Can only a vet put an animal down?

[Dick]

To put small animals down, ie cats and dogs, vets give them an overdose of local anasthetic.

Lignocaine is the common one, you can buy it from a chemists. Inject a dog, intravenously with 50 cc's and it will go to sleep peacefully and not wake up.

[Ghozer]

I believe if you own the land the act is carried out on, then nothing can be done as its outside of standard 'public land and law' - owning your own house and doing it there however doesnt count..

 

this is how farmers 'get away with it' so to speak.

[shihtzumad]

To put small animals down, ie cats and dogs, vets give them an overdose of local anasthetic.

Lignocaine is the common one, you can buy it from a chemists. Inject a dog, intravenously with 50 cc's and it will go to sleep peacefully and not wake up.

 

OMG, that is awful, do they really sell it. I could never do anything like that, leave it to the vets.

[medusa]

To put small animals down, ie cats and dogs, vets give them an overdose of local anasthetic.

Lignocaine is the common one, you can buy it from a chemists. Inject a dog, intravenously with 50 cc's and it will go to sleep peacefully and not wake up.

 

We do need to be very careful in the message that goes out in this thread.

 

Intravenous injections are not the easiest thing in the world to do if you aren't aware of the physiology of the animal that you're injecting. To attempt to give one and fail (through missing the vein or the animal escaping) is very likely to cause unnecessary pain and suffering to the animal, so on that basis alone there is a need to caution anyone without medical and/or veterinary training who is considering doing this.

 

Lignocaine injection ampoules are also prescription only medicines, which should only be available to those who have been given exemption under the Medicines Act 1968 to buy and/or carry specific drugs. You are likely to find that walking into a pharmacy and asking to buy some without proper ID and a certificate will result in a flat refusal from the pharmacist.

 

Whether it is legal to euthenase an animal yourself was the question at the start of the thread- and the answer to that is that it is legal, but that doesn't make it easy or advisable, if only for the sake of the animal if you do not do it correctly.