Peace of Mind for Pet Parents Episode 077: 3 Caregiver Myths — Your Heart Knows What It’s Doing Too

RESOURCES MENTIONED & RELATED LISTENING

• Menu for Healing PDF - Free download
• 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 023: Living to the Last Breath: A Pet Parent’s Perspective on Dying Naturally
• 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 058: Can My Pet Die Peacefully at Home? What Natural Death Really Looks Like

Related reading:

• The Other Doctor in the Room: Trusting Nature at the End of Life
• Walking the BrightPath: A Pet Parent’s Guide to Home Hospice and Natural Transition
• 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

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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 partner in crime, Gail Pope, president and founder of BrightHaven. Over the last couple weeks, we've talked about why families wait too long to consider hospice care for their pets, and what's really happening in a pet's body in the dying process.

Today we're going to look at something a little different and that's not what's happening in our pet's body but what's happening for us as caregivers. Because there's a couple of beliefs that many of us carry that can quietly get in the way of providing a peaceful ending for our pet and a peaceful ending in terms of how we view that ending for ourselves.

The belief that we have to do everything possible, no matter what, is one of those beliefs. The belief that staying positive at all times can somehow change the outcome, and the belief that we have to hold ourselves together and hide our grief from our pet so we don't upset them. Those beliefs come from love, every single one of them. But Gail and I are going to spend a few minutes looking at each of those beliefs and discuss why they don't really serve our pets in the way we think they do and why they don't serve us as their caregiver and the person who loves them.

So myth number one, I must do everything possible to keep them alive. Gail, to you first, I think almost every pet parent has felt this one at least at some point in their support process. So if I love them enough I have to try everything to keep them alive. Every treatment, every option, every procedure, every supplement. What have you seen happen for when a family takes that do everything approach all the way to the end?

Gail Pope: Goodness, you're taking me back in time. You're taking me way back to the beginning of BrightHaven when that was my approach because I was "normal". Maybe now I'm "abnormal". But yes, I totally resonated with everything that you said there. And gosh, I guess our culture has evolved into a fix-it culture. I think sometimes that's good. Sometimes, it doesn't serve us so well. Gosh, this is a big subject actually because I think when we have an illness our aim is to, maybe the word "fix" is a little strong, but I think conventionally in our approach is "Take this, take that”. We've got to fix the symptom."

The symptom is just a symptom of something that's going on deeper inside. But when we take that attitude all the way through life and we get towards the end of life, it's very hard to let go of that feeling that in whatever manner we choose to use, whether holistic or a conventional approach. If we can let go of the idea of fixing it and make each day the best it can be, I know it's easy to say that, but when you let go of that aim to suppress the bad and make it good, I think sometimes you can end up doing the opposite. I think I learned this from obviously hundreds of animals.

When we actually started seeing the symptoms as an expression of something deeper and we started to work with Mother Nature, here we have the other doctor in the room. She just popped her head in! But it was just a very gradual idea of allowing the being's situation to flow through life rather than hiccup along with fixing it here, fixing it there. "Oops, now we've got something different, let's fix that."

Allowing every day to be filled with love and joy, as well as the work of healing and health, but taking that word holistic to a wholistic approach which can bring in conventional medicine. It's an integrative way of looking at it but when you put love at the top and the bottom, that's where our “Menu for Healing” came from. The bottom line for me is that once we stop just this tight human goal of fixing it because we love them so much. It's not a bad thing. It's all about love. When we can let it go, we can start to enjoy today with them rather than about them. I think we switch from making everything about making them better. We don't serve ourselves or them nearly as well as when we do it with them and we follow their approach.

I think very simply, in some respects, there are some animals that do well going to the vet. There are some animals that are so petrified of it and it is so abhorrent to them that it doesn't serve them as well, and we have to look at different avenues. So it's always different but I think this "fixing of" approach is okay but we need to expand it into making each day the best it can be.

I'll shut up now. You shouldn't have asked such a "whoa" question.

Karen Wylie: I generally like to feel I know the questions that will get you going and get you started to begin elaborating on our topic because you've given us so many different aspects to talk about in this regard. It is so difficult when we get a difficult diagnosis, one that is terminal, one that our pet is not expected to survive, but we also don't know when that's going to be and how that's going to possibly take place.

And so I think we immediately start thinking, "Okay, how can I save them? How can I keep them alive? What could I do differently?" And sometimes that's adding new supplements, and sometimes it's adding some raw or fresh food to the diet if they didn't have any before. There are some actions that certainly can be very positive, and not just for improving how the pet feels day to day. Maybe it adds on weeks or months to their life with some of the changes we make. But making some of these changes, researching them, trying to figure out what you can do to help your pet, and then doing that, I think there are aspects of that fall under healing for the highest good.

I think that when we as caregivers take some steps to engage, it can be very positive for all of us. But we can also take it to an extreme that takes us far away from our pet and make it all about us because we're so consumed with keeping them alive. When in fact, if you have received a very definitive terminal diagnosis, again, not necessarily knowing the length of time or, timeframe, prognosis, et cetera, but it can just consume you.

It's very often people will begin looking at alternative forms of medicine now even though their whole life it was conventional, and now they have something brand new to learn about in order to buy the right supplement, provide for the pet, and homeopathy and herbal medicine. There's all these different paths to health, all with great validity. I've used any and all of them at various times for myself and my pet but sometimes all this research and all this time, and sometimes money—

Gail Pope: Yes.

Karen Wylie: Sometimes always money. It just distracts us from the day-to-day and cherishing the moments that we still have. The days, weeks, and months we have with our pet.

Gail Pope: Yes, I'd certainly love to jump into that part of the conversation because it's something that comes up for me quite often with other people. Actually, before I dive into that, I had to scribble down when you were talking, I just wrote down what I think are three important words, they sit at the base of everything, and that is that "Life is terminal."

Karen Wylie: Excellent.

Gail Pope: And the way you were speaking and it just came to me, if only we could approach life every day in that way. Life is terminal but let's enjoy today. We've got it. We don't know what tomorrow brings.

Anyway, let's go back to what you were saying and I think one of the things that I have learned, if you think about it, when I came into the work that I do, I was terribly conventionally minded, very rigid, very fix-it by nature. I didn't want to change that at all. So for those of you out there who know me, I did change. I had a huge change of mind and heart, lots of healing, lots of animals living healthier, longer lives. That took, what, 30, 40 going on 50 years for me to learn what I did about how to achieve our “Menu for Healing”.

So I think one of the things that I would love to make very clear is that I also believe that if you have a conventional mindset, you should not change direction towards the end of life. Maybe a little, you can tippy-toe a little bit into one thing or another, maybe not something like homeopathy because you really have to understand what you're doing, how it works. I think herbal remedies are really good along with diet. If the animal is open and accepting but I think sometimes people think, "Oh, she did that or she did this and I'm going to do that."

You can't just expect an animal to suddenly change its entire life because you think that way may have worked better. But I think that's part of the learning process that I went through. You have to go very slowly and gradually and start to realize "Would this work better for this animal? But hold on a minute, that worked better for the other one." There isn't a rigid pathway and the same for humans. Again, we have to look at our own lives. What works for us, and how does it work, and what feels in our gut to be a good way forward?

I think that's a really interesting topic to bring up because we do tend to panic towards the end and rush towards things that we don't understand. Then we say they don't work because we didn't even understand them to begin with. So it's grasping at straws when we should be grasping at love and the time we've got to spend together, and in just enjoying that. Sometimes when we let go of all of that stuff that we're panicking about, we sit in the moment, we enjoy the time with our loved one, and, "Oh, sometimes things actually do start to get better."

The trajectory towards the end of life becomes less jumping off the cliff and more of a slower decline and that's lovely and as nature intended.

Karen Wylie: It's interesting as you're speaking it's reminding me of what I've done with my soon-to-be eight-year-old Australian shepherd, Chey. Who I've talked about a couple of times where he had a partial CCL tear in his right leg his right knee. So I embarked on making a lot of changes over the last year. This is not to say that I'm comparing an orthopedic injury to end of life but I found myself going through the same thought process.

Gail Pope: Yes.

Karen Wylie: What can I do for him? How can I support him? What conventional options are available? Whether it was injections that help to lubricate a joint that helps the ligaments, be less stress, Chinese medicine, I've gone that route because I've used herbal medicine successfully in the past. He was already on a fresh diet that we prepare here at the house so that wasn't an issue. But I just think all of us, because we love them so much and we're always looking for how we can improve and support their life, and I just found myself going through all the same process, except I didn't have the emotional anguish that I was losing him to a disease.

Instead "What can I do to make sure he doesn't have as much pain as he ages?" That was my challenge, very different. We all have to watch ourselves because there's so many rabbit holes we can go down. And as you're saying, we need to have our time with our pets and not just Dr. Google. So Gail, how do you help a family tell the difference between fighting for their pet and fighting the natural process of decline and dying?

Gail Pope: The one word in there is "fighting". You shouldn't be fighting anything.

Karen Wylie: Okay, okay.

Gail Pope: You should be working towards bringing balance into life. I think sometimes when we have a diagnosis of a disease, "dis-ease" which is the opposite of ease, so something isn't right. We need to let go at some level of our mindset as a human to fix it. See, we come back with that word again. It's something that isn't quite right, so let's make it right. Sometimes there isn't “right”. Sometimes there's life that ebbs and flows and goes. The trajectory goes up and down a little.

So sometimes when we don't rush to actually stop something, it eases. And sometimes it eases on its own without us rushing to panic. It's just so hard to be human. It's hard to love someone. It doesn't matter whether they've got two legs, four legs, or however many legs. When we have love, we want to make it right for them. And what's right for one may not be right for another.

Karen Wylie: And it generally does take less energy to go with a situation than to fight it. As you're saying, fighting is not the word you would choose.

Gail Pope: Exactly. The trouble is I think when you have all these options open to you, there's panic.

"What should I do?" "Which route should I take?" "What if I do this and that happens?" "What if I do that and that happens?" We just have to follow our heart to what feels right.

Karen Wylie: Yes and probably which expert in the room or around the table is the one that makes the most sense to you and you stick with it.

Gail Pope: It might be Dr. Google. At the moment for sensible, straightforward answers, Dr. Google is pretty darn good. When you step into the world perhaps more of a wholistic approach or a spooky approach, Dr. Google still has a bit to learn.

Karen Wylie: True. Very true.

Gail Pope: Dr. Google still has a little bit to learn. He could go back to university on some things, I think. But for the most part, when it's something straightforward Dr. Google is an amazing resource.

Karen Wylie: Agreed. Agreed. All right, let's look at myth number two, positive thinking can delay our pet's death.

So many of us have been taught that if we stay positive about a situation that if we believe hard enough, we can make something happen. We can change what's happening. So is there a point where positive thinking stops helping and starts getting in the way?

Gail Pope: I don't know. In all honesty, positive thinking is a wonderful thing because we tend, when we're worried, we do the opposite to positive thinking, don't we? So trusting in what? Trusting in Mother Nature, trusting that God will pull through, trusting in a miracle. It's a difficult thing to talk about, don't you think?

Karen Wylie: I do. I think for me, even though I'm phrasing it that way, It's almost where it's the flip side that gets us more into trouble that we don't want to think about anything related to death and dying because then we could make it happen.

Gail Pope: Yes, particularly with older animals and this is where we come back to the word "Hospice" again. Hospice and death are the two most feared words— certainly in my world. So yes, that really comes back down to the old subject of education, the more we learn. Although in some respects, the more we learn, it doesn't necessarily help us at that deeper level inside of ourselves where we have this innate fear that sits there.

It is natural to fear something that we don't understand. Obviously with the word hospice, education is a fit because learning about it actually can blow your mind wide open and realize that it is about health and healing.

Karen Wylie: And death is a biological process for it reaches a point of no return. As you're saying, life is terminal. It's going to happen to us all. But there is so much that can be done that is positive in terms of whether it's prayer, mindfulness, meditations, just having your animal on your lap, under your arm, next to your hip as you sleep, whatever it is. All of that is focusing on love and positive thinking as well.

Gail Pope: Absolutely. I think the more we get closer to the end of life, the more we I think perhaps we reach a point where we feel as a human we can't actually do it. Here we've got our fix it part, and we've come through that, and then we come to an acceptance that we can't fix.

Perhaps one of the most important things that I always talk about and get boring about, is the fact that cats speak dog, dogs speak cat. They both speak human. They understand us. They're here to love us and care for us as much as the opposite. So when they're winding down towards the end of life or when they're simply sick, instead of retreating into ourselves with this, "Oh, my goodness, what am I going to do? It's just not going well."

We can bring so much stuff into our own selves and create this misery, and it's not helpful to them. They don't want to see us doing that. They want us to go sit with them, cuddle them, play with them. Sometimes you can be reaching the end of your life, and you still want to chase a ball across the floor. It's enjoying what they enjoy. Not looking deeper all the time.

"Oh, God, I don't think he can climb that cat tree anymore." So what? Tomorrow he might and tomorrow they often do. So living in the moment, acceptance, love, joy, and just following their lead an awful lot.

Karen Wylie: Yes, because even through the dying process they may begin to get a sense that their body's not responding the way it used to. They can't jump to the highest shelf on the cat tree anymore, they have to settle for one of the middle areas, or you have a dog who can't walk the whole usual route anymore but still enjoys being out. There's so many different adaptations we can make for them and for us so we still can enjoy the presence that we have with them.

I think you're also starting to step into the third myth I wanted us to say something about, and that is that we should not burden our dying pet with our tears, and we must remain positive for them. I thought, yes, I thought you might have something to say about that.

Gail Pope: Oh, yes, that's a big one for me.

Karen Wylie: I know.

Gail Pope: As we know, crying is healing. Tears are cleansing. Endorphins are released in the brain, the feel-good hormones. But when we go and cry in another room and we try to hide our tears, it's not helping our animal because, again, they speak our language. They know us inside and out at a much deeper level generally than most of us realize. So when we're sad and when we're crying, when we're mournful, they know it. They understand it and they probably feel the same because they're seeing us so sad. It's going to make them sad, too.

So let's do it together. I think it's all about caring and sharing every single thing. When you really love someone, you live life WITH them. I think probably a lot of it is because animals don't live as long as we do as humans. Actually, there's, oh my gosh, there's a really lovely little story that I read just recently. Can't remember many of the details but it was a young boy with his father and their dog who was dying. Oh, I remember the dog's name. It was Belka. I know this is a story that I've read somewhere. Basically the father had set the euthanasia appointment. The vet came to the house and Belka was euthanized.

I can't quite remember how the story goes but it was a conversation that happened afterwards where the father was surprised that the little boy wasn't quite so emotionally distressed as he'd expected. The little boy explained very simply to his dad that, "Dogs don't live as long as people. They don't need to. They don't need to. They come here, they teach us lessons, they're here for us, and then it's time for them to go. It's okay. They just don't need to live as long as people."

That was just such a beautiful sentiment and that elucidates for me, this is true. We live decades and decades. Animals don't. Their lifespan is shorter. It doesn't need to be longer. They come, they teach us, they learn, they smile, they bring joy, and then it's time to move on. Perhaps it's time to move on to do the same for another human that needs it. Who knows?

Karen Wylie: Yes, we don't know how many lives they have. Supposedly we have endless numbers of lives. They probably do too.

Gail Pope: Wow.

Karen Wylie: They can bring joy to many other people at other times, even though we want them with us. I guess the only other thought I had that I wanted to add to what you're saying is that as we begin to see that decline is continuing, if we don't allow them to see that then we're not allowing ourselves to prepare for their loss. We're not helping them get ready for the death process or their ultimate transition.

I'm going to say the last 20 years or so that I have engaged in preparing my pets for their ultimate death as I see them declining and I just start talking about their ancestors and invoking their various names of who I know they knew in their lifetime. I practice some animal communication principles like visualizing because our animals see in pictures so I would often do that as well. I started out doing all those things to help them understand the process that was going through, especially if I thought their particular disease progression might involve euthanasia. I wanted to prepare them for going to that clinic and we turn right when we go in that door and all those kind of things.

But although I was doing all that saying it was for my pets, it was really for me because I was feeling like I was being a good mom. I was also getting ready for that reality to hit. So I think crying with them, talking to them about what it's going to be like when they leave you, and how much you're going to miss them, I see it all as just part of the relationship we have with them.

Gail Pope: You know, that also brings me to another conclusion. I hadn't looked at it this way at all before but I'd become so used to it because we had so many animals. That when one was not necessarily in their dying process but just getting older, how other animals would support them and be there. Then gradually that morphed into the process of the doulas that would gather around when an animal was dying. That could be months before they died.

We're almost looking at the fact that they practiced hospice. They would start caring for each other. That's what you were just talking about. So maybe those conversations, those thoughts, and that preparation were all part of that with the other animals. I've almost laughingly called them my animal doulas.

Karen Wylie: Sure.

Gail Pope: But yes, I think now you've opened it up, the doula can actually come into the picture a little sooner than I'd really thought of it.

Karen Wylie: Yes, they're sensing the process and they're taking steps to begin providing their type of support and love. However you interact with your animals, I'm usually very verbal where I'm saying things aloud while I'm touching them while I'm visualizing, the other animals in the family are hearing what I say. So I think it just creates an energy of acceptance that allows us all to be very supportive of the one who's going to be leaving us soon.

Gail, if you could say a little bit more about the nature of tears and why holding them back is not necessarily the best thing for the caregiver.

Gail Pope: No, there's very much more to say because it makes sense when you know that crying releases pressure, it releases the endorphins, it allows this healing energy to come through the body. And you can see it in animals. Although they don't cry in the same way that we do, they respond to us crying in a beautiful way. That they put their arms around us when they know that our heart's hurting.

That just symbolizes love, and we can be together in love. As children, let's face it, the first thing that you fall over when you're five years old and you've grazed your knee and your grandmother says, "Oh, darling, don't cry. It's okay. It'll be all right. Don't cry."

We learn not to cry at such an early age, and then when we're more grown up. We're a boy turning into a man, it's more about “men don't cry”. And you, when you look at sadness, you look at the work that we do, our work is mostly bringing women in. But so often now, I'm finding myself doing consultations with men. People are starting to actually realize that, "It is manly to care. It is manly to cry. It is manly to get involved in something emotional or sentimental."

And I think that is really important. We're not all about women and end of life and death, it needs to encompass all of us, everybody.

Karen Wylie: It does. Of course, when if you look at statistics of the percentages of people that get married these days, people are not getting married as frequently as they used to or as young as they used to marry. So there's a lot of guys out there and they are the primary caregiver for their pets, so they're reaching out for help, too.

Gail Pope: Exactly. More so than ever before but still not enough. Still not enough. It's still—

Karen Wylie: More, more, come on.

Gail Pope: Yes, exactly.

Karen Wylie: Get in here. All of our pets need you, too. Oh, goodness. Okay, let's think about how we want to close up this conversation. So today we covered three myths that can shape how we show up for our dying pets. One myth is that (1) we must do everything possible to keep them alive. We talked about some ways to address that one. (2) That positive thinking can delay death. That's not necessarily going to work but positive thinking can have positive effects.

(3) And that we shouldn't burden our pets with our tears. I think we addressed that one pretty thoroughly. So those three beliefs are all rooted in love. They're all worth thinking about. So Gail, how would you like to end this conversation and say to our listeners and viewers and readers?

Gail Pope: I don't know. It comes back to that same old, you've just said it, just love them and you can't stop quite there. But it really is all about love and it's love for ourselves as well as them. It's the togetherness. Maybe it's taking the journey together.

Karen Wylie: Yes.

Gail Pope: That's a good way of looking at it. You know, it isn't about us doing and being for them. Let's take this journey together. I like that.

Karen Wylie: I do, too, because it's all about the relationship that we've had with them all along. You don't have to suddenly express strengths. You just have to stay close to them and stay honest. I think being honest with what every day brings will help your pet and you— tears and all.

And as you have always said about everything we do with our pets, Gail, you say, "It begins and ends with love."

Gail Pope: Absolutely, 100%.

Karen Wylie: I think that is definitely how to end this particular conversation. And so we thank you for being with us. Hope to see you next week. We will keep walking this journey with you and thank you.

Bye-bye.

Gail Pope: Goodbye. Thank you.