Back when veterinarians existed mostly for the benefit of livestock, people whose beloved pets got very sick didn't have a lot of options.

The compassionate thing to do for a suffering animal was to quickly

end its life. Veterinary medicine has come a long way since then, so that if we have the money,

our companions can receive complex surgeries, wonder drugs, even chemotherapy. It is wonderful for us

that our animals don't have to die as soon as they develop a serious illness,

but we should not lose sight of whether these treatments are good for them.

From KERA in Dallas, this is Think.

I'm Chris Boyd.

My guest has spoken to lots of human caretakers and lots of veterinarians,

and while there are exceptions to every rule, she finds

that many people come to regret not doing too little to keep their animals alive, but doing too

much. Madeline Lee Young Coleman is a features writer for New York Magazine where you can read

her article, Are We Forcing Our Pets to Live Too Long? Madeline, welcome to think.

Thank you. You set this story up around a cat named Pablo and the humans who loved him. His life seems to have been pretty perfect until he

was, what, about eight years old, and a vet found a tumor in his body. Yes, that's right.

Pablo was a rescue cat who never had any serious health problems.

But then when he was around eight, the vet found a lump in his belly,

which they at first thought was probably a less serious disease,

but they eventually turned out was a form of high-grade lymphoma.

As I mentioned, there was a time when people didn't even consider trying to keep a very sick animal alive. Was that presumably because everybody understood there wasn't what you could do for the animal and it would die anyway?

I mean, I think there are a few reasons for that.

One of them is that until the last few decades, people just didn't think about pets the

...