Animals Unfolded

Dog booties are used to protect a pet’s paws from the elements, mostly in winter. The products used to melt ice can wreak havoc on the pads, as well as the skin between, and for some dogs, the cold is just too much. Booties are ubiquitous in my day-to-day as a professional specializing in caring for senior and geriatric pets and those who are receiving animal hospice and palliative care. Aside from the reasons above, they’re used to protect the top and bottom of an an aging dog’s paws when degenerative myleopathy is present, or when they need more grip on bare surfaces, like when mobility is becoming less stable .  There are lots of brands and styles, but few really measure up to the outstanding protection, affordability and usefulness that the Pawz brand does. My lending library gets lots of donations from families-of-record that I’ve worked with as a Certified Animal Hospice Practitioner, and there’s an abundance of various other brands in it for good reason: they just don’t wo...

There are a few things that pet guardians rate as important when addressing the needs of their aging or terminally ill pet: they don’t want them to suffer, they want them to eat and they don’t want to see them zorked out and sedated on pain medication. And as a Certified Animal Hospice Practitioner, when I’m supporting families as we are discussing pain management with their pet’s veterinarian, the side effects are top of mind for them. (Some medications are sedating, at least temporarily though in many cases the sedation can be a big help, but I digress.) Those concerns about sleepiness are valid. And when a family gets on board with adequate pain management, I can tell you it’s not a moment too soon.  The pet does in fact typically sleep more, but it’s easy to focus so much on how drowsy a pet seems as a side effect of meds and not take into account that maybe, for the first time in a long time, the pet has attained a level of comfort because of the medications doing their inte...

Food is one of those most important topics that is discussed in the focus of my work, and it’s not surprising.  I use it as a positive reinforcement tool when I’m performing care duties for a pet, and I teach families how they can, too. It’s used as part of enrichment strategies that are appropriate to a pet’s telos, physical ability and emotional needs.  Food is sustenance.  It brings joy to families when they’re feeding their pet and it’s well-received, since it signals that the pet is feeling good about things and that they are doing at least reasonably well.  Pets need food to survive, at least until they are approaching the stage of animal hospice-supported natural death, where food becomes more of a burden than a support, but that is a topic best reserved for a post all on its own. I’m often asked about what I think in terms of what food or foods are best for a pet. As a seasoned Certified Animal Hospice Practitioner (CAHP), I am qualified to speak to whether i...

Canine enrichment is a topic I bring up not only during consultations, but throughout the pet’s lives that I’m tending. It’s vital in keeping dog’s happy, with its ability to stimulate the brain, engage the body and at times, use problem solving skills. It’s also a stress reliever.  Enrichment can take many forms, can be employed at any age, and I’m deeply appreciating the notion that so many pet product companies have come up with novel designs for pets, especially dogs.  Some of them have been designed for those who are power chewers—you know, those dogs who will routinely destroy and swallow commercially available toys. Sadly, a percentage of those dogs have or will land in a veterinary emergency hospital after ingesting a chunk of said toy and developing an obstruction. And so, families have no other option but to skip offering traditional toys, but what fun is that for them or the dog?  I’ve stumbled on a workable and safe solution that any dog—no matter the telos, s...

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...

Pets are living healthier lives, thanks to the advances in veterinary medicine and better understanding of their needs, both behavioral and emotional. Healthier also means longer , and that has implications that families might not have expected with their current generation of pets: challenges surrounding age-related decline. Having seen many families through what is now their third generation of pets, and walked with them through their pet’s fourth life stages, there have been so many advances in medication and complementary therapies to enhance comfort — which in turn supports mobility — along with tools in helping that go more smoothly. All pets experience age-related decline. And I’m going to focus on talking about one area that invariably comes to the forefront: how dogs and cats are able to manage changing mobility and independence with the use of products and tools.  With cats, we know they have certain spots in the house that they really love to hang out in, and they’re us...

“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...