Part 2 of 2: Euthanasia of the Potbellied Pig

The big mastiff calmed down quickly and the couple led me to the barn to see why I was here. I retrieved my house call kit from the car and followed them between two old barns out into a fenced area that looked like it once held livestock. Other than 2 goats in an adjacent area there were no more farm animals to see now.

“We got our potbellied pig, Jimmy, for our kids about 15 years ago. He’s lost so much weight. He used to be fat and now he’s skin and bones. He can hardly walk. Our regular vet put him on some medications a while ago, but they are not helping anymore. We think it’s time.”

I first drew up a sedative and gave him an injection in the neck muscle. (Recommended in this area because the pigs have so much fat everywhere else and the injection needs to go into the muscle and not the fat.)

Euthanasia solution is best given directly into the vein and the most accessible vein in a pig is in the ear flap. Mrs. Arnez headed into her house to get me a bowl of water to wash up the area. I needed to thoroughly clean the outside of the ear and improvise a tourniquet to force the vein to stand up for me. This would be the sight of Jimmy’s injection.

He was sleeping soundly from the sedative. Once the ear was clean and the tourniquet was in place, I could still not see a vein. The next step was dousing the area with alcohol and tapping or lightly “slapping” it with your hand until the vein stood out. My worry was, what if after the sedative and the prep, I still couldn’t find a vein? Or what if I found a tiny vein but couldn’t successfully feed the needle into it?

There was no problem. The vein became obvious after the alcohol treatment. Jimmy felt nothing as I gave his injection and he peacefully went to his final rest.