While in general I agree with the sentiment of money not being an object to saving one of my critters (my vet bills are thousands of dollars a year!), I also need to know that the treatment has a reasonable chance of success and that the animal will have some quality of life afterwards.

For example, I have a cat, Pete, who two & a half years ago I spent over 4000 dollars on. He needed surgery that couldn't be done in the Yukon and he had to fly to the University of Saskatchewan for treatment. At the time Pete was just over two years old, he was otherwise healthy, except for the chronic urinary tract blockages. My vet gave me two options--1. take Pete home and enjoy him until the next blockage at which time he would be euthanized. At that time, Pete was blocking every couple days and could no longer be cathaterized. Option #2 was put him on a plane to Sask, have the surgery with an 90% chance of forever preventing the blocks. Given that Pete was young, generally healthy and that the treatment was almost guarenteed to work, I went ahead with it. Had Pete been older, had other health issues or if the surgery had a low success rate, I probably would have made a different decision. Twicket is almost 15 and I know I wouldn't put him through that, but it doesn't mean I love him any less than Pete.

My husband and I have talked about what we would do should one of the dogs be diagnosed with a major disease, such as cancer. It's morbid, but I think it's important to talk about those kind of things beforehand. While we put no price limit on their lives, we have agreed that they won't be put through invasive, painful or limited success treatments. We will keep them comfortable and happy for as long as possible and gently let them go when that is no longer possible. We had discussed long before we lost a dog what we would do with the body. So when Hoodoo died, we didn't have a big debate and we didn't make a rushed decision in the midst of a crisis. While I was too upset to speak, my hubby was able to tell the vet what arrangements we wanted and remembered to take Hoodoo's collar off.