Peace of Mind for Pet Parents Episode 053: From Pet Parent to Caregiver: The Quiet Shift Nobody Warns You About

Episode Transcript: 

Karen Wylie: Hello and welcome to Peace of Mind for Pet Parents. I'm Karen Wylie here, as always, with my wonderful friend Gail Pope. Last week we talked about why hospice isn't suggested more often by our veterinarians. Today I want to move away from systems and clinics and talk about something that's much more personal — and that's the moment that we realize something has shifted for us.

There's this quiet line that we cross often without noticing where we go from being just a loving pet parent to becoming something more. We're managing medications, we're adjusting diets, we're monitoring the heart rate, their breathing patterns. We're rearranging our schedules. 

Here's the funny part, a few years ago when Gail and I first started talking about creating something for pet parents and we talked about caregiver skills, she looked at me like I had three heads. And said, "It's all the same. What a pet parent does and what a caregiver does."

So with that, Gail, let's start at the very beginning. Before we talk about skills to be learned or any change in our role or identity. Let's just talk about that moment when something changes. 

When did you first realize that caring for animals at BrightHaven involved more than love?

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The Moment Everything Shifts 

Gail Pope: I don't know. And I don't know that I ever have an actual path going forward because I think it's baby steps, isn't it? When I first began, I didn't have any real experience other than being a pet parent, having animals, loving them, taking them to the vet. That piece in the middle didn't exist in my life or in my mind. I had a busy working schedule and the animals fitted in. I didn't have that many animals that ever went through chronic illness stages, and when I did, it was maybe just one animal. It didn't dawn on me. Anyway, let's see, we started the sanctuary and it became obvious to me that I needed help.

So Holly was the first person that became a BrightHaven employee or a "Cats Are People Too" employee. Between us, we would do all the household chores, we would write down lists of which animals needed different things, and then that gradually morphed into an actual document that I printed out every day that we could check off. So it was a journey of learning what I needed to do to take care of the animals I loved. I didn't see myself as any different even then as a pet caregiver, because caregiving I think wasn't a word necessarily that was well used in daily life anyway. I was a parent to a very big family and I cared for them in every single way that I could.

Although I wasn't, how to say this? I wasn't focused on “learning” in my mind but my whole being was learning all the time, if that makes sense. So I guess the animals taught me how to be a caregiver. Then eventually you gave me the title! 

It took, what, 30 years to get the title. It took me a long time to qualify for it.

Karen Wylie: She's glad I showed up. We'll have to get you some kind of sash.:)

Gail Pope: But no, that's really interesting because there is a difference. I know I'm looking into the human world, being a parent to an animal or a child or even a grownup child— a teenager, an adult child. We don't think of it as being a caregiver but if that being becomes ill in some way or needs our help, we just automatically snap into that mode. I guess if that grows and grows which generally it often does, then I don't think many of us give ourselves the “hat” and say, "I'm a caregiver." They still think of themselves purely as a loving mother or father.

So yes, it is interesting but there is a whole lot to learn that you don't necessarily learn with just one or two animals. But when you've looked after a whole lot, you actually realize that title of caregiver is something else.

Karen Wylie: Yes, and I think each new challenge, health challenge we have, we've had to learn a particular skill. Whether it's how to give an injection or how to do subQ fluids, or how to take their temperature on a regular basis, or so many different things. Or you begin being a caregiver but you don't necessarily think of yourself as one because you're doing it because you love your cat or your dog or your rabbit or your Guinea pig or whoever. 

You know, I never, certainly, never thought about myself as a caregiver for my horses when I was younger either but looking back on it, certainly you are monitoring in ways and keeping some notes.

Gail Pope: You know what, if you take the word in its original meaning - care giving. What is care? Number one in most people's minds is love. That's where it originates and then it flowers, doesn't it? Quite a lot.

Karen Wylie: The point at which I think for all of us, the first time we find ourselves stepping into a new gray area, it's very confusing and scary because you don't feel like you know what the body temperature should be. What's normal? What's not? How do I monitor the heart rate or the breathing pattern? You have to learn. You have to watch, you have to look.

Gail Pope: Some people don't. From my experience, some people prefer to leave those kinds of things to their veterinarian and some people choose Dr. Google. Others learn by taking advice from their practitioner and learning how to do it themselves, and then that's when they're stepping into a slightly changed part of their role.

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Annie and the 48-Hour Crash Course

Karen Wylie: Very true. I think when I first became aware of how much I didn't know, I’d had one litter of purebred kittens. Everybody’s healthy, everything’s wonderful. I brought in a lovely female named Annie, who I've talked to you about at various times. I think I wrote something about her on the blog at one point. At eight months of age she threw a Saddle Thrombus, which is a blood clot to the hindquarters and was immediately paralyzed.

So we obviously took her to the local vet that Saturday morning and he said, "Usually when you see this kind of thing, it's cardiomyopathy and it's not good especially with one so young.  But we don't know this today. So I'm going to put a catheter, in and I'm going to give you a blood thinner to help bust that clot. I'm going to also give you steroids to prevent tissue damage and I'm going to give you something to reduce the pain for her."

And he drew all those little syringes up, gave the instructions: what to give, what hour. He said, "If she's still with you on Monday morning, bring her back."

So that was my first very intensive experience of handling the syringes, putting them into the catheter, checking my times, learning to check her gum color which he had also instructed me on. And the paw pads, she had pink paw pads which were white in back because of the loss of blood circulation. So that was my 48 hour crash course and 48 hours later, Annie was still with us. So we started her on a regimen of three shots of Heparin a day at eight hour intervals to just try to keep her blood thin. Now this is 30 something years ago, so not general practice with what people would recommend for you today but I didn't know how to do those injections.

Gail Pope: You started your learning curve at that point.

Karen Wylie: That's the thing and at first I didn’t have to do it. My husband, Tim, could do it. Tim was a biology professor for 30 years. All this kind of thing was easy for him to do. He knew how to do it all but then he was going to be out of town for a week. I had to do it. So I had to get over any qualms that I had, "I'm going to hurt her. What angle do I use for the injection? How far in does it go?"

All these things that I had to learn to keep her alive - and that was my motivation. As I said, that's 36 years ago, maybe 35 years ago. But once you learn that, then whenever a future pet needs something, you build on those skills.

Gail Pope: Until you have an encyclopedia in your head.

Karen Wylie: Which is why here we are doing these podcast conversations and talking about the things that pet parents need to learn as they become caregivers.  Because some of the skills that they need to learn are different depending on the health condition of their pet. Wouldn't you say so?

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Skills Every New Caregiver Needs

Gail Pope: Yes, I think the majority of the things that we learn how to do with practicalities, perhaps household practicalities: first mobility and those kinds of things. As far as the veterinary side of things go, a lot of it depends on the team that you might have around you— like your vet or a different practitioner. As long as they're open to helping and teaching so that you can handle things at home, then you can start to really learn an awful lot to help on a daily basis.

Some people don't want to go into that kind of learning. They prefer not to know and that's okay too. 

I think the practical side, then we've got diet. Oh my goodness. There are so many things that a caregiver does for animals and people. Again, bringing people in too. Being a caregiver of a being on two legs, four legs, or more legs, it's mostly similar kinds of things that you have to learn or you have to blunder your way through until you actually figure out the right routine or whatever it is you need to learn. But for the most part, there's going to be someone out there who can help you and once you learn from them then you move on.

Karen Wylie: Of course the record keeping that we talk about all the time is generally going to be a part of this.

Gail Pope: Yes, it's a big deal too.

Karen Wylie: It is a big deal.

Gail Pope: Or it may not be, it depends on the animal and what situation you're facing and sometimes you need to be keeping notes in a file twice, three times a day, sometimes once a week. It depends what it is, who your vet is, and what you need to record.

Karen Wylie: But it does help you identify any patterns that are happening with your pet.

Gail Pope: Oh my gosh, yes.

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Pilling, Syringes, Supplements, and More

Karen Wylie: Which then allows you to have a much more fruitful conversation with your vet the next time you're with them. The term caregiving or caregiver is interesting because if you type it into Google for pet caregiver, it typically comes up with a listing of pet sitters in your geographical area.

Gail Pope: Oh! Yes, of course. That's another avenue I hadn't even considered that. But yes, they're caregivers too because there are so many different facets to the word care. Dog walkers are still offering care, aren't they?

Karen Wylie: Exactly. As we've talked about at various times some pet sitters are now focusing on geriatric animals or animals in hospice care which then does become a big support for pet owners who are caregivers, and need a little bit of a break, whether it's an afternoon or a weekend or longer than that.

Gail Pope: Or they have a job and they're trying to balance everything because that can be really tough.

Karen Wylie: What are some of the skills that you think most caregivers need to have that they have no awareness of when they're starting out? When they get a diagnosis on their animal or a difficult diagnosis, not necessarily a terminal one yet.

Gail Pope: All I can do to answer that is look back at the things that I learned. Probably pilling an animal and getting used to how to do it depending on the particular animal because I think I learned very early on that some cats, you can stroke them and open their mouth and pop it in, done. Others (hiss) and do that. So learning how to balance that, like maybe putting a ground pill in the diet. They won't eat that but maybe we do it in a different kind of treat. So there's a lot to learn I think in that area because food is probably almost top of the list always.

How to either feed or even give water or medication by syringe. Understanding why you wouldn't use a great big syringe for one thing or a one cc tiny syringe for something different and what each one is best used for. I think one of my earliest learning curves, which happily doesn't happen for an awful lot of people, will be expressing cat bladders.

Karen Wylie: That's right. You're a pro at that.

Gail Pope: That was a big deal for me. Also, palpating for stool. I think an awful lot of cat parents, particularly dogs too sometimes but not so much generally - certainly in my experience, if a cat is pushing for stool and they can't push it out for some reason. Sometimes just learning the little trick of how to feel at the end of the tail and give it a little squish and then it will come out. Knowing when to contact your vet because there's a problem and learning what products we can actually put in the food to help with stool, whether it's too hard or too soft.

There are the kinds of things we almost take for granted in the human world because you can walk into any supermarket and you've got a whole aisle of laxatives and this and that and the other. So I think your vet obviously is the person to turn to if it's something really important that's part of a general health issue..

That takes me to supplements— learning what kind of supplements work for immune support, work for organ support, and specific organs: the kidneys, the liver. What are the right supplements that I might be considering using? How can I learn about that? Who can I go to or what website is going to give me the tried and trusted products that I need? So, I hadn't realized there's an awful lot of learning skills, isn't it?

Karen Wylie: There's an awful lot of learning skills and for most of us, if you only have one or two pets at a time, your learning curve is going to be very incremental over the disease timeframe with each pet. If you have more than that, then there's just more diseases and conditions that you might need to provide support for.

Gail Pope: Oh, yes.

Karen Wylie: It can be very complex and as you're saying, our veterinarians can be very helpful to us but we almost can't really be bringing our pets in every single time we have a question.

Gail Pope: No, exactly. That creates a problem financially. If you lean to your vet as much as you might want to, sometimes.

Karen Wylie: So that's where learning to do some things yourself also gives you more confidence that you're taking the very best care that you can of your pet. It's like as I mentioned, the heart rate and the breathing rate because I started out with cats with heart conditions, monitoring their breathing patterns. I got my little stethoscope and tried to learn how to listen for everything. But just observing the breathing pattern so that you can actually count the breaths. Over a period of time, it's not that it changes that much from one week to the next, although it could. But over a couple years, an older cat with cardiomyopathy, you'll be seeing a change. It helps you to know that because then you know when to pick up that phone.

Gail Pope: Oh, yes. There's so much to learn. Some people, I think I said that before, some people don't want to know. They don't want to learn. They just want to notice if something doesn't seem right. Then they'll go to a practitioner to find out if there's a problem. Again, you've got chronic illness, you've got acute illness, so learning the difference and what, when, and how to act if you suspect something more acutely. Wow! Yes, there's a lot of training required, isn't there?

Karen Wylie: There really is and part of it is, I think, accepting. As you're saying, not everyone will want to do this or have the time to do it. If someone is managing several children of younger ages and they're also trying to work part-time or full-time, how much can they take on? That's true whether you're taking on caregiving for an animal or caregiving for a person.

If you do take it on, you do start to understand where you feel uncomfortable, where you don't feel like you have the information you need, and then that's when you can begin to be receptive to learning or not. 

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The Power of Community: Thursday Cuppas

We have a lot of caregiving support on both of our websites at BrightHaven.org, as well as BrightPathForPets.com about caregiving, about getting the support that you need as a pet parent, giving caregiving to your own pets to help you become more confident. When we were talking about the pilling just a few minutes ago, I was reminded, it might have even been back last summer at one of our Thursday Cuppas.

Someone brought up that they were having trouble pilling their cat. If they had tried this way and this way, did anybody have any other ideas? And I counted them. We had 11 different ideas of how to pill cats!

Gail Pope: Really?

Karen Wylie: Yes! It was amazing because everybody was saying, here's what I found helpful in this situation. It's just the kind of thing, as you were saying, it depends on the personality of each cat. It depends on the comfort level of the caregiver. But there's usually all these different ways around any frustration you have.

Gail Pope: Oh, I think, I apologize if I'm advertising here, but just mentioning the “Cuppa”, finding a place where you can go chat to other people who are caring for an animal, maybe with a long-term chronic illness and exchange ideas. Our Cuppas are just the most wonderful place. I just can't believe how successful it is, how warming and loving it is to see how people actually want to help each other. How we all build our knowledge and experience by listening to how others cope and what they do. I think it's lovely.

Karen Wylie: It is wonderful because even if you don't have a particular question on a particular day, you might have the answers that somebody else could benefit from. Some experience you've had that is really going to just be an "aha" moment for somebody to say, "I'm going to try that. That's a great idea."

Gail Pope: And the other important thing there is that I think caregiving is or can be a lonely road. When you're talking with other people who are experiencing the same thing or have experienced it before or are reaching out because they want to talk to people who are like-minded, then that's really helpful to have a place that you can go and not feel so alone. Makes a huge difference. It's lovely.

Karen Wylie: I think it does too and Cuppa is always something you and I look forward to each week. We never know what we're going to talk about. So you just go with the flow that particular week with the questions or issues people want to talk about.

Gail Pope: Yes.

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How Caregiving Changes You

Karen Wylie: Let me ask you, Gail, I know at this point you are down to your one rescue dog.

Gail Pope: Yes.

Karen Wylie: Which is a very different life for you, but how do you think caregiving changes you emotionally?

Gail Pope: Whoa!

Karen Wylie: We've been talking a lot about the skills that you need to learn and getting over discomfort about subQ fluids or injections or whatever. But part of it is caregiving doesn't just change your pet's life often because it allows you to extend your pet's life with what you're doing at home. But it can change you too.

Gail Pope: Oh, yes. What comes to mind for me first is that we're all different and we will all be changed emotionally one way or another, and they could be in different ways. Obviously it's all about love. It's a time where you are caring, sharing, loving, crying, and struggling to learn all the things that you do need to learn along the way. Emotionally, it can be very easy to get into a difficult situation and to spend time worrying and not letting go. So I think it's a time to learn about love, and learn about letting go.

Letting go has become a really big part of my life recently. I'm sure I've talked about it before but when you are caring for a being with a chronic illness it can be a very difficult time for you. So you have to learn to be like your animal and allow your animal to lead you a lot in living in the moment and enjoying today.

We don't know, none of us know, what the future's going to hold tomorrow. So worrying about the trajectory of an illness? No, I think we have to learn, to maybe do some research, maybe understand a little more but then put that out of our mind and concentrate on the love, on the relationship rather than the illness. 

So see, again, it's a Wholistic way of living when you are caregiving. You have to embrace it all, but at the center of it all is you and your animal together in love. That's the most important part of the whole thing.

Karen Wylie: I have to agree with you. I always love all of my pets, each of my pets throughout their lives. Maybe it's just old age when they start to need different things from me but, I think for me, caregiving has been something that I grew into and my love grew too. So that it wasn't just about the skills and what I needed to learn. It was really, as you're saying, about appreciating the time that you have with them. Taking it day by day as they do. It'd be so nice if we could be more like them.

Gail Pope: I think that's what we strive to be and it's probably the hardest lesson. The lessons that they teach us about living in the moment, not thinking about tomorrow, and "being" rather than doing all the time. Meditation, Reiki, people who practice those things who are caregivers, I think have a much easier ride. I don't think it's ever going to be that easy if you love an animal.

We don't want it to be that easy but just having time that's precious, that's spent with them and not doing something to them or doing something for them. It is just that, "Okay, let's just enjoy who we are and let's enjoy our relationship."

Karen Wylie: If you find yourself in that space, that caregiving space where your love is growing into something deeper. Little one's burrowing into me here. It's cold. It's cold weather here, late February in Appalachia.

Gail Pope: It's so adorable.

Karen Wylie: No, I'm not putting her on a plane.

Gail Pope: It’d be so easy. It would be so easy and I need a cat.

Karen Wylie: I agree with that and you're in your new digs, so we'll take that on as one of our next new projects. We do have our Feeding ebook coming out soon, so that's something people could look forward to. I don't believe we've talked about pilling in it. That might be an ebook all its own in terms of all the ideas everyone has.

But if you find yourself in this new caregiving space where love has become more hands-on, you're being more observant, more intentional with what you do and when you do it with your pets, we really do want you to know you're not alone. There are resources on our websites for you. There's our other podcast episodes and conversations you could listen to, or you could come to our Cuppas on Thursday afternoons and be with us, or I should say it's 10:00 AM Pacific, 1:00 PM Eastern. With that, we'll say thank you for being with us and hope to see you next time.

Thanks. Bye-bye.

Gail Pope: Thank you. Goodbye.