Animals Unfolded

A commonly-asked question is, how does one respond to people who say,  Grieving over a pet? I mean, it’s just a dog… you can get another one? I won’t go too far into the weeds with how comments like these lack sensitivity. I can say from my years in companioning families through their pet’s journey through hospice and end-of-life that most of the time, it’s hard for other people to be sensitive to situations they’re not familiar with, or find too emotionally-grueling to navigate. And so, the comments that land like a lead weight during an already brittle time erode what emotional and physical resources those grieving have left.    We know that when people have space held for them to move through their grief, they can fare well. It’s when that disfranchised grief is minimized, ignored or is used to shame is when problems begin. And those responses—stressors in themselves—from others add to the trauma and emotional toil that is experienced.    We find this is espe...

“Are you just waiting for her to die?” That was a question that two people—one who I’m closely tied to—asked me when I spoke about plans I was sketching together to travel to a place I’d never been. It was 2015. Puerto Rico had been on my mind. And as a late-bloomer when it had come to traveling, much less doing so alone, it had become an essential mental well-being tool. It also, ironically, helped to squash paralyzing social anxiety that had plagued me into adulthood.  I’d not traveled in the final few months of Gretchen’s life. And as a sole human in the household, I was her main caregiver.  Gretchen was my nearly 16 year-old St. Bernard/shepherd mix. I’m quite certain in imagining the gasp (16!) that invariably escaped from your lips that I need not go into too much detail about how heavy the caregiving was for a geriatric, large breed dog with advanced osteoarthritis, a touch of renal disease and had been recently treated for hemorrhagic gastroenteritis . Gretchen was nev...

It’s not uncommon for me to be brought on board by a family to tend to their pet who has received a life-limiting illness or is experiencing age-related decline (in many cases, both)—and for them to have much-younger pets as well. The former tends to be the focus of my care and tending of course, but as any family in this situation will tell you, the other pets become just as much a part of the equation because they’re as much a part of the family unit.  It’s no secret that the younger pets lend a sense of lightness to the overall situation and in themselves offer some respite from the day-to-day changes, decision making, monitoring of a pet who is in delicate health. In fact, I often remind my families that though the pangs of guilt that they experience from having fun with their younger pets and tending to their emotional and mental needs are completely normal, resisting that and setting time aside for play and all else can actually make them a better caregiver to that pet ...