Peace of Mind for Pet Parents Episode 084: I Didn’t Know We Had Choices: Pet Loss, Natural Dying, and Discovering Another Way to Say Goodbye

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 077: 3 Caregiver Myths — Your Heart Knows What It’s Doing Too
• Episode 076: Is Dying Painful? Your Pet’s Body Knows What It’s Doing
• 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 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 to Peace of Mind for Pet Parents. I'm Karen Wylie. Here, as always, with Gail Pope, founder and president of BrightHaven. Today we're joined by a wonderful friend of ours, Dr. Alice Kay Lovelace, who has been an ordained minister in the United Methodist Church for more than 30 years. Just a little bit of time!

Over the last few years she has been doing a lot of work with people's animals: including Reiki and meditation, pet loss grief, and animal hospice which is where we encountered each other I guess about three years ago. We always enjoy talking with Alice, and we know that you're going to enjoy it too.

Alice, I gave such a bare bones introduction of you. Can we ask you to share a little bit more about your background and then how you found yourself moving more and more to support pet parents and their pets?

Dr. Alice Kay Lovelace: I'd be delighted to do that, and I'm really excited to have the opportunity to be with both of you today on the podcast. So in letting you know a little bit about who I am, I'd really like to go back to my childhood. I would like to give all credit to Pixie. Pixie was my very first puppy. When I was a child growing up, I had all sorts of pets of all species.

I had reptiles, amphibians, birds, a wonderful cat named Mickey, and my first puppy, who was Pixie, a miniature schnauzer. I had looked forward so much to this promised puppy, who was going to be my birthday present on my seventh birthday.

We knew Pixie's mother, whose name was Ginger. She was going to have puppies. We got to go see the puppies when they were just a couple days old and hold them and, oh, I just immediately fell in love. I was supposed to get my puppy on my birthday, which is February 16th. But I had a wonderful surprise when my mother brought Pixie home to me about three weeks before that. The puppies were ready to leave their mom and so I got to have my puppy early.

Unfortunately, within a few days Pixie was sick. In fact, all three puppies in the litter were sick. It took a while to figure out what in the world this illness was. Eventually they did but unfortunately Pixie actually died during my 7th birthday party.

Karen Wylie: Oh.

Dr. Alice Kay Lovelace: Can you imagine the heartbreak?

Karen Wylie: Exactly.

Dr. Alice Kay Lovelace: And in those days when Pixie was so very sick, I had my first really deep experience of prayer. Growing up in a Christian home, going to church, going to Sunday school, there was always prayer. But the first time that I just prayed a deep prayer of my heart in the best way I knew how, was praying, "God, please make Pixie well."

I remember I prayed this prayer in the bathroom because I had learned that prayer was supposed to be more effective if you were on your knees. And of course, if you bowed your head and you put your hands together like this or like this, that would make a more effective prayer. I was in the bathroom, using the bathtub as my kneeler, and I just prayed so hard. But Pixie died.

What this did for me was it really was the beginning of my spiritual journey of pondering this mystery of "What is prayer?" and "Who is God?" and "What's my relationship with God?" Of course, this very tender, difficult experience of loss and grief of my beloved Pixie. She wasn't in my life very long but she was one of the most important beings in my life.

Karen Wylie: A real catalyst from the sound of it. Really broke things open for you in a way that a seven-year-old can't quite comprehend except there's lots to figure out.

Dr. Alice Kay Lovelace: That's right! And being a curious little girl, that's where I went was curiosity into the mystery. Rather than staying in a place of, "I didn't get what I wanted."

Karen Wylie: Which would've been a really easy place to go.

Dr. Alice Kay Lovelace: Yes, children and adults alike with that experience. So that really started it all and all of the many pets that I had after, including the most wonderful second miniature schnauzer named Pepper, who came to us on Easter Sunday. So that was about two months after Pixie's death, and Pepper and I were the best of companions for 12 years. Until his death, I was his caregiver in those last months and had a very different kind of an end of life experience with Pepper.

Then I was able to go off to college in another state. Honestly, I think if Pepper hadn't died of his kidney disease and other illnesses that he had. If he hadn't left us that summer between my graduation from high school and going off to college as a college freshman, I might very well have changed my plans and not left home then because there's no way I was going to leave my dog. But things have a peculiar way of working out in just the right timing and that's the way it was with Pepper.

Karen Wylie: Oh, that's an amazing beginning here to our conversation. So in college, were you focused on ministry or did that come later?

Dr. Alice Kay Lovelace: No!

Karen Wylie: Where you are there, heading to college, and move forward from there for us.

Dr. Alice Kay Lovelace: Oh, that's funny. And in fact, in my college years I don't think I ever went to church.

Karen Wylie: Okay, sounds familiar.

Dr. Alice Kay Lovelace: And that's not unusual for students, for young adults of that age. No, when I went to college, I thought I was going to be a journalist.

Karen Wylie: Oh, interesting.

Dr. Alice Kay Lovelace: Yes, I had been very involved with journalism, the school paper, all those kinds of things in high school. So I thought that's where my vocation was going to be. But before that, when I was 13 years old, when I was in confirmation class, our pastor explained to us 13-year-olds that God has a purpose for our lives. God calls us into vocation that it would be good for us to be praying what it is that we're to do with our lives.

I actually had a very profound— I'm going to call it a mystical experience of hearing the voice of God calling me into vocation. And what God said was, "I want you to teach." So of course I was very excited about this mystical experience, and I told my mother, and she said, "Oh, I don't think so."

Karen Wylie: Don't you love our parents?

Dr. Alice Kay Lovelace: She said, "Oh, a lot of people in my family have been teachers, and they actually could have done something different or maybe better, but they didn't." Oh, and she gave me that old saying, "Those who can, do. Those who can't—"

Karen Wylie: Right.

Dr. Alice Kay Lovelace: She said, "And you're so good at writing. I think you should explore becoming a writer." So it was really because my mother saw me as a writer that I became very involved in journalism and thought that was what I was going to be doing.

Karen Wylie: Well, interesting because at first when you said journalism, in my mind I'm thinking, "Journalists search for the truth in current events, then ministry you're looking for truth in other areas."

So that's where my mind was going in terms of connecting your pieces. But your story is very different in terms of your mom saying, "Eh, go this way. Go this way a little bit."

Dr. Alice Kay Lovelace: Yes, let me add to that, this mystical call experience happened when I was 13. When I was 15 my mother died.

Karen Wylie: Oh, wow. That's young.

Dr. Alice Kay Lovelace: So there again is a profound experience of grief and loss. In my experience, especially when you're a young person and you lose a parent, and I think especially the parent of the same gender that you are. Suddenly in death it's like everything that parent said, advised, counseled— That becomes like the voice of God. That's very authoritative in one's life. That well, if my mom thought this, then it must absolutely be true.

Karen Wylie: And so journalism in college?

Dr. Alice Kay Lovelace: Journalism in college, but also I got married.

Karen Wylie: Okay.

Dr. Alice Kay Lovelace: I got married to my high school sweetheart, who was a little older than I was. So when he graduated from college, then we got married. He had a profound call experience to the ministry. So then, he followed that path and got me thinking.

I know my father said, "You're the one who ought to be the minister." But at that time, which was the early '70s, I did not have one single example of a woman in ordained ministry. Women could be Sunday school teachers or youth leaders or choir directors. Women could have a professional vocation in churches but I was completely unaware of any woman anywhere who was actually a pastor in a church. I didn't think it could be done.

So it just didn't occur to me that could possibly be a path for me. Until, my husband began his seminary studies and he did have a handful of female colleagues in seminary classes. That got me thinking even more, "Oh, I guess women can do this." In my denomination, it's been possible since 1956. Although not many women until the '70s, '80s, and the '90s when then I began my own seminary career in the mid-'90s.

Karen Wylie: Wow. We all evolve in different ways and timing. Sometimes our lives go straight but more often they go like this. You just adapt over time. So at this point, you have been a minister for over 30 years, right?

Dr. Alice Kay Lovelace: That is correct.

Karen Wylie: So tell us a little bit about when you began thinking about providing support and services to pet parents. Because somewhere along the way, you began to take some steps in that direction. So tell us a little bit about how that new emphasis started.

Dr. Alice Kay Lovelace: Yes, I'd be happy to tell you about that shift. Really, it was first for my own support. My journey with Reiki really began with needing stress relief for myself.

Karen Wylie: You bet.

Dr. Alice Kay Lovelace: So I was referred to the wonderful Reiki practitioner and teacher here in Dayton, Ohio, Margaret Kanapki. I was so delighted and so surprised that from that very first Reiki session on Margaret's table, not only did I experience the kind of deep relaxation that I had been longing for literally years. But Reiki freed me from pain, physical pain that I had been carrying in my body ever since I'd been in a car accident 12 years previous to that.

Karen Wylie: Oh, goodness.

Dr. Alice Kay Lovelace: Because Reiki really changed my life! Initially it was wanting to know everything I could about Reiki. To learn to practice it, and learn to help other people to also find the kind of relief and release that I had experienced through Reiki treatment. So I'd been practicing Reiki on myself and with humans for a few years.

This brings us to, let me think now, 2011. Started Reiki practice in 2004, so about seven years experience with Reiki. My cat, Mary, had died in December of 2010. Mary was so closely bonded with my other cat, whose name was Mojo, this wonderful, fluffy ginger cat. When Mary died, Mojo just didn't know what to do with himself. He would just prowl the house, and yowl, and cry. There was nothing we could do to console him. He also started having symptoms of GI disease as well. So emotionally and physically, he just wasn't in good shape.

And I mentioned it to Margaret, who's a great cat lover, and she said, "You can use Reiki on Mojo." But she didn't really give me any pointers on exactly how to do that. I kind of had to seek that out on my own. So I went to the bookstore. The bookstores are great resources. The only thing I found at that time that seemed helpful, was "Guided Meditations" by William Lee Rand, recordings.

Gail Pope: Okay.

Dr. Alice Kay Lovelace: And so I thought, "I'll play these guided meditations and just see what happens." And what happened was Mojo just loved it. When I would get into that meditative space, he would come and sit on my lap, and he could completely relax and so could I. So that was my first clue that thinking of Reiki as being primarily a meditation method was what really worked for me and for Mojo, and maybe for other people and animals.

It wasn't until 2015 that I learned of the work of Kathleen Prasad. I took my first 2 certifications, Animal Reiki levels one and two with one of her students who I'm pretty sure Kat Forgas is her name. She's located in Bloomington, Indiana, and I'm pretty sure she did her teacher training with Kathleen at BrightHaven. I'll have to check with her and see if that is correct but I think that's correct information.

Gail Pope: Oh, how wonderful.

Dr. Alice Kay Lovelace: but anyway, she learned from Kathleen, and then was here in my area of the country offering certification classes. By this time, our animal family had begun to grow. By this time, I was married to my second and current beloved husband, David. I had retired from full-time ministry.

One of the things that folks may or may not know about the United Methodist pastoral system is most often pastors live in a church-owned parsonage. There are exceptions. Sometimes housing allowances are given, but it's been the tradition for many years that the church provides your housing. Pets are allowed but let's not get ridiculous. The church trustees tend to get a little nervous if the pet population gets more than, you know, a dog and a cat. We'd always had animals over the years but we limited ourselves. After David and I both retired, we moved back to my hometown of Dayton.

We bought our own home. We brought two cats with us. Then at the end of 2014 we adopted two more. There's a song titled Year of the Cat. For us, 2015 was the year of the cats. They just kept coming into our lives.

Karen Wylie: Oh, how funny.

Dr. Alice Kay Lovelace: By summer of 2015 we had 10 cats. Two of them were special needs, Rupert and Catherine. They were born with an orthopedic deformity called Radial Hypoplasia. So particularly for them and just for helping this large feline family all live in peace and harmony together and be healthy— emotionally, physically, spiritually, relationally— all the ways that we think of health and healing and wholeness. I thought, "I have got to really learn how to practice Reiki with animals. There's got to be more of a method to it."

So that's why in 2015, when Kat Forgas put a little notice on Facebook, "Hey, I'm going to have classes in Cincinnati," that's how I started my formal training in animal Reiki. The shift initially was just because I got to take care of all these cats the best way I know how.

Karen Wylie: So you were realizing that you needed to begin developing a new approach for yourself, a new way of coping and living with them because you were certainly juggling a lot of lives there with 10 personalities. All coming into your home at different times, from different places. That can be a real juggling act.

Dr. Alice Kay Lovelace: it sure can. When I had retired from full-time ministry, what I really thought I was going to be doing with my time was to develop a human Reiki clientele. I thought I was going to have clients on my table in my home and develop a Reiki practice that way.

Karen Wylie: Yes.

Dr. Alice Kay Lovelace: But these cats just had a different plan for me.

Karen Wylie: And you listened, didn't you?

Dr. Alice Kay Lovelace: I did, indeed. Then in the fall of 2015, here I am now I have my animal Reiki levels one and two certifications. I've been practicing with all of our own cats. I discovered that the Humane Society of Greater Dayton is located a very short drive from our home. so I went there to see what they were all about.

Immediately, when I walked in the door, they're like, "Oh, you should volunteer with us." So I did become very involved as a volunteer there. That gave me the opportunity to practice Reiki with literally hundreds of cats, mostly cats. I worked with some dogs but I was mostly on the cat side of the shelter. Also, to create classes for volunteers and train them in the basics of Reiki in a shelter setting. That was just a wonderful experience.

Karen Wylie: That was a wonderful experience. So from animal Reiki, what was your next area of skill that you wanted or expansion that you wanted to learn about?

Dr. Alice Kay Lovelace: Ah, okay. So let's see, I became certified as an animal Reiki teacher with Kathleen Prasad in 2019. So that was also when I began my business, Meditation Education, and began training students. Many of them are pet parents but some of them who really wanted to create their own animal Reiki business or pet groomers or pet sitters or you know, already pet professionals and wanted additional training. Initially it was all about going back to that mystical experience I had as a 13-year-old, "I want you to teach," and really living that forth in teaching others how to practice Reiki with animals.

You know, there was that experience at the age of seven with my little puppy Pixie, who died on my birthday. So that pain of pet loss grief, it never really healed and it created a great deal of empathy and compassion for others who were dealing with pet loss grief. So all of that led me to the University of Vermont's program for Companion Animal End-of-life Doula Training.

Karen Wylie: I think you went through a little earlier than I did.

Dr. Alice Kay Lovelace: That was fall of 2020.

Karen Wylie: Yes, much earlier than I did. Yes.

Dr. Alice Kay Lovelace: The middle of the COVID pandemic gave me a really wonderful program to focus on in such a time as that. Also helped prepare me for the death of our little cat, Rupert, one of those first ones that we adopted after we moved to this house. Little Rupert with his radial hypoplasia who developed other complicated illnesses. We thought he was responding to treatment and then Saturday, December 19th, when I woke up, I discovered that something had happened.

I didn't know what the something was but clearly he was near death and so he did die here at home. I was on the phone with my vet numerous times throughout. We decided that it made no sense at all to try to take him to the emergency vet. That whatever was going to unfold would just take place in the peace and quiet of home. So then after he passed, right about noon on a Saturday, we didn't think he was going to die. So we hadn't made any kind of preparations for what to do.

So I began making phone calls to different funeral homes and cremation services. I think I called at least a half dozen of them. Five out of six said, "Oh, it's Saturday afternoon. So our prices go up on weekends."

Karen Wylie: "Nice."

Dr. Alice Kay Lovelace: "If you'd called us before noon, the price for cremation would have been such and such. Now that it's this time it's going to be that." And so with each of them I said, "Would it be possible for us to just keep him here at home and bring him to you on Monday?" And they all said, "Oh, no. Especially a small animal like a cat, he's going to begin to decompose immediately. I suppose if you wanted to—" This being December in Ohio, "Suppose if you really wanted to, you could put him out on your porch or something because it'll be cold out there. But, oh no, you need to bring him to us right away."

Karen Wylie: Oh, what a nice way to get the up charge. Put some fear into you and say, "You've got to do that right now."

Dr. Alice Kay Lovelace: Yes, I didn't like any of those answers. The other call that we made was to “Faithful Companion Cremation Services”. They had worked with us with two previous kitties, both of whom had died at our vet clinic. So Faithful Companion had very promptly picked them up at the vet. They guarantee with a private cremation that they will return the cremains either to the vet clinic or bring them to the client's home, whichever the client prefers, within 24 hours. So they had done that for us on two previous occasions.

So we called them. They were able to come and pick up at our home and promise that Rupert would be returned to our home within 24 hours. So they did. In all of this, Rupert's body then was with us for about six hours because it was about 6:00 PM when they came to get him. But something wonderful happened to Rupert's body within that six hours after his physical death. He somehow became more beautiful. There is a book that was written about in 1980. The title of it is "The Radiance of the Inner Splendor".

Karen Wylie: Oh, that's nice.

Dr. Alice Kay Lovelace: And that was what we were seeing when we looked at Rupert's beautiful body. His radiance, his great Reiki light, his great bright light, his spirit was just absolutely glowing all around him. He was just beautiful.

Karen Wylie: Wow.

Dr. Alice Kay Lovelace: We thought to ourselves, "Oh, couldn't we just keep this beautiful being with us a little longer, and honor his beauty, his radiance, and his extraordinary life?" But having been told that it was essential that this body had to be taken away and cremated pretty quickly, we relinquished him to the kind person who came to pick him up. His cremains were indeed returned to us, probably within 12 hours.

It was very comforting to have him back home with us. That's something that's important to us. But of course, there continued to be a lot of grief. Rupert's death really hit us hard, both my husband and myself. It was just a hard one. And I had been wanting to study more about pet loss and how to help other people through pet loss grief.

I'd already looked into the program from the Association for Pet Loss and Bereavement. So I enrolled in their course. That must have been the spring of '22, I think it was. Yes, so a little time went by. Meanwhile, I'm building my meditation education business. By this time I have lots of Reiki students, literally all around the world by the magic of Zoom. And was really concentrating a lot on that practice but still very interested in helping others through the journey of pet loss and grief, and how to be helpful to others in that way also.

Karen Wylie: So what brought you to the moment of time where you began to think about rituals and rituals you could create for yourself at home? Would that be your next step, or...?

Dr. Alice Kay Lovelace: Yes, I'm going to say it is. And I really don't know how I first heard about Animal Hospice Group. I must have gotten an email or something— somewhere along the line.

Karen Wylie: Out there somewhere.

Dr. Alice Kay Lovelace: I emailed an inquiry to AHG and Gail set up a Zoom time to further discuss the possibilities of beginning training as a certified animal hospice practitioner. This brings us to February of '22. So it was in that same timeframe that I was right in the middle of my pet loss grief specialist training. So I wasn't ready to start another training program yet but I needed information. And Gail and I had the most amazing conversation. I think that Zoom lasted at least two hours.

Karen Wylie: Sounds familiar!

Dr. Alice Kay Lovelace: And I shared with her our experience of Rupert's death and how beautiful he was and my feeling of, "oh, couldn't we just keep his body with us and honor him a while longer?"

That's when she shared with me about the BrightHaven three-day honoring ritual. That just really expanded my awareness and was such an affirmation, such a confirmation that what I was feeling about what really felt right in honoring our beloved animals was right and that actual humans were doing this.

Karen Wylie: Oh, I love it! I love it! Your conversation with Gail became a catalyst for you to begin looking at what you could do. And of course, that was why we even had the idea of let's talk to Alice about her honoring rituals, and so our listeners and viewers can learn from you how you approach things.

This is looking like a good dividing line in our conversation for this particular episode. Then we'll come back and start talking about the honoring rituals that you began evolving in your own home for your own animals. Does that sound like a plan?

Dr. Alice Kay Lovelace: Sounds good.

Karen Wylie: Okay, very good. With that, we'll thank you for being with us for this episode with Dr. Alice Kay Lovelace and we will continue with part two next week. Thanks for being with us. Bye-bye.

Gail Pope: Goodbye.