[Scrambler Bob]

Somehow dogs are put down without writhing and gasping.

And the shot is affordable.

So what am I missing?

[KarlInOhio]

I think that they are trying to use drugs which have a minimum amount of time between unrecoverable and dead. If a dog is given a drug which will take five minutes to kill him but once injected there is no way to stop him from painlessly dying, there is not a problem because there isn't going to be a last minute call from the governor to stop it.

With condemned criminals there are far too many last minute reprieves (why can't the governor or judge make up his mind by 5pm?). Thus the drugs aim to first knock the criminal out, but still be perfectly recoverable if the order to stop is given. Then a drug to stop his heart quickly to minimize the time between injection and death.

Using this requirement, the guillotine is probably the best method. Everything is stoppable until the blade is dropped and a second or two later he's unrecoverably dead.

[Paperpusher]

“Somehow dogs are put down without writhing and gasping.
And the shot is affordable.
So what am I missing?”

Maybe that shot is not FDA approved for use in people?

I know they were afraid the drug they did use was about to expire.

Yes, I know. Sounds crazy to me also.

[skr]

Not always. My last dog didn’t go as peacefully as the one before. There are no guarantees that the reaction will be the same for everyone.

For all we know, the person is not writhing because of the injection but because he can see where he are going.

[chris37]

I don’t know.

I have been to the putting down of 7 dogs and 1 cat.

One of them was not mine, but someone else who asked me to go because they could not bear it, so I did.

In each case, the dogs and 1 cat appeared to go very peacefully.

They just sort of faded away.

I know this because I looked into their faces and eyes each time as instructed by the vet.

They didn’t suffer, but I did.

That’s a tough, tough thing.

[bigmak007]

A tail..