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You know your pet better than anyone- you should know when it's the right time and your pet is in pain or no longer enjoying life, and it's not just a temporary problem that there's a possible way to fix. Some pets might be happy to no longer be physically active, for example, while others may be noticeably depressed.
I've had to have quite a few pets destroyed. A rabbit, a hamster and a budgie were all put down at the vets after having strokes that impaired their mobility, or other age related problems. My father had to shoot two rabbits himself after they developed flystrike and we didn't want to make very distressed, suffering rabbits (who were being literally eaten alive) hang on for another couple of hours and have the added trauma of being transported and taken to a strange place, when instead they could be shot right in the garden where they'd always lived.
The worst was my dog. There were a couple of near misses in the past, but both times there were solutions that not only kept him alive, but kept him pain-free and doing the same things he'd always enjoyed doing. Towards the end of his life I noticed he was losing interest in his walks, was quite listless and spent a lot of time grumbling to himself. I'm very glad we never had to make the decision about when enough was enough as he then had a stroke that completely destroyed his sense of balance and although it was horrible to see him like that, it meant we never had to make the decision.
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