Lori Nelander sat on the floor of her Bend home, her 60-pound yellow lab Zoey lying mostly in her lap.

It was an early morning in February, and Zoey, 12, had taken a turn for the worse. Dr. Byron Maas of Bend Veterinary Clinic had diagnosed the dog with cancer just a week before, but now, Zoey was struggling to hold her head up, much less stand.

Nelander’s fiance, Jesse Hell, had called the clinic at 7:30 a.m., and Maas agreed to come to the couple’s home and euthanize Zoey in the comfort of familiar surroundings.

And so, Nelander held the dog she’d gotten as a weeks-old puppy, stroked her head and told her she loved her, savoring her final few hours with her best buddy. At one point, Hell’s dog, Roxy, approached.

“I’m holding Zoey’s head,” Nelander said, “and Roxy comes over, licks Zoey’s head, looks at me, licks my hand and sits down right in front of us, like ‘I’m right here for you.’”

The supportive fiance. The seemingly aware younger dog. The comfort of familiar surroundings. It was a scene that couldn’t have played out anywhere but the couple’s west-side home.

Which is exactly why Maas — and other Bend veterinarians — offers the service of in-home euthanasia for pets that are terminally ill, in pain or have simply reached the end of their lives.

“It’s a very personal moment,” Maas said. “(Euthanizing in the home) takes away sort of the clinical-ness of it.”

Growing trend

According to the Oregon Veterinary Medical Association, there is anecdotal evidence to support an increase in the number of vets that offer “house-call euthanasia,” but no hard data on the service.

Whether or not more vets are putting down pets in clients’ homes, though, both vets and pet owners who’ve experienced in-home euthanasia — in which a veterinarian administers a painless injection of medication designed to stop the heart and respiratory activity — say the process is easier on the animals and the humans who love them.

Dr. Rex Urich, who runs a mobile practice called Home Comfort Veterinary Services, said he’s unsure if house-call euthanasia is more prevalent than it was years ago, but that he believes it is more common in Bend than in other parts of the country.

Urich said he has received “uniformly positive” feedback from owners who’ve had him come to their home.

“For 30 years (in nonmobile practice), I probably went to two or three clients’ houses. The whole prospect (of euthanizing in the home) was a little daunting,” he said. “Now that I’ve done it, though, I don’t know why I didn’t do it 30 years ago.”

Dr. Janet Ladyga, of Bend’s Blue Sky Veterinary Clinic, said her office has “a lot more people” asking about the service in recent years, and that Blue Sky tries to accommodate those requests if there’s any way to fit them into the vets’ schedules.

Like her colleagues, Ladyga said the best choice for the end-of-life process varies from animal to animal. For animals that dislike going to the doctor, staying home for their final appointment can be a much better option, she said.

“There are some animals that (come in) very stressed. They get hyper. They get anxious,” she said. “When I’ve gone to people’s homes to do home euthanasia for them, it’s very peaceful. It’s so much more relaxing. The animals aren’t as stressed. The people aren’t as stressed, and things go really well.”

Maas, the Bend Veterinary Clinic doc who euthanized Zoey, has been making end-of-life house calls since he started his practice in 1990. He believes there is an effort under way among vets to offer a more personal touch in the euthanasia process because of the role that pets play in our lives.

“Pets and owners … have gone away from a more utilitarian thing — guard dogs and barn cats — to actually being family members,” Maas said. “We’re seeing more and more of that, so we’re seeing much more of a movement to provide the kind of care they would expect for their family members.”

To that end, Maas is involved in Synergy Animal Hospice, a new, local nonprofit group aimed at providing hospice care for pets, including bereavement counseling for the people left behind.

“I was starting to see a real lack of any emotional care for people,” Maas said. “Yeah, we can do the medicine. We can diagnose. We have all these things in our tool bags to help deal with the pets, but as far as follow-up after that, there was nothing. I think there was a real void for people.”

Indeed, it’s the people, perhaps, that suffer the most from the euthanization of a beloved animal.

A difficult decision

Eight days before Christmas, Diane Rose, 38, was forced to euthanize her dog Maggie, 14, at their home south of Sunriver.

She calls it “the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.”

She was concerned about the added expense of having a vet come to her home, but decided it was worth it. To fund the visit, she used money she had saved to use for Christmas gifts and festivities.

“I wouldn’t want her last images to be that of (the veterinary office),” Rose said last week. “She hated going there anyway. She knew that every time she went there, something bad was going to happen, so why would I want her to have to go through that on her last day?”

Rose’s reasoning was echoed by Sandy Kalister, 45, of Bend, who had her 14-year-old golden retriever mix, Hailey, euthanized about a year ago.

Kalister, who works with a local cat-rescue operation, was already familiar with the euthanasia experience; she had taken cats to clinics for that reason before.

But when it came time to put Hailey down, Kalister chose to do it in her home to minimize the stress — both for the dog and the owner.

“I think the lack of stress meant everything to me. That’s the thing that I loved about having Dr. Maas come here, was not having to put Hailey through the stress of the clinic,” Kalister said. “She’s always been so afraid of going into the clinic … so what helped me was knowing that she wasn’t stressed out at the end, that she was at her home, where she’s most comfortable, in her favorite environment. It was very peaceful. She went as peacefully as she could.”

Kalister, however, is also aware of the effect that euthanasia can have on pet owners.

“I didn’t know how I would react — if I would burst into tears, or what I would do — and it’s kind of nice having that privacy,” she said. “I didn’t have to worry about other people being around and being embarrassed. The privacy helped me too, so I could react how I was going to naturally react.”

Kalister has another pet — a 13-year-old cat named Selah — who is afflicted with a disease and is running out of treatment options. She said she’d likely opt for in-home euthanasia in Selah’s case, too, when the time arrives.

A comfortable place

For Laurie Graff, 36, of Bend, the decision to euthanize her 8-year-old cat Chaz at home was cinched when her daughter Leigha, 14, heard about the option.

For a year, Chaz had been showing signs of kidney failure, and his condition had worsened during the last two weeks of February.

“It made my daughter feel a lot better, knowing we could do it here,” Graff said a few hours before Chaz was euthanized on Tuesday. “It will be more comforting for our kitty.”

Although Chaz was a relatively young cat, Graff said she would not let him suffer or become “an invalid kitty, having to get shot up twice a day.” Like other owners, Graff saw benefits to in-home euthanasia for both animals and animal lovers.

“Our main feeling is that it would give him a sense of comfort, with a little more familiar surrounding,” she said. “And maybe, we as humans don’t want him to feel like we’ve abandoned him. I’ve spent a lot of years giving him a lot of love, and he returned a lot of love, and I don’t want this really important time for him to be alone and in an unfamiliar place.

“It’s really important to me that the way that he goes reflect how much he is cared for,” she said.

Closure

That’s the way it was for Zoey, too, with her mom and dad and sister Roxy nearby as she headed for doggie heaven. (All dogs go to heaven, you know.)

Hell and Nelander wouldn’t have had it any other way.

“What a great service it is that they provide, to do it humanely like that in your home. It’s about the best service you can imagine,” Hell said. “It was less stress for her, less stress for us. We didn’t have to put on a mask in front of other people.

“It’s not an ugly memory,” he continued. “It’s a painful memory, obviously, but it makes us happy that she was in such a comfortable situation.”

Nelander agreed.

“I had so many moments with her, where she was hugging me back. I just sat in here and did not move for two hours,” she said. “It was the closure I needed. It was almost like, ‘OK, I have two hours with my best buddy in the world.’”