Peace of Mind for Pet Parents Episode 030: When We Becomes Me: Navigating Life When Your Pet Family Becomes One

Episode Transcript: 

Karen Wylie: Hello and welcome back to Peace of Mind for Pet Parents. I'm Karen along with Gail and of course our executive producer Callie who is actually laying down quietly— for how many minutes I guess we'll see. 

Gail and I've been discussing some of the changes recently taking place in her life and how it reminded me of many feelings I've had at other times.

So we're going to talk today about how our lives can change when our life changes to include only one pet rather than many or perhaps losing that one. How that can affect your day-to-day life and your processing of grief and how it may be different. Not necessarily where one type of grief is easier or more difficult than the other - but just different.

It’s  what's different when "We" becomes "Me". 

So Gail, as we've been talking about especially the last couple weeks, you've been very open about the changes you're going through and the recent losses of both Purrci, your cat, and Andy, your dog. Living now with only Ollie, an elder dog as your only companion animal in the house.

So could you start us off and share a little bit about what daily life feels like for you now, and how is that a little different going from a larger furry family as a we, to the one?

Gail Pope: It's hard to answer that because my mind is taking me back and back to how my life has gradually changed over the years from the sanctuary with 80-100 animals to care for and worry about every day, to a very gradual decrease and how the caregiving changed. 

I think for me, I guess, it really goes back to when we moved from the desert back to the sanctuary's original home in Santa Rosa. Everything started to change at that time because we moved here with two elderly, very elderly dogs, who were really in quite active hospice care.

That was Rosie and Ziggy, and shortly after we arrived here, Rosie died. Richard's health at that time was declining very quickly and shortly after that, he died. At the same time, Ziggy the Greyhound adopted Purrci who I've been talking about recently a lot more. So Purrci came into my life as Rosie and Ziggy went. Then Andy and Ollie, the two dogs came into my life almost as though I needed rescuing at that time. 

If I look back, I didn't realize it at the time, but yes I did in some ways, but Richard leaving on the human level was the biggest hurdle because that's when I suddenly still had my animals - less than I'd been used to, but they were all needy. I was still a caregiver but I was suddenly a "Me" and not an "Us" on the human level.

Karen Wylie: Yes.

Gail Pope: That still bothers me even now. I'm sure anybody living on their own having lost a spouse would be right there with me because it's a complete life change. But then Purrci died about, I don't know, a month ago now. It still feels like yesterday.

Karen Wylie: Almost three weeks.

Gail Pope: It's three weeks and that hit me very hard because his death was, I guess for me, expected on a daily level. I'd got so used to the fact that his health was fragile. I was used to that, but in my mind, he was never ever going to leave me. So his collapse and death hit me pretty hard.

Really, I was moving through a trajectory at that time without quite realizing it. Because in my mind, Richard's leaving had left me as the "Me" and not the "Us" because the US still was partly there. 

I think Purrci leaving and then Andy going fairly soon afterwards…although his death was expected, he'd been winding down. So emotionally, I grieved with him before he left. I don't feel quite the deep grief, it's sadness. I am sad. I'm sad to have lost them all. The grief, the really deep grief was dealt with before. However, now I'm dealing with this feeling very different because now I have one dog. He's deaf and blind. He's very self-sufficient. He's adorable but he's not a cuddly person and he was actually a puppy-mill dog with Andy. So he's not used to affection.

He enjoys it and he'll rub his head but if I try to sit him on my lap or cuddle him, he's "I don't know what this is. Now. I need to get down." I don't have this with me anymore, and I don't have anyone to cuddle. So I'm very much on this pedestal in the middle of my life as a "Me", and it feels very strange.

Karen Wylie: Purrci was such a strong and vital personality as I've gotten to know him the last two years via all of our conversations. Of course, his needs were very extreme in a lot of ways in terms of caregiving and that he could not urinate or move his bowels himself. He needed to be expressed and manipulated to help him each day. 

So you were doing that multiple times every day. That's what was allowing him day-to-day to survive and thrive. And he did thrive for a very long time which is certainly a credit to you and part of his very strong will to live and to adapt to change. He had lots of changes to adapt to in his life.

Gail Pope: He did.

Karen Wylie: But I've heard you mention as we've been talking about this the last few weeks that even the lack of sound in the house is different for you— that it's just so quiet.

Gail Pope: Yes.

Karen Wylie: And for any of us that have multiple pets, I think it's almost impossible to understand because there's chaos. There's some kind of chaos all the time with dogs barking or cats and dogs interacting, either playing or fussing with one another or whatever. There's just sound and activity to respond to all the time.

Gail Pope: It's energy.

Karen Wylie: Yes.

Gail Pope: The energy in the house is mostly mine except when it's near dinnertime and Ollie is totally present and barking like crazy. This is now, whereas I dreaded it before and it was a bit of an annoyance especially for my neighbors at 5:30 in the morning with his ebullient barking. I almost love it because it brings me not only into the present moment, but it brings me joy because it brings energy into existence and we all need that.

Karen Wylie: We all need that. Certainly your role as a caregiver has dramatically changed just in these almost three weeks of condensed time in terms of what you needed to do for Purrci every single day, multiple times.

Gail Pope: And Andy too.

Karen Wylie: And managing Andy and Ollie in terms of taking them for their walks or their ride in the stroller. Those were routines and rituals every day that were part of your day and you organized your consultations around what you needed to do for them. We'd organize our recording times around that. That's just been part of your day-to-day responsibilities. And now with Ollie as the one, how are you beginning to see your role or your identity as a caregiver changing?

Gail Pope: I don't know. In all honesty, I feel like I'm in no man's land at the moment. A part of me might be called an elderly caregiver. So I'm also at a point in my life where I know many of our people are: past retirement age. The first thing everybody says to me, "You're getting more cats, aren't you? And you're going to have another dog."

At the moment I'm wrestling with what I'm going to do. I don't think I can be without feline energy for very long. It's just a part of my existence. I think I am a cat. However, I'm very aware that caregiving, which interestingly enough I understand, and the role of caregiver is one we have to think about very carefully before we adopt a being on two or four legs. I tend to think that we shouldn't adopt them anyway because they generally will find and adopt us. 

Karen Wylie: That's right. They will appear in our lives at some point or in my case in my yard. Then they become part of my family. Yes, I think for me of course, having had many years breeding purebred cats and then having them live to 15 to 20 years beyond their entry into the world, into my arms, in my home.

It's been a gradual, I guess I should use the word attrition. Somewhere between ages 15 and 20 something would begin to deteriorate. Usually kidney disease would be what would finally take them from us to leave the planet. But I always had somebody, at least somebody, maybe multiple somebodys that I was giving extra care to, and yet I had the others. 

You and I have talked about this at various times where we were thinking that our sense of grief or our sense of sadness was different in a lot of ways…perhaps delayed in some ways because we would be so focused on the caregiving for the one, the elderly one, the one that needed us that was very sick and about to transition. But when they would physically transition, we still had the others that we had to turn to, and they still needed us every day.

There were still things to do, there were still babies to monitor, there were still water bowls to fill and everything else. Grief was still being processed, sadness was still there but it wasn't just what we were experiencing because we still had daily tasks. In my case, I had businesses to manage.

Anyway, so I guess what I'm trying to get at is when you are experiencing loss and grief, when you still have multiple pets, you still have a role as a caregiver. You still have your role as a pet parent. But I have found over the 25 years or so since I bred my last litter of kittens and my population of adults has gradually decreased over time with new ones, of course appearing in the yard that need my help.

So they become part of the family too but it's a much smaller family now. So now I have two Aussies, a 5-year-old and a 7-year-old. Aussies are very active babies and fortunately, knock on wood, they are very healthy as part of the drive for all that activity. Then I have four cats at various ages and one who everybody probably has seen at one point or another and is 12 (Callie).

The last time I needed to focus and provide extensive caregiving was with Mr. Hope who we had for 16 and a half years. But at the end it was hypertrophic cardio, kidney disease, high blood pressure, and a myriad of things requiring pills three times a day and very regimented caregiving.

And to not have that, it's like suddenly to not have that schedule with Mr. Hope those few weeks after he left. It was like, "My God."

I really noticed it because at the time I was focused on him I didn't have anybody else that was sick. I didn't have anybody else I was monitoring. Everybody else was young and very healthy. 

Although I still see myself as someone who knows how to be a caregiver, at this moment. I am not a caregiver for any particular pet because I don't have a pet that needs that level of monitoring care. It is definitely an emotional relief to not have that.

If tomorrow anybody needed it, I'd be right there. I know I'm going to do everything I can for my pet but as I have smaller numbers of pets I find my sense of self and identity as a caregiver is very different and more pet parent than caregiver. That's going to go back and forth, I think for me, depending on who might need help.

But I think that's something for so many of our listeners and people who watch us on YouTube is that when we are providing care to a very sick pet— as you were with Purrci for the entire time you had him. You were expressing his bladder and bowels for him multiple times a day which is a pretty serious undertaking and then those routines are gone. I think what was most startling for me as well, when the routines are gone, how do you replace those routines?

Now, you and I work at home. And so caring for our pets is integrated with everything else we do day to day. For a lot of people who work outside their home, they may lose their pet but their grief is not necessarily public in every facet of their lives. There could be lots of clients or customers or coworkers that don't necessarily know about their pet.

Gail Pope: Yes.

Karen Wylie: So they don't have that opportunity to deal with grief whenever needed throughout the day, but sometimes that's a blessing. That you have a place to go that is not associated with your pet.

Gail Pope: Yes. I think I'm really lucky in that respect because the people that I work with obviously are all my kind of people and so I don't have to hide. We did the Rose Ceremony yesterday and I was reduced to floods of tears but that's okay. I wouldn't do that in a supermarket— at least I hope I might not. Who knows?

But grief is grief and when you need to let those tears out, the relief is just what your body needs. So it is never going to be easy. 

I think you brought up a very good point for people who go to work and they work with people that don't understand how much their life has changed. Because it isn't only about the grief, it's about the emptiness. It's about the change of routine and how it affects you.

Karen Wylie: Is there anything about the silence in the house that you've been noticing how much quieter everything is…is there any aspect of that that feels healing at all? Or is it more of a reminder of the absence of energy?

Gail Pope: At the moment, I think it's more of a reminder for me because I would say that to me the silence is noisy. I don't know if that makes sense but I wasn't aware of the energy of the house as it was before I was aware of what I was focusing on— my work, the animals. Now it's almost a deafening nothingness around me. Very strange. Very strange.

Karen Wylie: This may not be a question you've even come to or can answer, but how does grieving the loss of Purrci and Andy affect how you're approaching care with Ollie? Are you experiencing anticipatory grief about the future loss of Ollie?

Gail Pope: No, he's 18. He has no sign of illness. However, that's a good question because yes, it's made me think about it because he is an old guy. But he's happy. He's happy, he's full of energy.

He loves his food. He lives for his food, I should say. I'm happy for him and I'm very aware that anything could happen at any time. So as a mother, I still have those little niggles that I pick him up and give him a kiss or put him down and there's a fleeting, "Ooh, I wonder if this or that could happen. This could change at any time. So enjoy it while it's here."

So I'm very aware of enjoying the time with him when we go out for walks. He enjoys his walk and so I enjoy it with him and try to make sure I do stay in the moment with him rather than allow my mind to take me off at a tangent. Let me be with him while we are walking. 

When he's sleeping and I don't have anything pressing that I have to work on, that's where I have a problem because like all of us housewives, there is plenty to do. There's cupboards that need to be cleared out. There's this or that on the list that I know I've got to do but I can't do any of that. I just cannot bring myself to do anything other than what is really urgent to take care of the house on a weekly basis and do the laundry. All of those kinds of everyday routine things, absolutely I do. But the jobs that I could be doing with the spare time that I have, I'm not ready for that.

It's just I imagine other people are the same. It would be an intrusion. I don't want to do it.

Karen Wylie: Grieving is hard work. It really is. Even though for so many of us, when whatever the loss is, human or four footed, it's just an additional layer of stress or pressure, and it's tiring. It affects our energy level of what surplus energy we have to do the house.

Gail Pope: Exactly. Yes, you're right. It is about lack of energy. It drains you and you want to sit and stare at a wall sometimes, and that's okay.

Karen Wylie: That's very okay.

Gail Pope: Yes.

Karen Wylie: Very needed. Very much needed, as often and for as long as you need to. But it is hard work. I think the first time I ever experienced that, and I'll switch to a human loss, was after my father died and I was 22. You're still at an age where you don't think of your parents' dying. But I found myself for at least a couple months, more tired than usual, needing more sleep than usual. At the time it was like, "What the heck is wrong with me? I wonder if I need to go to the clinic."

I hadn't experienced ongoing grief in that way - to have discovered that grief is hard work and it tires your body out physically. While your mind mentally is working through so much, even if you're not consciously aware of it. It's taking that energy. 

So we have talked about how different we think or have thought at various times when we've had more animals, how the way we've coped is different. How it is for us as we have fewer animals. Do you think having more animals softens our grief in some way? I don't know. I'm not really sure how to express it. Or does it just change the shape of it?

Gail Pope: I like that. That's a very nice way of putting it. I've lived a huge part of my life with lots of animals, so before you finished the question, I was definitely like, "Absolutely. Yes, 100%"

Now, Yes, I think I would still stick with that because when you love animals and you have a family of animals, a large family of animals, the loss of one is helped by the emotional involvement with the other animals because they also miss that being in the family that is no longer there. They may show it in various different ways but it is like they are your tribe.

As your tribe gets smaller, it doesn't really become more difficult until it gets really small. But when your tribe is just you and one or even two others, now you're looking at something that is going to affect you, I think emotionally in a different way. 

Having experienced it now, I am finding that it is affecting me in a different way. Part of me wants to run out and adopt a hundred animals and bring them home with me…and I promise I'm not going to do that!

Karen Wylie: I was going to say, "Don't do that. Don't do that."

We'll have no time for podcast conversations. Time to be writing anything or teaching anything.

Gail Pope: It's hard to come face to face with your own self. I think that is part of it.

Karen Wylie: That's interesting. Can you say a little bit more about that?

Gail Pope: I only just thought of it. But if you're faced with your own thoughts, when you're used to involving other things and other people, other beings that you are caring for, all of a sudden that narrows and you're left face to face with yourself.

As caregivers, we talk about it all the time: take care of yourself. Take care of you before you take care of your other beings. I don't know that I've ever taken a huge amount of notice of that for my own self. But now I am face to face with me, and I'm not sure that I know me as well as I thought I did.

So I think that's all a part of it because everything changes. So we change too.

Karen Wylie: Yes, who are we without all of those animals around who you know when your role or identity is so much associated with having all those animals. It's not just how others look at you but how you look at yourself.

Gail Pope: Yes, and it is not always easy to come face to face with your own self.

Karen Wylie: No.

Gail Pope: We avoid that a lot. So I think it's very important to realize and to actually start to look inside, meditate a little more, and try to find your own balance before you dash out and do something crazy or different. It is just recalibrating your balance in life.

Karen Wylie: I think that's a really important thing to keep in mind. It's making me think of something I know I've shared with you in recent weeks that I keep coming into all sorts of research about how spending time with our pets who look at us,  just gaze into our eyes and are giving us all that unconditional love, that it increases our own body's production of dopamine and oxytocin. Both of which are related to being able to maintain an equilibrium emotionally and not experience levels of depression. 

I read about that stuff years ago but now they're really actually researching it with pet owners and trying to learn more about it. I mentioned to you that I think that explains why so many of our clients who have lost the one pet, have found coming home from work so difficult. Because they've lost a source of all that positivity and unconditional love coming to them and allowing their bodies to produce all that dopamine and oxytocin. 

If you suddenly don't have that, then you're going to find yourself feeling depressed, where it's a chemical depression. 

I think that's also an important factor for people when they're down to one, or have lost their only pet. There are reasons why they're feeling so sad. It's the loss of the pet but it's also their body reacting, responding to the loss of the pet, and that interaction that we're always able to count on with our beautiful babies.

Gail Pope: Yep, makes total sense.

Karen Wylie: In bringing this conversation to a close with what you've been experiencing in recent weeks from the second year anniversary of losing Richard, a couple weeks ago, and then Purrci and Andy— where are you here just a couple weeks later? Do you have any advice for other people as they find themself in similar situations?

Gail Pope: I guess the first thing that comes to mind is what I always say, and I probably will be taking it to my grave with me, is “baby steps”. Just be kind to yourself. Take baby steps through each hour of every day and do your best with great love. That's my mantra that's developing because whatever situation I'm put in or find myself in with work or play, they come to my mind because that's all we can all do.

When we try to rush at things, it's not going to happen. We have to just find our own balance. So baby steps and love. Love for yourself, and love for others.

Karen Wylie: Oh, that's just beautiful, especially after working with you as I have, and being familiar with your philosophy and the advice that you provide your clients - and all of us as we record and write. That it's not just focused on grief of the one, but also focusing on re-energizing yourself and figuring out who you are. The new you without that pet, without that family member as your life changes. 

As it is, it's a day to day change. That's really wonderful advice as always. What we always know we're going to get from you. 

Thank you, Gail, as always.

And we thank you for being with us. We do want to mention that our Rose Ceremony which is an online celebration of life of our pets - whether you've lost them long ago or recently - our Rose Ceremony is being held the second Sunday of every month at 2 o'clock Pacific or 5 o'clock Eastern, and it's free and open to everyone.

So if you would like to be with others who understand where you're at and how you feel, please consider joining us and you can find information about the Rose Ceremony and register if you choose at BrightPathForPets.com

We thank you for being with us today, and we'll look forward to seeing you next week.

Thank you as always. Bye-bye now.

Gail Pope: Goodbye.