Peace of Mind for Pet Parents Episode 074: Are You Really Seeing Your Pet Clearly?

RESOURCES MENTIONED & RELATED LISTENING

• PEACEFUL PDF - Free Download
• LIVING Quality of Life Care Assessment Tool — Free download
• BrightHaven Animals YouTube Channel — Search: BrightHaven Animals | @brighthaven_animals
• Animal Hospice Group (animalhospicegroup.com) — professional certification organization in animal hospice and palliative care

You might also find helpful:

• Episode 073: Reading What They Can’t Say: Pain, Comfort, and the End-of-Life Journal
• Episode 069: Preparing for Your Pet's Death — Physical, Emotional, and Spiritual Ways to Make Every Moment Count
• Episode 053: From Pet Parent to Caregiver: The Quiet Shift Nobody Warns You About
• Episode 069: Preparing for Your Pet’s Death: Physical, Emotional, and Spiritual Ways to Make Every Moment Count

Related reading:

• What Is Animal Hospice Care for Pets?
• Life-Changing Diagnoses in Pets: A Comprehensive Guide
• Emotional Support for Pet Owners Facing a Difficult Diagnosis: Coping with Guilt, Fear, and Grief
• Monitoring Your Pet's Health at Home: A Palliative Care Guide for Chronic and Difficult Conditions

---

Episode Transcript: 

Karen Wylie: Hello and welcome back to Peace of Mind for Pet Parents. I'm Karen Wylie. Here, as always, with my wonderful friend Gail Pope. 

Today we're going to talk about something that doesn't get talked about enough and is something we haven't actually talked about in this particular way because it's not what quality of life is. We talk a lot about that and how to monitor and how to measure it and so forth but it's why it's so hard to see clearly when we love our pet more than anything.

Every pet parent wants to make the right call at the right time but the love we have for our pets, the fear we have about the situation we're in with them, even the exhaustion that a lot of us can feel over a long period of time of caregiving, all of that can get in the way and change what we're able to see. We're not here to tell you how to fix any of that today but we're going to talk honestly about how it shows up because we've lived it. We've been down, down this road. 

So Gail let's start off, have you ever caught yourself explaining away something you've seen in a pet? That if a friend described it, you'd know it right away. But if it's in your own pet, maybe you don't see right away.

Gail Pope: Gosh, I hadn't realized that this other side of quality of life is very different from what we normally talk about. I think as humans, we see what we want to see sometimes. We can become very well-educated in charts and form-filling and answering the questions, "Does he look this way? Does he walk that way?" - all of those different things and we make assumptions based on what we're thinking.

I think sometimes those detract us from actually evaluating quality of life because we can reach an assumption from what we've written down, what we've noted that, "Ooh, it's time to kind of start really watching a bit more closely. We're feeling a little uncomfortable."

But what we're not really bringing into the equation is how happy they are, how much fun they're having, what life means to them, and what's their quality of life for them. I think it just reminds me, as you know probably by now, my dog Ollie is 18 years old. He's totally deaf. He's totally blind. He appears to be a bit of an "idiot" sometimes. However, he's not. 

He is probably one of the most intelligent beings but the one thing that stands out to people - because they're a little confused about this strange dog that can't see, can't hear, and wonder he functions, when they see him literally rolling on his back, kicking his legs in the air and has this big smile on his face. Just in general life, he is one of those beings who is so filled with joy, that it just radiates out of him.

People can't help but notice it. But that's what's coming to me now listening to you talk about this subject. We often don't notice that because we're so worried about what they are showing us. What's their quality of life? We've got the blood work. We know these things. How is that changing how we view them, and whether that's a true picture.

Am I going anywhere near where you were going with the conversation?

Karen Wylie: Yes, you are, and  I'm sure I could have phrased that question better to you. But it's a vague area to get at because have you ever caught yourself explaining away something about a pet, but that if a friend described it, you would have recognized it right away?

Where I even was coming up with that kind of question was I thought of my Mr. Hope, who I talk about a lot. And you may remember, we had a hypertrophic cardio diagnosis on him two and a half years before he ultimately died peacefully in his sleep one night. But in the middle there, we had a lot of different things happening— a lot of pills and so forth. About three months before he ultimately died, he suddenly had a red eye instead of a beautiful green eye and it popped up overnight, and it was like "What? What?" And of course, I immediately texted my vet and she told me to come right when they were reopening after lunch.

And I knew I had a window of time when I was going to take him in. I remember taking photographs and sending them to you and it was like, "Have you ever had this happen? I've never had this happen. What is it?" And we were both like, "Wow, that is so different." Ultimately, I was thinking it was high blood pressure that could have caused a bleed. He also was on blood thinners. So we addressed it and all that and over a couple weeks, the red eye went back to being green.

Then we had other issues and as I said, a few months later is when he died in his sleep. But last year, so two years after he died, I'm going through my phone and Apple has this way of pulling out photographs of particular pets and putting it in a lovely sequence with music. You don't even ask for it. They just do it. 

And suddenly there was Mr. Hope, and all of a sudden, there was the photo of him with the red eye. And I found myself really shocked because I was looking at Mr. Hope, and I was seeing a kitty who didn't look healthy anymore, didn't look 100% anymore. But I wasn't seeing that at that time. I was just looking at the red eye.

And what I thought of to bring it into today's discussion, it was how on one hand we cannot notice anything because we're loving them. Then the other end of the spectrum is, you can get so focused on what you're noticing as a caregiver, like I did, "Oh my God, that's different. Red eye. What happened?" I was so focused on the red eye, literally, a couple years later I'm looking at a photograph and I'm saying, "Oh my goodness, he was declining." He still was eating well and a member of the family every day and night and so forth but he was 16 and a half and I should have seen that in context, but I didn't. I didn't.

Gail Pope: I think you probably did. I think that it's to do with us being human and the way our minds work. We know something but we see what we want to see. What do you think?

Karen Wylie: Think so. 

Gail Pope: That little man that sits on our shoulders then argues with us about what we are really seeing. We can get driven down all sorts of different lanes of thought based on what we do see, and then we end up focusing on one part and pushing another part away. I think we do see it, it's where we choose to focus. Especially when you've got a symptom like that, it's clear and that's it in your face.

That's your focus. The rest of it, you see it, but you just don't think about it with people. Think of somebody that you don't see that often and then suddenly, "Oh my God" maybe you see a photo of them. That can do it sometimes.

Karen Wylie: That can do it sometimes.

Gail Pope: That takes me back years actually. I was shopping in a departmental store and looking at clothes, wandering backwards and forwards, and picking things up and looking at them. I turned to walk forward and there was this person looking at me, right? I didn't recognize it was me. Instantly, I'm like, "Oh my God, do I look that old?"

You know, we don't see everything as we want to. Our mind has already made up what it looks like. I think a lot of us have done that in the past. And you see a photo of yourself taken when you thought you looked absolutely gorgeous, you were glamorous in a restaurant. Then you see a photo that somebody else took, and it's either much lovelier or much more awful than you expect.

Karen Wylie: Yes, one way or the other but not how you envisioned yourself.

Gail Pope: So I think that's where it goes with us and our friends and family, and our animal friends and family too. We see them in different ways, and then we end up focusing on one lane but there are all these other things that we do see, but we don't necessarily take into account all the time.

Karen Wylie: That's a great point because, of course with Mr. Hope, he was getting by with, at that point, four or five little pills every morning and the same in the evening. I was just doing my 30-second, 60-second: "What's his body temperature, what's his hydration?" As I'm giving him the pill, I'm checking the color of his gums.

I was so into routine, that red eye was not routine. But you really make such a great point because there have been times when friends have gotten sick. Thinking of a friend who had cancer and I hadn't seen her in about two months, and I was talking with her sister on the phone arranging to go over to see her. And I remember saying, "How's she? How is she doing?" "Oh, she's about the same. Everything's pretty much the same. She's doing pretty good." I said, "Okay, good." And I remember going in, and by that point she was in bed full time, and she had lost so much weight and eyes were sunken and everything.

And yet to her sister, who was taking care of her every day, "Everything's good. Nothing's changed." And I remember the tears just came because I was there holding her hand. I couldn't believe that all this had happened in two months and I didn't know. But the caregiver, whether it's human or a caregiver to a pet, we can just not see what's in front of us all the time.

Gail Pope: Makes total sense. We all do it, without doubt.

Karen Wylie: Looking through the eyes of love.

Gail Pope: Yes, that's beautiful. That really is. But that really does sum it up, doesn't it?

Karen Wylie: It does, and has wonderful consequences and then the blind spot that it can give us too. So I guess we need to look at it both ways. 

But let's look on the flip side, Gail, and that is, has fear ever made you see the worst in a pet when it really was a good day? Like bracing really hard for something you think is going to happen that you don't let yourself register that the pet's actually doing okay.

Gail Pope: Yes, I'm sure it has and I think that happens to all of us. Fear is an overriding human ailment really in this world we live in. I think in our lane, as it were, fear of death is huge. Whether it's your animal or another human, the fear we have that is innately inside us can change the way we see them, can change the way we are, the way we “be” with them, and change our attitude so much. It just evokes more fear because instead of accepting changes gently as they come.

Unless it's something acute, illness has a way of very gradually moving along on its path. And I think we partly ignore it, we partly don't see it, we partly don't want to see it but then there comes a day when our eyes suddenly open and we realize, "Oh my God, I haven't really been noticing this." So I think it works both ways. We give in to the fear very often and then we start visualizing in our minds what, "Oh my God, he looks like that. That could be this, and this." Then we hit Google and we start asking questions and he's on his deathbed suddenly and waiting for death.

Karen Wylie: We're so good at catastrophizing when in fact it could just be something very incremental that's happened. It's not this big crisis.

Gail Pope: Exactly. It happened to me actually in the last couple of weeks when I adopted my newest family member, Maisie, who came to me with a urinary tract infection. Over donkey's years, I've become very well used to that but she was also settling in, not using a litter box. I was watching her like a hawk because in the back of my mind I had, "I wonder if she's actually urinating unsocially on one of the beds or somewhere. Is she not urinating? Oh my God, what if she's blocked? What if she can't urinate?" I couldn't stop myself.

Part of me on this shoulder was a little man saying, "For God's sake, don't be ridiculous. She's completely fine." The little one on this other side was saying, "Oh, you know what could be happening? Have you got the vet's phone number?" 

I don't think we can help being human, can we? However much we know and we learn and we understand, when we love someone, our emotions, everything we know flies out of the window, doesn't it sometimes?

Karen Wylie: It sure can, and especially in your case with a brand-new member of the family.

Gail Pope: Yes.

Karen Wylie: The number, 700 animals of experience behind you, where you're looking at her and you're thinking through all these different things it could be.

Gail Pope: Yes.

Karen Wylie: But like you're saying, you have to grab yourself on it because it, let's not go down all those roads. Let's just watch her and see.

Gail Pope: Exactly. Exactly. It's tough. It's hard being a mother.

Karen Wylie: It's very hard being a mother. At this point, with where we've gotten so far in this conversation, love can blur the bad and fear can blur the good.

Gail Pope: Exactly, yes. I like that. That's really good.

Karen Wylie: Well, it's a predicament for all of us, I think. Then I guess there's another thing that can sneak in too and it's not really emotions exactly, but it's exhaustion that can enter into the equation especially in a long-term caregiving situation. When we have a little bit of the daily worry, even if we're trying to be present, stay in the now and put into action so many of the things we talk about, it still adds up — it can really wear you down.

So when you've found yourself deep in caregiving with appointments, with the vet, the medications, the remedies, sleepless nights perhaps, does it get hard to tell one day from another? And how do you catch yourself when everything starts blurring together like that?

Gail Pope: Ooh, I think we're all different. For me, the trick is possibly bringing myself back to the moment and remembering to ignore the "little man". I love to call him my little man, who sits on my shoulder and keeps telling me things all day long. "You've got to do…. You must remember…. What about this? You're not good enough. There's no way you're going to get that done."

It's just an endless chattering that goes on in your mind, and I think one of the things that really helps me, certainly, is to keep remembering that I need to shut that door for a little while. We're learning about this world of energy and how it works and how meditation, Reiki, all sorts of ways — they're different for each of us. Some things work for one, some things work for another.

But just taking a few moments here and there to just sit, close your eyes, let it be, or go and sit in Mother Nature. I think that's one of the most powerful things we can do: to put our feet on the earth and just sit quietly in nature. Then suddenly things aren't so important and scary anymore. We've let go a little bit. We're not listening to the voices. "Oh, but there they go again" just watch. Just let them go on by.

It's the hardest thing. One of the prime difficulties, I think I know that I have in my life, is to stop the thoughts all the time and concentrate on one thing at a time. And comes down to that old saying that I say all the time. You're doing your best with love. And sometimes when I repeat some of the old little mantras that I love, they bring me back to that moment, and they take me out of the fear. They take me out of the worry, the concern, and all the things that are floating around. "Am I good enough? Does he need more? Can I do more?" They go on and they go on.

Just stopping, letting it stop. Just sitting in the quiet or sometimes soft music. Different things work for each of us. 

There you go. Stroking a cat, that can do it. It's a moment.

Karen Wylie: Not just our cat, our executive producer.

Gail Pope: Our executive producer, of course.

Karen Wylie: She does determine a lot of what goes on. What can be heard clearly, what can't be when she turns the mic off on us.

Gail Pope: It's lovely, actually. Finally, she's got up because I was actually going to say to you a little while ago, can I assume that you actually have Callie on your desk? Because you're talking and your arms are doing *petting motions*. They'd wonder what on earth, what's happening with her arms all the time.

Karen Wylie: Really, it's true. Especially, can you imagine somebody who doesn't even know this is really about animals and they just see someone on screen doing this?  What the heck were they doing?

Gail Pope: Yes. It's good to see her up there.

Karen Wylie: She's here. Once she heard your voice, she arrived and then she did her thing then she settled down. 

But back to the point you were making which is so important and that is to find something or several somethings that can quietly steer us back from what can interfere and just pull us down into exhaustion. 

Your suggestions of taking time for yourself, music, petting an animal. One thing I have noticed I've done and I really didn't think about it until the last few years as we've been talking about being caregivers and training other people and supporting them and how to become caregivers.

One thing I had done through the years is, I compartmentalized parts of my caregiving in the morning and at night. So first thing, I might put the kettle on the stove for my tea, but then it would be time for rounds. It would be time to pill anybody who needed to be pilled, evaluate anybody: where are they? Are they on the lower rung of the cat tree, or are they still feeling comfortable jumping up to the top? I would be doing all that in the first few minutes of my day. Then while I was having tea, I'd be making a few little notes.

I would do a similar thing at night. I think what that allowed me to do was to say, "Okay, I've dealt with it. I've written down what I think is something to keep track of. If I saw a red eye, I knew I needed to text my vet right away." 

But after those caregiving tasks, I then allowed myself to enjoy the rest of the day with my animals and I wasn't spending the rest of the day worried, generally speaking. I guess a couple things I would add to your list of things to do to help you pull out of the exhaustion is to set a time, have a routine to evaluate how your pet's doing, make some notes - and then let it go.

Gail Pope: Yes.

Karen Wylie: People have work to do. They have jobs to drive to. They have children to take care of. They've got spouses that also need a few minutes in the caregiving day, too. There's a lot to do but if we've done what we need to do in our caregiving capacity and feel comfortable about it, then we can at least let it go for a few hours. Then I do the same thing at night before I go to bed. So for me that has worked, to just compartmentalize. These routines have worked for me very well to let me let it go.

Gail Pope: Yes, I would agree. I was just thinking of quite how your routine would fit with my routine. At first, I was thinking, "My God, routine with 80 animals a day, and there's something different happening at any moment. Really?" 

But as you were talking through it, I realized, yes, I did have a routine. The people around me had their routines. The animals just flowed along in their lives but we had routines for what time we did certain medications, what time certain volunteers would come and go. And the dogs would look at their watches like, "Ah-ha,, going for a walk soon!"

But everybody had a routine. I think probably for me it evolved into a gift of being able to allow the routine to flow but allow another part of me to just be me, be happy, be joyful, be what? I guess it was all about love really, because the beauty for me was that there were different animals in different rooms and all over the place. Wherever I went, there was someone to smile at me.

So that brings you into a different state of being, I think. I just totally loved the work I did with a passion, and the animals were the work. I think, when you distill down my daily life, actually it's what you describe. Because I still had routine things that got done at routine times, and in between, everything else fitted and flowed. Not always easily but yes, it did.

Karen Wylie: Not to put words in your mouth but if you have a routine of evaluation of each pet for whether it's 60 seconds to just eyeball and make sure everything's okay or pilling or whatever it is, and then you say, "Okay, that's where we are today."

Gail Pope: That routine would be feeding in the morning and evening. Wheeling a trolley around and visiting the animals wherever they happened to be. My mind was divided into two. Dishing up food: who wants to have a treat? Who just wants this? Who has more? Who has less? And then literally spending a moment or two with each animal.

That was my time for checking them out. Are they in the same place they're usually? And how are they looking today? Are they yawning? Are they grooming? It would be almost like my mind would be a camera. I was creating their food, serving it, click. Then moving on, giving a stroke and a cuddle and on to the next one with the same procedure.

So yes, it's very much if you have a routine of how your mind is going to help you through each day, whether it involves the animal, the work of the household: the time we do washing up - when we do laundry. There are all those projects too. 

So everything has to kind of slot in and we have to keep changing direction. What time do I need to leave for work? They're all parts that fit into this routine. So the more you actually can do that, the more time it gives you to actually just go sit on the couch for five minutes with your cat or take your dog for a walk before you go to work.

That's a difficult one. I think that's a really difficult one because that's a time when, although I wasn't actually going out to work, I was coming back to work, but walking down the road and I still do it now. I'm walking with Ollie and I suddenly realize I am totally focused on today's podcast. I wonder what she's going to ask me…. I wonder what we... My mind is totally elsewhere, and suddenly I'll see a crow fly in front of me and say, "Hey. Hello. I'm here." That brings us back to the moment.

Then we see the trees and we start looking at that beautiful garden, "Oh, my goodness, he's growing tomatoes. They look great." You start stepping back into the world. We can easily get lost in it, so I think that's another really good lesson, isn't it?

Karen Wylie: It is because caregiving is an incredibly important part of our life. It's a role, very important role, but it is only part of our life and part of the relationships we have in our life. If we can do what we need to do in that role and then enjoy the rest of the day, that's one way to really help cope over the long term.

So we talked about love. We've talked about fear. We've talked about exhaustion. 

So if a pet parent was listening right now, Gail, and recognizing themselves in one of those modes where they just are loving their pet so much they're not noticing anything. Or, they're noticing everything and going to Dr. Google, or they're just exhausted over time, what would you want them to know?

Gail Pope: Again, you're doing your best with love. Once you start to step off that ledge that has the great unknown at the other side of it which you're thinking about, worrying about— oh my goodness, it's hard to be human. 

But we are all doing our best and we're doing it with love.

That is what our animals bring to us: love, companionship, caring. So when we come back to that center part of ourselves, try to let go. Remember to breathe. How often do we hold our breath? We're fearful, worried, anxious. And we take a deep breath, and suddenly it's "Oh my God, I needed to let that go."

Live in that moment, then things become an awful lot easier. Doesn't mean to say life's easy. I don't know that it's ever going to be that easy because it's Earth school, isn't it? That's what we're here to do - to learn how to be ourselves and learning to be ourselves as caregivers is perhaps one of the most difficult parts.

Karen Wylie: It is a very difficult part to begin to see differently and imperfectly. That's part of why we take notes and why we do everything for a few minutes every day is to just stay on top of it the best you can. It's never going to be perfect. There are going to be times that you don't see things. There are going to be times you catastrophize, and there are going to be times you just need to sleep round the clock.

All of that is okay. You just need to keep showing up and keep asking yourself questions, and keep loving your pets through the whole thing. You don't have to see it perfectly. 

As always, you do your best, you do it with love and that is enough, as you have said to us so many times.

Gail Pope: That's what they bring us. Our animals come into our lives, they bring us love. They teach us all sorts of lessons, and they don't really ask for anything in return except our love. So if we can stabilize ourselves knowing that is what we're giving them, then we're giving them the best we can.

Karen Wylie: Absolutely. I guess on that note, we will close this conversation about how we address quality of life on a day-to-day basis. 

If you're new to our podcast and this might be the first episode you've tuned into, we do have a free tool available on the BrightPathForPets.com website that is our "LIVING Quality of Life Care Assessment" that can walk you through six simple areas to help you notice what's going on with your pet week to week. So please check that out. That might be helpful to you. Thank you as always for being with us. We'll see you next time. Bye-bye now.

Gail Pope: Goodbye. Thank you.