at that point. Our dog is almost 5 years old and she is doing great and is as flexible as in her first year. Of course, all dogs mature differently, but that’s beside the point. Yes, there is no argument here that a child will ALWAYS come first. However, your family’s dog was not only still young, but probably also in good enough health to where another family would gladly have adopted him given the circumstances. The better solution may have been to contact a Human Society in your family’s area and ask about their procedures to take in an older dog to be adopted out. A short ad in the newspaper or on a flyer explaining the child’s allergies to the long-time family dog may have also aroused enough sympathy in pet lovers searching for an older (and housebroken) pet to take in the dog. Ultimately, the dog was punished (with death) for evoking allergy symptoms in the child living in the same household and he never did anything wrong. Euthanasia would have been more comprehensible if the dog had attacked or otherwise hurt the child, but not for simply being a dog.

This is wrong on so many levels.