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When i was seven or eight our cat Squeaker developed leukaemia and had to be put to sleep: my older brother and I went with my dad to the vet to say goodbye and see it happen (by this point, I think, I'd been to the funerals of at least two relatives, so death wasn't a new concept). We were both stroking her as she died with her tongue sticking out, slightly absurdly. I am really glad we got to go to the vet's and had the whole business of deciding to put a pet down explained to us.
I remember being fascinated with working out the difference between "put to sleep" and "put down" - was one of them more painful than the other? And I used to drastically inflate the cat's age in my head - she was twenty when she died, I insisted, making her ancient in cat years, already the longest lived of all cats, far far too old to treat the leukaemia without causing her pain (i no longer remember how old she was but probably more like 16). Talking it over and over was really useful for me, though looking back it might well have been quite painful for my parents.
But seven (and ten) and used to funerals is rather different from four and six, so I don't know how useful this is.
(When the cat who we got about six years after Squeaker died - my parents did the opposite of Steve Shasta's and said we couldn't have another cat yet, when we asked - died last year at the vet's, the vet rang us up in the middle of the night to get us to come over. Apparently there's only a short period after death where they look like themselves, their bodies start to break down quite quickly, so it's best if people see the cat to say goodbye as soon after death as possible)
― naglpuss (c sharp major), Thursday, 3 June 2010 10:49 (thirteen years ago) link
he's gone. i was with him, but he was pretty upset to be there, so i don't know how much comfort that was for him.
i dont think the kids really understand this yet.
really miss him.
― a cooler full of courage and panache (Hunt3r), Thursday, 3 June 2010 15:50 (thirteen years ago) link
I know my parents had to put a couple of pets to sleep throughout my childhood but honestly I barely noticed. Maybe I was just a really self-centered/self-contained kid and didn't bond to the pets all that much, but still...one of the dogs had been gone for about a week and my mom was waiting for one of us to ask what had happened to him...and no one did! So it's probably wholly up to your approach.