Peace of Mind for Pet Parents Episode 038: The Gift of Now: Understanding Presence in Pet Hospice Care – Learning from Our Animals How to Live in the Present Moment

Episode Transcript: 

Karen Wylie: Hello and welcome back to Peace of Mind for Pet Parents. I'm Karen Wylie here as always with my friend Gail Pope. Today we're going to talk about something that we say all the time but we've never really unpacked to take a closer look at. 

Gail, we tell people a lot of times to “stay in the present” and that their pets are “living in the now”. The other day as I was looking at our very long list of things that we could talk about on our podcast conversations, I realized that we've never really talked about what being present means. We use the term “presence” a lot but it's abstract. You and I may not even be meaning the same thing when we talk about being present or living in the now.

So I thought perhaps today we can explore these concepts together and make them a little less philosophical and more practical as we go. Does that sound okay?

Gail Pope: I think it's important to understand that we have found a really interesting balance in these conversations. At first when we planned them, we had a topic and we knew what we were going to talk about. I wouldn't say it was boring but it was different. Now we don't do that.

I know you don't even think about what we're going to talk about generally until the morning of. You don't tell me and so I sit here each week, a deer in headlights, thinking, "Oh my gosh, am I going to be able to talk about this?"

So yes, it is an interesting thing . Also, that's strange because it also brings us into the moment because we are faced with something that we're going to talk about in the now, right now.

Karen Wylie: Yes, especially when it's a topic like this where we haven't discussed it previously.

Gail Pope: No.

Karen Wylie: But we've both used those terms of being present with our pets and that they live in the now. So it seems like a good time for us to talk, but you're right — by me not sharing it with you until the morning of, ensures that we're going to have a spontaneous conversation.

Because I don't know what you're going to say and you don't know what I'm going to say or what I'm going to ask you. So let's start out with this : When someone might say to you "Be present with your pet"— let's say the pet is declining, what does that mean to you?

How would you describe it, being present with your pet?

Gail Pope: It's clearing your mind of all the trivia— the everyday trivia that is going on. Gosh, over so many years I’ve found myself sitting with obviously lots of animals. Either when they're not well, when they're aging, whatever the reason, but especially towards the end of life— if they're immobile perhaps, or they're resting 90% of the time. I'm sitting with them, and I’ve realized over and over again that I am sitting with them. I love them. I'm stroking or just sitting with them.

My mind? It's in six different places! So although I'm with them and I'm caring and I'm loving, I'm really not present with them. And so that's something that I've really been quite successful in understanding and being able to do. I still struggle to do it because however much I'm aware that I'm present. I'm thinking about this moment. Oh, but then I remember, "Did I start the dishwasher? Did I do this, did I do that?"

Before you know it, you are out of that moment. So, it is a precious thing. We talk a lot in modern times now about mindfulness and meditation and Reiki but those things are tools to help us on the journey.

Karen Wylie: I think as you're saying too, and having little Missy come to assume her usual position, how much easier it is when you have a healthy, active pet? Because they are so in the moment that they are usually insistent enough that they pull you to them and pull you into the present.

Yet when we are working with a pet whose health is declining and they're not as active as they have been - or they're actively dying - then we're responding to them. But that's when our mind seems to just be going all over the place. So I guess it might be helpful to think about what being present is NOT.

Gail Pope: I guess being present is not such a clear statement and so it's hard to turn it upside down. But it really isn't honoring the now. It's not an honoring, it's not being part of life. 

We know that life is precious and life can be snatched away at any time. So when we're constantly living in the past and the future, we are missing the most important part which is happening around us right now.

Karen Wylie: Absolutely. It's our minds that are doing all that. Our mind is racing ahead to scheduling the next vet appointment or looking at what Dr. Google can tell us about the latest symptoms. We're going to research things, we're going to resolve things. We're going to cure our babies. Then we're also jumping way ahead, catastrophizing what could happen? What might happen? What we think might happen in the worst way?

Gail Pope: Yes, now you are heading into anxiety. For me, that comes when we are living with our calendars, with our schedules, and we know this is coming and that's coming, and then tomorrow and the next day, "Oh, what have I got to prepare? What have I got to do?"

That takes us ‘out of the now’ all the time. I think for me, my calendar would be number one on the “cross off” list. I also think social media is a huge problem for probably most of us. I try not to engage a lot in social media because I know once I start watching or listening to something, I'm onto the next one and then another reel comes up……

It's also interesting and before you know it, you could be hours, so try not to do that and stay away from it. The stress of daily life and the joys of daily life too, it's all the things that distract our mind because our mind loves to multitask.

Karen Wylie: God knows, I love doing that but I've just caught myself the last couple weeks doing this: in the morning, I'll be having my morning tea. Sit down on the couch. I've already had 5 or 10 minutes of intense time with Chey and Livy, the Aussies. So now they've calmed down because the day has begun— mom and dad are here. I'll be looking at my phone because I'll be looking at our schedule for the day and looking at what social media posts Zoe has put up for us, that kind of thing.

So I'm already immersed in that and so I've got my cup of tea in my right hand and I've got my phone in my left and I'm there on the couch. I've started my morning and Livy, God love her, has started coming over, sitting down in front of me and just looking up— staring at me. Not pawing me, not licking me. So finally I'll see her and she's just waiting for me to attend to her, to just put that phone down, put the cup of tea down, get both of my hands on her. It has just really struck me how she brings me into the present moment every morning.

She's seeing what I'm doing and I'm definitely not there with her and Chey. My body's there but I'm not really emotionally with them— I'm not present. I guess, that's why I was saying a little earlier that when our pets are very healthy and active, they can help us stay in the now a whole lot easier because they give us cues and we're responding. Like I've learned to respond to Livy's silent plea for me to be with her.

Gail Pope: I think a lot of people don't though. They'll absentmindedly stroke the dog or the cat and cuddle them, put them on their lap but they've still got a phone in one hand. So it's like a stepping stone.

They're trying, I totally agree with you. They spend their lives trying to calm us, to slow us, to just be with us. Maybe not always the slowest because a burst of energy in a game is always very welcome because you're still in that moment with them.

Karen Wylie: Exactly. But otherwise, I'll use Callie here because she positions herself like this, whether I'm writing and creating something, or whether we're in a meeting or recording as we are today. So my hand is mindlessly petting her because she's with me so many hours of the day, that it becomes something I'm not attending to every moment. But there needs to be times when I'm very consciously attending to her and not just going through the motions of it.

Because otherwise, as caregivers, it'd be easy enough for us to go through the motions of care. Now I'm just talking about her and petting her but if we have a pet who's declining, well then, there's medication to give. There's bedding to change. There's accidents to clean up after. So a lot of our caregiving is task focused and so it's really easy. On one hand, yes, we're in the moment …but we're not really in the moment with our pet.

Gail Pope: No, it's different.

Karen Wylie: Right. We're reacting or responding to the physical things in the environment that need to be addressed but we're not really emotionally or psychically in with our pets. I think especially when I have a pet who's declining and I'm with them, the quiet time often has me starting to second guess some of the choices I made in the past. "I should have caught this earlier. Why didn't I go to the vet two months ago rather than last month?" You just start... "Why didn't I try this other treatment? I wonder if that would've worked."

As we've talked about in other podcast episodes, hindsight is always 20/20 for us and it doesn't help us because we're looking back with the knowledge we have now. We didn't have a month or two or six months ago, however long back we're looking and we did the best that we could back then. But it's easy to start— I don't want to say obsessing because it doesn't always lead to where you're obsessing, but when you're problem solving in your head and thinking of the past, you are not in the present moment.

Gail Pope: Yes, exactly. It's such an easy place to get to, such an easy place to get to, and more difficult to wade out of it. 

For me, I think honoring Mother Nature is our best way forward. I find walking Ollie every morning - he's deaf and he's blind,  so he's in a different world. I've learned since I'm only walking him now.  Before, I hadn't really realized it so much, but he takes me deeply into the heart of Mother Nature.

He's engrossed in what he can smell. He's not seeing, he's not hearing but he's smelling. He's intuiting and just spending a few minutes totally concentrating on him takes me to a different place. It's a more relaxing, gentler place. It doesn't mean my mind's switched off but then once I start to feel, "Ooh, I wonder what time..." or something like that comes up then he's already prepared me to switch. 

For instance, this morning, the sun was shining. It was freezing cold but the sun was shining. As I looked up and reminded myself "Oh, where am I going? Where's my mind heading off to?"

I realized here we're in autumn. Really strong autumn colors and just looking at, we've got lots of trees, just looking around at the panorama of the oranges and the greens, all the different shades. It was absolutely beautiful. That was almost like, duh, now you are back. Then the birds and there's Mr. Blue Jay hopping along beside me saying "Hello! I need my peanuts."

You look down and you look and see a pretty flower. You hadn't noticed the bees surrounding it in all the different flowers. So just stepping back a little bit and joining Ollie, as he's engrossed in that smell, that message that was left for him. He's totally engrossed in what he's doing. So I find it really helps me to let go because then a thought will come into my mind. Like this morning, "Oh my goodness, we're starting early. I need to get back."

Let it go. Let it go. The birds, the bees, the flowers, the trees, just embrace them for a few minutes. So it's tough. It's tough being human, I think. Very tough.

Karen Wylie: It can be very tough being human and I think what you're describing though, with you being drawn to use other senses because when we're not in the present moment and we're looking back in the past and we're worrying about the future. 

We're not looking at the beautiful leaves. We're not listening to the sounds of the birds and. It's not only our dogs that sniff along the way, although granted they have much keener sense of smell than we do. But at different times of year, you either can be smelling the flowers or soon around here, we're starting to smell the first fireplaces being burned, the smoke in the air.

It's like when you allow yourself to use your other senses. It really does bring you more into that present moment. Even just like I was here mindlessly petting Callie, and yet if I closed my eyes and we weren't here recording a podcast episode but I was just here with her, I would be feeling the texture of her fur. I would generally find myself adapting my breathing to her breathing.

Just getting ‘in sync’ because that's what we often do with them and that's what they do for us. 

But if we're so worried about the past or already grieving that they're leaving us (sometimes long before they do), we're missing out on so much of what can be wonderful moments.

Gail, can you remember any specific moment when you felt truly present with one of your animals? You've had so many experiences that you've learned from. Certainly as we've talked about, it can be while they're healthy, but it often happens in their decline.

Gail Pope: How long do I have to...

Karen Wylie: I'm only asking for one story.

Gail Pope: The one that springs to mind particularly— well, I guess first of all, the cats have brought me closer to the present moment than dogs. I wouldn't say that dogs haven't but it seems— I'm just looking back at when Ollie was in his dying process, he was at least a couple of weeks away and he took to bed. 

He had a large, low bed. You probably remember, he was in a wheelchair. He couldn't walk with his back legs. So he had a four poster bed and it was very low to the ground and it was really big. It was absolutely adorable. Somebody made it for us, for him, not for me! He was lying down — he was lying down all the time and he had no less than six cats with him. At first, I guess the sentiment was, "Oh, look, there's Charlie. She's lying down beside Ollie. Oh, there's Beauregard, there's Barney there."

All different animals would be seen at different times. I think that brought us to wonder what were they doing? They weren't grooming themselves, they weren't actually doing anything. They were just there. 

I have a lovely photograph of him lying with the cats all around him. Nobody's doing anything. They're in the moment and that fascinated me. So I would sit down just beside them on the floor watching and being part of that moment and feeling how easy it seemed to be for them. They weren't stopping and getting up, turning around and fidgeting. They were just there in the moment.

Every now and again, one of them would get up and wander off to get a drink or go to a litter box, and then they'd generally circle back and settle back down. And there they were. They weren't asleep. They were focusing. 

Sometimes there'd be a paw here or there on Ollie's body. Sometimes someone would be snuggling back to back with him but they would be in that moment. They wouldn't snuggle back to back and then go off to sleep in another world. They were present.

So those kinds of stories are the ones that really underscore awareness and being in the present moment — really like meditation, like Reiki. I think it was probably around that time I was learning Reiki. Starting to realize how difficult it is to sit in the moment. 

Actually it's easy to sit in the moment but being there 100% in that moment is probably the most difficult thing that humans have to learn to do.

Karen Wylie: It is so hard to do and I think as you're describing, as you've called them, the doulas.

Gail Pope: Yes, all the doulas.

Karen Wylie: And we've talked about how important it is for all of them when an animal is declining or dying. Because they're preparing in their own way, even if they're not thinking ahead to it, they do tend to have an awareness of what's happening.

Gail Pope: Exactly, and they're very present in that awareness. As you say, it's not as though they're planning what's going to happen and when's it going to happen. They're just there. They're just there comforting.

Karen Wylie: Yes, they're not worrying. We often talk about the importance of companioning and walking alongside someone who's dying. And many of our animals do that for each other. I've seen it and as you have so many times in talking about the doulas.

Gail Pope: One of our doulas, I don't know if I've talked about, I probably have talked about him at some point. That was Furbee who was brain damaged. We still were never sure whether he was actually deaf or blind. It was really hard to actually understand the him that lived inside a beautiful body. But he was clearly joyful. He was clearly a happy boy. We just couldn't really interact that well.

He loved affection, but not a lot. He didn't mind being held. He was a very special boy. But as he grew older, he became a doula and it became commonplace for us to see him snuggled beside a dying animal with a cat or dog in the moment with them. At the time, I don't think I really saw it as that kind of an awareness. But when I look back at photos of him with other animals, his eyes are open. 

Remembering those occasions, he was very present. Very present. His mind didn't work like other minds. I'm sure it worked, but quite how, I'm not entirely sure. He walked in circles all the time. His brain was not a normal functioning brain but he was drawn to be a doula.

He was clearly very passionate about it. He didn't just lie with them for five minutes, it would be an hour or more at a time. He just wouldn't move, he wouldn't sleep. He would just BE with them. 

So I think we all have the capacity to let go. I think our modern lives have programmed us out of that natural instinct to be in the moment.

Karen Wylie: Yes, because as you're describing Furbee, and I'm assuming you were in that room a whole lot of that time so you could observe him and the other doulas. 

I'm thinking about the time I spend with any of mine that are on the way of leaving the planet and leaving me. I'll be sitting on the couch and the dogs will either have their heads on my lap or my shoulder and the cats are on my lap or on my hip or whatever.

But I have opportunities to be in the moment in addition to stroking them. I can be looking at the sun coming through the window or it's getting dark and looking at the shadows. I can be feeling the texture of the fur. I can be hearing other sounds in the house or outside the house. 

There are ways that you can be in the moment just by making sure to try to use your other senses and get out of your head.

Gail Pope: I just got a picture then of a particular time sitting on the couch, dog either side, a couple of cats here, and Fred, I remember him on my shoulder basically on the back of the couch. And there I was and really enjoying this very special moment but the television was on. I was enjoying this moment and stroking and very aware and listening to whatever the program was on the television. 

It's not the same, is it?

Karen Wylie: No, it's not. If it was soft music that helped you stay in a more meditative zone that's something different than episode number 89 of a series you've been watching. Yes, that's very distracting.

Gail Pope: I think we really do have to realize that animals are our teachers and we have to pay attention and they will guide us, or maybe Mother Nature is our guide.

Karen Wylie: Certainly the other doctor in the room is with us as they are declining. So I think it is all part and parcel of it because we can become more aware of ourselves in this process too— just by being more aware of our body when we're with them. 

As you're saying, what not to listen to, what is distracting and not helpful, but just noticing what is happening at the present moment certainly helps. As you're saying, we learned from our pets too. 

So what do you think are some of the obstacles we have to being in the moment? What pulls us out of presence now you've mentioned about the TV's on, and that can be really distracting.

We've talked about thinking of the future, worrying about the future and regretting the past. That definitely takes us out of the present moment. What are some other things that might do that to people?

Gail Pope: Again, it's all the things that the mind juggles with. Even in the span of five minutes, the mind can visit maybe 20 different things that it’s juggling. 

As we're human, I think it's just really hard for me. I've learned some of the things that I can deal with. For instance, I have very soft music playing in the background and so on occasion when I become diverted by something, sometimes I'll suddenly be aware of the music and it'll take me back down into where I need to be. I think people in business, we spend a lot of our lives in front of our computers - and they don't help - but it's very difficult to stop working when you've got a lot of work to do.

But I think, again, as far as I'm concerned, Mother Nature steps in because I have what's commonly called a bad back. So I know darned well that if I sit at this computer for a long period of time, that when I try to get up, my back is going to really tell me off. So I try to get up and just take a little walk through the house, listen to the music which I hadn't even heard because I was so distracted with something else. But Mother Nature can step in various different ways. Suddenly you'll notice rain on the window and it's almost "Hello! Are you with me?"

There's things that divert you from where you are and actually starting to get used to those happening and instead of, "Oh, it's raining." Yes, Mother Nature. It's just starting to become aware of the things that bring us out of the turmoil that we're often in.

Karen Wylie: I know in meditation classes and training, there's a lot of encouragement of using particular music that you enjoy, that you find relaxing and using it frequently so that it kind of trains subliminally. It trains your mind that it's time to relax. So when I'm hearing you mention music - it can be very helpful to us if we start selecting music and keeping it as a ritual because then we relax a little bit. 

We don't think nearly as much when we're responding to routines and habits.

So if we make music, soft music or something in the background that really helps us and we do that regularly, that can help. 

Breathing— the three conscious breaths can do it or the box breathing to the count of four: count to hold the breath for to the count of four, then exhale for four, hold for four.

That kind of thing. So any of those, again, it's getting back into your body to bring you back to the present moment. 

As I was sharing a little earlier, what my little Aussie girl Livy has been teaching me every morning, put my damn phone away. Really, here I am in the morning, I haven't been with them. During the night, they're sleeping. I'm sleeping. Having my morning tea, I can have that in one hand and I can have an arm around them. But she's been teaching me as you were saying earlier, they can teach us pretty darn well.

Gail Pope: You just reminded me as you started talking about breathing, I was thinking I don't do that enough. Then my mind said to me, hold on. You do it every night when you're in bed and I'm talking to you and you can't go to sleep. So it was helping me. 

Then it reminded me that what I do, and I do this during the daytime and no set times just occasionally, I have this little poem. I think it may have come from Thich Nhat Hanh's work and I likely modified something that he said, but I've been doing this for years. 

It's so simple: 

Breathing in, I heal my spirit, 

Breathing out, I smile. 

Present moment, Special moment.

And if I stop and do that and really stay in it, I get goosebumps. Wow. I know that I'm there, even if it's just for that second, I'm in this moment. I'm 100% here. That has become a mantra that has stayed with me for years now.

Karen Wylie: It's beautiful.

Gail Pope: I don't think about it.

Karen Wylie: It’s become part of your life. It's a routine. It's a habit. It's a ritual. Can you repeat those again for our listeners who might be wanting to write it down?

Gail Pope: Breathing in, I heal my spirit. Breathing out, I smile. Present moment, special moment.

Karen Wylie: That's lovely.

Gail Pope: And sometimes I'll say it but I don't accompany it with the correct breathing or not the correct breathing but I don't time my breathing with it. 

But then other times I do it along with breathing in, breathing out and making that flow. That is even more powerful, because you actually feel the breath taking you deep inside yourself. Then you let it go, and so your whole being is involved. There's plenty of mantras, like the Green Tara mantra.

There are all sorts and I love them but that particular one just has sat with me for years and years and I feel like it lifts me up.

Karen Wylie: I can see why.

Gail Pope: It brings me back.

Karen Wylie: And as you're saying, it's important for everyone to find what works for them.

Gail Pope: Exactly. Some days it may be one thing and others it may be another.

Karen Wylie: But any of them do bring you back to your body and all your senses again which minimizes what we do with our mind. When you're repeating the mantra you're using your mind as a tool, as part of the ritual, but it's not taking you out of the moment.

Gail Pope: No. It's bringing me into the moment rather than out of it. That's a good way to say it. I like that.

Karen Wylie: That's beautiful. That's beautiful.

Gail Pope: I'm just sitting here and I have Ollie who is just lying on the floor on the carpet here very peacefully. I know if I walk over there and pick him up, give him a kiss and put him down again, I would've been drawn into that moment. So there are so many little things like that that will bring us not only joy, but into the present moment.

Karen Wylie: Into the present moment. It's so important to release not only to tame our mind. So that we're not doing the past and the future, but also to relieve our need to keep taking care of them for just a little while. Because there's so much as a caregiver that we have to do.

Gail Pope: You know what? They say the same. They're trying to care for us and encourage us to do all these beautiful, gentle, relaxing things.

Karen Wylie: Exactly!

Gail Pope: No stress.

Karen Wylie: Yes, just like Livy this morning, that was her job apparently the last couple weeks to pull me back. Not focusing so much on tasks allows us to be in the moment with them when we most really need to be with them and want to be with them. So I think that may be a good point to end on. What do you think?

Gail Pope: I think that would be a lovely way to end. It's a delight. This was a delightful conversation. I really enjoyed it because again, it brought us back into the moment, didn't it? Here we are focusing on a place that we strive to be all the time but obviously we are not there all the time. So it's a delightful time to be there, isn't it?

Karen Wylie: Absolutely. There's always time to do it more often.

Gail Pope: Definitely.

Karen Wylie: Thank you as always for an interesting conversation because like we said, we haven't talked about this before, ever. We talk about a lot of things but we have never talked about this before. 

We thank you for being with us as well today, and hope that you will join us again next week when we will continue talking about ways to maintain peace of mind as a pet parent. Thanks so much. Bye-bye.

Gail Pope: Thank you. Bye-bye.