If you've ever searched for hospice care for your pet and walked away feeling like it wasn't really what you were looking for — you were right. Something has gone quietly wrong with the word hospice in the animal care world. And in this episode, Karen Wylie, EdD and Gail Pope sit down to name it.
When students in the Animal Hospice Group's advanced certification program (animalhospicegroup.com) started researching hospice services at veterinary clinics in their communities, they came back frustrated. Almost universally, what clinics were calling "hospice" turned out to be something else: a quality of life evaluation followed by a conversation about euthanasia. The middle — often months of meaningful, comfort-focused living — was missing entirely.
In this honest, wide-ranging conversation, Karen and Gail explore:
— What the word hospice was always meant to mean, and when it began to lose its way
— Why true hospice care begins at diagnosis, not in the final days or weeks
— How the veterinary model has quietly redefined hospice as an end-of-life pathway rather than a philosophy of living
— What body, mind, and spirit care actually looks like for a seriously ill pet at home
— Why integrative veterinarians are often the most natural allies for families seeking real hospice support
— The "missing middle" — and what pet parents lose when months of genuine comfort care are skipped
— How to hold space for both natural death and euthanasia without being pressured toward either
Gail also shares what changed her own mind about the word hospice — she once wanted nothing to do with it — and why she now believes that teaching hospice as a philosophy of living, rather than a protocol for dying, could transform the way families experience their pet's final chapter.
This episode is for you if you've ever asked:
— Does hospice mean my pet is about to die?
— What is the difference between a quality of life assessment and real hospice care?
— Why can't I find a vet who offers actual hospice support?
— How do I give my pet the living part — the middle part — before it's too late?
📌 Related Resource:
- 🔗 Episode 052: The Missing Middle: Why Animal Hospice Is Rarely Offered — and How to Ask for It
- 🔗 Episode 034: When Palliative Care Becomes Hospice: Knowing When to Shift Gears
- 🔗 Making the Case for Animal Hospice: Why Hospice Care Matters for Pets and Families
- 📖 Animal Hospice Group: animalhospicegroup.com
- 📖 The BrightHaven Way: Lessons from 700 Animal Teachers PDF: https://brightpathforpets.com/brighthaven-way-book/
-
📖 Download the PEACEFUL Quality of Dying Guide: Signs of a Peaceful Passing at: https://brightpathforpets.com/resources-html/
-
📖 Walking The BrightPath: A Pet Parent’s Guide To Home Hospice And Natural Transition - https://brightpathforpets.com/blog/pet-hospice-guide
-
📖 Soul-Centered Care: Seeing Pet Death Differently A BrightPath TRANSITION Series Booklet - https://brightpathforpets.com/soul-centered-care-booklet/
🌹 Join our monthly Rose Ceremony (free online pet celebration): https://brightpathforpets.com/rose-ceremony/
💬 If this episode touched your heart, you’re not alone. The BrightHaven Caregivers’ Hub is our supportive membership community for pet parents navigating caregiving, anticipatory grief, and all the moments in between.
We gather to share stories, ask questions, and care for each other as we care for our animals. If you’re walking this path, we’d be honored to walk it with you.
🔗 Learn more about the Hub: https://brightpathforpets.com/caregivers-hub/
📌Thanks for listening! Don’t forget to subscribe and leave a review 🐶⭐🐱
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Welcome to Peace of Mind for Pet Parents, the podcast by BrightHaven Caregiver Academy.
I'm Gail Pope and I'm Karen Wylie and together we're here to support you in navigating life with your aging or ill pets.
We know how deeply you care for your beloved companions, and we're here to offer guidance, understanding, and resources for this meaningful journey.
(00:25):
Each episode we'll explore topics that address the daily challenges, emotional realities, and choices you face as a pet parent helping you and your pets find peace, comfort, and joy.
Whether it's making sense of a new diagnosis, adjusting to changing needs, or simply seeking a place to feel understood, you're not alone.
(00:47):
Thank you for being here with us.
Karen Wylie (00:50):
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 begin talking about something that our students in our advanced training at Animal Hospice Group have been talking a lot about the last week.
That is the word "Hospice" because they've been doing a little research on it for themselves and of their own pets.
(01:16):
Trying to see what hospice services are available in their area— at veterinary clinics.
Then also beginning to look at it from the standpoint of how they're going to serve their own clients in the future.
What services are available where they recommend to pet parent clients where to go.
This is a particular clinic that is receptive to supporting you and your pet and providing hospice care.
(01:40):
You know, in the community last week, everyone was pretty well indicating that they were very frustrated because every clinic they were contacting was not actually offering hospice care.
It was more bundled together with a quality of life evaluation and then a discussion of end of life— which typically would be recommending euthanasia.
(02:04):
Our students were not that receptive to that being the state of animal hospice in the world today.
So, I thought we could start today by talking about what the word "Hospice" means to us, you and me, as well as what it seems to mean to other people out there.
You want to go first?
Gail Pope (02:24):
No.
It's hard, I come up against this so often.
First of all, it takes me back to when I was first introduced to the word "Hospice" properly within the animal world.
I said I didn't want to know anything about it because my work was all about living and not dying.
(02:45):
That we concentrated on our animals living well all the way to end of life.
So no, I really don't do hospice.
Don't want to know anything about it.
So I think so many people that we come into contact with have that from their childhood.
The word "hospice" means death and dying and so they shy away from it.
What it means to me now is obviously something entirely different.
(03:09):
It is comfort, care, love, and support all the way through living because I did finally discover that it actually does mean that.
But out in the world, it's come to mean the actual end of life.
I've read so many books— I just love them and talk about it all the time and bore people — from authors in the world of human hospice and palliative care.
(03:32):
Therein comes another word that needs to come into the discussion too.
When you read all the stories of people experiencing hospice care at home with their loved ones with a hospice specialist visiting on a routine or whenever needed, it's a beautiful thing.
However, in the animal world, it hasn't quite taken off as it's meant to.
(03:55):
I guess, I think people are starting to catch up with it, and a lot of people in the veterinary community have already caught up on it.
Then others within the veterinary community, as you said, they have but they haven't spotted the gap in the middle which is actually the hospice part.
Obviously, a quality of life discussion is very important but it's only important to us to look at what can we do to make life better, how can we improve this living situation rather than look at it as a dying situation.
(04:28):
Obviously, it is and does become or may become or will become but so many people and animals in my experience have entered this world of hospice, things have changed.
Maybe their diet, the medicine they're taking, little by little the comfort, and suddenly, "Oh my goodness! 10 years came off his life and he's jumping here and going there and..." You wouldn't use that word anymore because they are really living.
(04:53):
I think those are the precious things that need to be taught to people so that they don't just hear the word and go, "Oh, I don't think so."
Karen Wylie (05:00):
Somehow, it has gotten interpreted to only mean the last days or weeks of life when someone, what we would probably say, is really entering more the active dying phase.
But even hospice in the United States, Medicare covers hospice for six months.
They're not thinking of just the last few days or the last few weeks.
(05:21):
They were looking at it as a six-month and they don't kick you off if you happen to live longer than that.
But it is very interesting to me to think about it because when hospice first came up as a concept, in the late '70s or very early '80s, it was really about body, mind and spirit.
It wasn't just the medical.
(05:41):
It wasn't just the physical.
It was all of it.
That's the pinch, I think— I'll speak for myself but sometimes I can speak for you, too.
Gail Pope (05:51):
Be careful.
Karen Wylie (05:51):
Be careful.
But I think that's what gets us now is that our view of what animal hospice care can be, the full spectrum of it, does cover body, mind and spirit.
It's because we have several layers to it (06:04):
in the training we do, the podcast conversations we share every week.
We're looking at what's happening for the pet in terms of the physical experience and journey the pet is going through, what the caregiver's going through as well.
There's quite an emotional journey that the pet parent is on.
(06:25):
Then we also look at the relationship between the two.
For the pet, it's not just the physical aspect of the pet's journey.
We also look at it from a soul perspective because we're looking at these animals as sentient beings that have opinions.
They not only have an opinion of their favorite cushion on the couch to sleep on, they have opinions and preferences about everything.
(06:48):
Many of them do show us that they have a sense of when they're physically declining and when they're getting ready to leave us.
So when you and I are talking about hospice, we're trying to look at all of that and that isn't what I see happening in the veterinary world.
Not that I expect them to feel like that they're taking on the entire spectrum but to just look at hospice care as a medical crisis defeats the purpose of hospice care.
Gail Pope (07:15):
I've just had an idea.
Karen Wylie (07:17):
Yes?
Gail Pope (07:18):
Actually, I've probably shared it before but it really underscores everything that you've just been saying.
If vet school taught hospice care as part of this five-plus year curriculum that everyone learning to become a veterinarian was taught the basics, at least, of hospice care, and then they could enroll in a specialty course at a later stage perhaps that dived deeper.
(07:43):
But it is a lack of education and yes, it's a lack of education not only for veterinarians but for all of us.
So if everybody learned more then we would all approach the end of life with a very different attitude.
It would be acceptance.
We'd learn about letting go.
We'd learn about all the problems that as a society we face.
(08:06):
You've only got to read the news at the moment, letting go, acceptance, living in the moment, they're all things that people are desperately trying to learn and teach each other.
So when you take those words and you put them into our world, that's what we learn.
That's what we learn in the field of hospice care because it is about going with the flow.
It's letting go of the fears and the worries and the anxieties.
(08:29):
Obviously not totally.
We're human.
We don't exactly know what happens to us once the switch is turned off, if you like.
We don't know where the soul, the spirit goes, what happens to it and some of us don't even believe there is one.
So there's a big gap there that we could all learn an awful lot within.
Karen Wylie (08:47):
I agree with you.
What a surprise.
Gail Pope (08:49):
Of course.
Karen Wylie (08:51):
Of course.
Especially just thinking of the students entering into vet school, there's nobody who enters vet school who doesn't love animals.
Gail Pope (08:59):
Exactly.
Karen Wylie (09:00):
Who hasn't been like us and carrying around our a year and a half old kitties and so forth.
They understand the love.
They understand the relationship.
Gail Pope (09:08):
Oh, God, Yes.
Karen Wylie (09:09):
But then when they go to vet school, end of life becomes so medical.
That's where you and I have had conversations about "Do we call what we do home hospice care?" "How do we distinguish what we encourage and the training we try to do to help pet parents develop a caregiver's eye?" So that they're observing and taking notes as they're caring for their pet at home so they can interact more effectively and be a better partner with their vet.
(09:39):
Do we call their hospice a veterinary hospice or medical hospice?
I try to find a way because just calling it hospice care doesn't have any meaning anymore because it's been interpreted in so many different ways.
Gail Pope (09:51):
Exactly and calling it veterinary hospice makes no sense because hospice care— it's for people and animals.
The basic principle doesn't change.
Karen Wylie (10:00):
It's supposed to be.
Gail Pope (10:01):
Of course, in the human world, the problem of finance and what it costs and the money aspect of it has stepped in.
I guess that's coming into the animal world as well now.
It's a shame.
Karen Wylie (10:13):
Yes, it is.
In the United States, we're so generally skilled at attracting consumers for products and services.
We know that our language, our vocabulary makes a huge difference to attract the right people to your product or service so that they buy it.
In this case, you and I don't think about them buying into hospice as much as being able to find the support they need when they need it.
(10:39):
I guess, last week in the community with our advanced students, it's not just you and me, again it's our students bringing this issue to us all the time.
That it's not just in my location or your location, but we have people from all over.
So what do you think we should call it?
Of course, we talked about palliative care but I've never had a veterinarian tell me that what we were doing to support one of my pets was palliative care.
Gail Pope (11:04):
And it's another word that the general public, for the most part, don't really understand and it sounds scary.
For them, palliative care is suppressing a symptom by drugs.
Karen Wylie (11:16):
In most cases, yes for conventional.
Gail Pope (11:18):
And that's what's scary.
It's "Oh, God, it really is." So I don't know but the problem is that true hospice and palliative care as known in the human world is a beautiful thing.
Although it has its problems, it's ingrained in society.
So in the animal world, although in some ways it would be wonderful to change the name, I don't know that it could because it should be that same thing.
(11:43):
It shouldn't be different.
The closest we've come is bringing the word "Animal" in to the Animal Hospice Group.
So we've kept the "Hospice" word, we've put "Animal" in front of it.
It makes sense but in general use, to take out the word hospice or/and palliative care, I don't know.
What would you call it?
(12:03):
If you could actually just wipe it out completely, what would you call it?
Karen Wylie (12:07):
I don't know but I find myself talking about comfort care more as a way to further define hospice.
Certainly, we've talked about taking a soul-centered approach when we're looking at the hospice journey for the pet and looking at it from a spiritual perspective.
Which as you've said, not everyone will claim a particular form of spirituality or religion.
(12:28):
So I don't know.
Of course, we have quality of life care.
We put that into the Living Assessment Tool that we're monitoring quality of life care throughout the time that a pet has been diagnosed with a terminal—
Gail Pope (12:41):
I think you might have just got it.
Karen Wylie (12:44):
What?
Gail Pope (12:44):
In the word "Living" because hospice care isn't about dying, it's about living and living well to the end of life.
I guess I keep saying that and it's far too much, it's too long to use as what should we call it.
But the emphasis on living, not even just living but living well through the last chapter.
(13:04):
Those are beautiful ways to express hospice, I think.
But to change for one or even two words, I don't know how you're going to do that.
Karen Wylie (13:14):
It may be that we just have to define how we define it, how we see it and just keep talking enough and long enough and in as many places as possible to bring this up, to have this kind of discussion.
I think I've told you at some point in the past that my very first client in grad school, my first nonprofit organizational client was Hospice of Nashville, Tennessee.
(13:40):
They had just started a chapter.
So it was right after hospice came over from the UK to the US.
We had a student group that would be providing consultative services to nonprofit organizations as a way for each of us to learn how to be better consultants and analyze things and so forth.
So that was my very first one and I just remember because I didn't know what the heck hospice was.
(14:03):
I'm what 22 at the time and they would just say, "We help people who are dying and we help their families, too." And it was like, "Wow, really?
Isn't that great?"
So even at the very beginning, they didn't have a real understanding of how they were going to do it but their overall mission was to help and support the person dying and to also figure out how to support the family of the dying patient.
(14:28):
Sometimes just going back to a very general view of it all allows you to look at it differently and reinvent it a little bit because it's really not just about filling out a quality of life evaluation form to see if a pet is ready for euthanasia.
That is not hospice care and yet somehow for some people that's their definition of it.
Gail Pope (14:51):
So basically, bottom line is that all the students, vet students, just about anybody who would be interested in stepping into the world of hospice and palliative care for animals, once they become certified then while they're being certified— and of course that's going on and has been for quite a long time now.
(15:12):
But the word hasn't really got out into the veterinary community that once they start thinking about quality of life for one of their animals, they also start thinking about if quality of life isn't as good as it was, what do I have to offer?
What can't I fix anymore?
What wasn't I taught how to work with?
(15:34):
Oh, I can work with a hospice counselor for my client.
I can refer out or I could have somebody practiced in the art working within my clinic.
Could work either way but once the word is out and more and more people are actually asking for these services— what they receive and what they understand about hospice isn't necessarily what they're actually getting.
(15:59):
So they are actually seeking it now more.
I find that in consultation.
We've seen it in AHG.
Students have shared their stories, and there's a gap.
There's that gap that you were talking about.
The vets simply don't know.
It's not that they don't care.
Of course they do.
They want to do their best.
They do it with love.
They can only do what they've learned.
Karen Wylie (16:20):
And their job is to attend to the physical aspects of the pet, the medical.
That's part of their job.
And yet, the pet parent, their client, and the people who come to us as well, they're looking for that philosophy— the whole family care.
That is how we look at animal hospice.
Gail Pope (16:38):
A lot of the people who come to us and that I've experienced but a lot of the clients that I've worked with will already be working with an integrative veterinarian, which means they're a blend of conventional and holistic care.
Those people, I find very often, have a veterinarian who literally hears about the work of hospice.
(17:02):
Their ears prick up and they are absolutely, "Let's do this."
They have the right philosophy already ingrained in them because they've been working integratively.
They're used to switching from the idea of fixing to working with.
So symptoms aren't so big and scary for them because they're creating a balance of healing.
(17:23):
They do it all the way through towards the end of life.
So there you have the open-minded approach.
Karen Wylie (17:29):
Yes and the body, mind, spirit approach.
Gail Pope (17:31):
Exactly, yes.
Karen Wylie (17:33):
Yes.
And that's, I think, why so many clients that we speak with are often looking for an integrative vet. As their pet enters end of life hospice care, they have a difficult or terminal diagnosis and the pet parent is not finding the kind of support that they want.
(17:53):
It's not the medical support, that there's anything wrong with the conventional medical support that they're receiving but they want more than that.
Gail Pope (18:01):
And the other part that you've just made me realize that I hear a lot is because we talk about choices at the end of life.
We don't talk about natural death being the way for a life to end.
We don't talk about euthanasia being the way for a life to end.
We stay open.
For me, obviously, natural dying has become a way of life for me but I still hold euthanasia there as a possibility if it's needed.
(18:27):
I think the one thing that comes up for me over, over again, which is quite scary sometimes, is that people search because we tell them to for a mobile veterinarian.
So should the occasion arrive that they do decide on euthanasia, they have somebody to call for help.
But that somebody has to be open, again, to supplying the kind of meds that hospice care would provide, obviously, to humans.
(18:54):
Strong, fast-acting pain relief should it become necessary for an underlying illness that may have evinced itself throughout the process.
Mobile veterinarians for the most part aren't open to the kind of comfort care that hospice ensures.
So very often I'll have clients say, "Oh, yes, I spoke to her. I've got a wonderful mobile vet. They're very supportive. But when I make the appointment, it is for euthanasia." Again, they've missed the middle bit.
Karen Wylie (19:21):
They've missed usually many months of that middle bit.
It is sad that hospice somehow seems to mean that there's no hope of any kind left.
Although if there is a terminal diagnosis in play, if there is no cure then the physical life of your pet is going to end at some point.
But hospice care can give you a new kind of hope in terms of every day truly living, as you were saying a little earlier.
(19:46):
Still having good days and monitoring so that you're staying on top of it to make sure your pet is enjoying every day still whatever level of comfort care is needed.
I just think there's just so much positive about hospice care that finding a way to really be able to help people take advantage of it wherever they are is something I hope we can help happen as we continue to move forward.
Gail Pope (20:11):
We just have to keep on talking, don't we?
Karen Wylie (20:13):
That doesn't seem to be a problem.
That's something you and I have not had a problem doing.
Gail Pope (20:22):
I think coming back to the phrase that I tend to use quite often, "Healing for the highest good" is or should be the focus in that last chapter.
Let's spread it out.
Dying doesn't have to be a few days.
It's a chapter of life and living, and that's why I really love the wholistic approach.
(20:42):
Talking about healing for the highest good rather than curing because let's face it, most of us perhaps have an illness that is chronic that isn't fixable.
We live with it but it's only when we get into the later years or the disease progresses that we start to look at fixing, and why can't we fix it?
Let's do surgery, let's do another surgery until we finally realize that we've the life is ebbing out of the patient, whether they're on two legs or four legs.
Karen Wylie (21:13):
Very true.
Gail Pope (21:13):
And so applying a wholistic approach takes away so much of the negativity by looking at healing for the highest good.
We're healing body, mind, and spirit.
So the patient feels better.
They may still be in that same place, but it's a whole energy shift.
A whole energy shift, and once you've got that energy shift, that's where animals and people often rebound to better life.
(21:37):
They see it all the time in human hospice care.
When a patient is declining and they switch to hospice, the treatment plan changes around a little bit.
The patient starts feeling better.
They've still got the illness but they're feeling better.
They've got life again.
They're living.
They're not dying, and that's it.
Karen Wylie (21:55):
Yes and that's healing for everyone.
Gail Pope (21:58):
Maybe hospice could have a badge that you put on when you're in hospice care that says, "I'm living." Or something like that.
Karen Wylie (22:10):
It is why we called The Living Quality of Life Monitoring Tool because it's all about living.
Is there some way you would like to close this particular conversation?
Gail Pope (22:21):
Not really anything new or different.
I think baby steps come to mind as a huge reminder for all of us that all the way through life we should be taking baby steps rather than labeling periods.
So I think that's an important mention.
Possibly that love is the greatest healer for all stages of life.
(22:41):
It's all about love, isn't it?
Karen Wylie (22:43):
It is.
That's why we all are so focused on what we can do for our pets because we love them so much.
Gail Pope (22:49):
There you go.
Karen Wylie (22:50):
All right then.
Thank you as always for being with us.
Keep in mind that hospice is a philosophy of living as we're talking about it.
It's not a sentence of dying and it's not about the end.
It truly is about living.
So we'll hope to see you back here next week.
Take care.
Thank you.
Bye-bye.
Gail Pope (23:09):
Goodbye.
Thank you for joining us on Peace of Mind for Pet Parents.
We hope today's episode has offered you support and insight as you care for your aging or ill pets.
Remember, it's not just about the end.
It's about living well at every stage of life.
To continue your journey with us, explore more resources at BrightHaven Caregiver Academy's website— BrightPathForPets.com, where you'll find guides, assessments, and a caring community of pet parents like you.
(23:45):
Until next time, may you and your pets find comfort, connection, and peace in every moment.
Take care.
Welcome to Peace of Mind for Pet Parents, the podcast by BrightHaven Caregiver Academy.
I'm Gail Pope and I'm Karen Wylie and together we're here to support you in navigating life with your aging or ill pets.
We know how deeply you care for your beloved companions, and we're here to offer guidance, understanding, and resources for this meaningful journey.
(00:25):
Each episode we'll explore topics that address the daily challenges, emotional realities, and choices you face as a pet parent helping you and your pets find peace, comfort, and joy.
Whether it's making sense of a new diagnosis, adjusting to changing needs, or simply seeking a place to feel understood, you're not alone.
(00:47):
Thank you for being here with us.
Karen Wylie (00:50):
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 begin talking about something that our students in our advanced training at Animal Hospice Group have been talking a lot about the last week.
That is the word "Hospice" because they've been doing a little research on it for themselves and of their own pets.
(01:16):
Trying to see what hospice services are available in their area— at veterinary clinics.
Then also beginning to look at it from the standpoint of how they're going to serve their own clients in the future.
What services are available where they recommend to pet parent clients where to go.
This is a particular clinic that is receptive to supporting you and your pet and providing hospice care.
(01:40):
You know, in the community last week, everyone was pretty well indicating that they were very frustrated because every clinic they were contacting was not actually offering hospice care.
It was more bundled together with a quality of life evaluation and then a discussion of end of life— which typically would be recommending euthanasia.
(02:04):
Our students were not that receptive to that being the state of animal hospice in the world today.
So, I thought we could start today by talking about what the word "Hospice" means to us, you and me, as well as what it seems to mean to other people out there.
You want to go first?
Gail Pope (02:24):
No.
It's hard, I come up against this so often.
First of all, it takes me back to when I was first introduced to the word "Hospice" properly within the animal world.
I said I didn't want to know anything about it because my work was all about living and not dying.
(02:45):
That we concentrated on our animals living well all the way to end of life.
So no, I really don't do hospice.
Don't want to know anything about it.
So I think so many people that we come into contact with have that from their childhood.
The word "hospice" means death and dying and so they shy away from it.
What it means to me now is obviously something entirely different.
(03:09):
It is comfort, care, love, and support all the way through living because I did finally discover that it actually does mean that.
But out in the world, it's come to mean the actual end of life.
I've read so many books— I just love them and talk about it all the time and bore people — from authors in the world of human hospice and palliative care.
(03:32):
Therein comes another word that needs to come into the discussion too.
When you read all the stories of people experiencing hospice care at home with their loved ones with a hospice specialist visiting on a routine or whenever needed, it's a beautiful thing.
However, in the animal world, it hasn't quite taken off as it's meant to.
(03:55):
I guess, I think people are starting to catch up with it, and a lot of people in the veterinary community have already caught up on it.
Then others within the veterinary community, as you said, they have but they haven't spotted the gap in the middle which is actually the hospice part.
Obviously, a quality of life discussion is very important but it's only important to us to look at what can we do to make life better, how can we improve this living situation rather than look at it as a dying situation.
(04:28):
Obviously, it is and does become or may become or will become but so many people and animals in my experience have entered this world of hospice, things have changed.
Maybe their diet, the medicine they're taking, little by little the comfort, and suddenly, "Oh my goodness! 10 years came off his life and he's jumping here and going there and..." You wouldn't use that word anymore because they are really living.
(04:53):
I think those are the precious things that need to be taught to people so that they don't just hear the word and go, "Oh, I don't think so."
Karen Wylie (05:00):
Somehow, it has gotten interpreted to only mean the last days or weeks of life when someone, what we would probably say, is really entering more the active dying phase.
But even hospice in the United States, Medicare covers hospice for six months.
They're not thinking of just the last few days or the last few weeks.
(05:21):
They were looking at it as a six-month and they don't kick you off if you happen to live longer than that.
But it is very interesting to me to think about it because when hospice first came up as a concept, in the late '70s or very early '80s, it was really about body, mind and spirit.
It wasn't just the medical.
(05:41):
It wasn't just the physical.
It was all of it.
That's the pinch, I think— I'll speak for myself but sometimes I can speak for you, too.
Gail Pope (05:51):
Be careful.
Karen Wylie (05:51):
Be careful.
But I think that's what gets us now is that our view of what animal hospice care can be, the full spectrum of it, does cover body, mind and spirit.
It's because we have several layers to it (06:04):
in the training we do, the podcast conversations we share every week.
We're looking at what's happening for the pet in terms of the physical experience and journey the pet is going through, what the caregiver's going through as well.
There's quite an emotional journey that the pet parent is on.
(06:25):
Then we also look at the relationship between the two.
For the pet, it's not just the physical aspect of the pet's journey.
We also look at it from a soul perspective because we're looking at these animals as sentient beings that have opinions.
They not only have an opinion of their favorite cushion on the couch to sleep on, they have opinions and preferences about everything.
(06:48):
Many of them do show us that they have a sense of when they're physically declining and when they're getting ready to leave us.
So when you and I are talking about hospice, we're trying to look at all of that and that isn't what I see happening in the veterinary world.
Not that I expect them to feel like that they're taking on the entire spectrum but to just look at hospice care as a medical crisis defeats the purpose of hospice care.
Gail Pope (07:15):
I've just had an idea.
Karen Wylie (07:17):
Yes?
Gail Pope (07:18):
Actually, I've probably shared it before but it really underscores everything that you've just been saying.
If vet school taught hospice care as part of this five-plus year curriculum that everyone learning to become a veterinarian was taught the basics, at least, of hospice care, and then they could enroll in a specialty course at a later stage perhaps that dived deeper.
(07:43):
But it is a lack of education and yes, it's a lack of education not only for veterinarians but for all of us.
So if everybody learned more then we would all approach the end of life with a very different attitude.
It would be acceptance.
We'd learn about letting go.
We'd learn about all the problems that as a society we face.
(08:06):
You've only got to read the news at the moment, letting go, acceptance, living in the moment, they're all things that people are desperately trying to learn and teach each other.
So when you take those words and you put them into our world, that's what we learn.
That's what we learn in the field of hospice care because it is about going with the flow.
It's letting go of the fears and the worries and the anxieties.
(08:29):
Obviously not totally.
We're human.
We don't exactly know what happens to us once the switch is turned off, if you like.
We don't know where the soul, the spirit goes, what happens to it and some of us don't even believe there is one.
So there's a big gap there that we could all learn an awful lot within.
Karen Wylie (08:47):
I agree with you.
What a surprise.
Gail Pope (08:49):
Of course.
Karen Wylie (08:51):
Of course.
Especially just thinking of the students entering into vet school, there's nobody who enters vet school who doesn't love animals.
Gail Pope (08:59):
Exactly.
Karen Wylie (09:00):
Who hasn't been like us and carrying around our a year and a half old kitties and so forth.
They understand the love.
They understand the relationship.
Gail Pope (09:08):
Oh, God, Yes.
Karen Wylie (09:09):
But then when they go to vet school, end of life becomes so medical.
That's where you and I have had conversations about "Do we call what we do home hospice care?" "How do we distinguish what we encourage and the training we try to do to help pet parents develop a caregiver's eye?" So that they're observing and taking notes as they're caring for their pet at home so they can interact more effectively and be a better partner with their vet.
(09:39):
Do we call their hospice a veterinary hospice or medical hospice?
I try to find a way because just calling it hospice care doesn't have any meaning anymore because it's been interpreted in so many different ways.
Gail Pope (09:51):
Exactly and calling it veterinary hospice makes no sense because hospice care— it's for people and animals.
The basic principle doesn't change.
Karen Wylie (10:00):
It's supposed to be.
Gail Pope (10:01):
Of course, in the human world, the problem of finance and what it costs and the money aspect of it has stepped in.
I guess that's coming into the animal world as well now.
It's a shame.
Karen Wylie (10:13):
Yes, it is.
In the United States, we're so generally skilled at attracting consumers for products and services.
We know that our language, our vocabulary makes a huge difference to attract the right people to your product or service so that they buy it.
In this case, you and I don't think about them buying into hospice as much as being able to find the support they need when they need it.
(10:39):
I guess, last week in the community with our advanced students, it's not just you and me, again it's our students bringing this issue to us all the time.
That it's not just in my location or your location, but we have people from all over.
So what do you think we should call it?
Of course, we talked about palliative care but I've never had a veterinarian tell me that what we were doing to support one of my pets was palliative care.
Gail Pope (11:04):
And it's another word that the general public, for the most part, don't really understand and it sounds scary.
For them, palliative care is suppressing a symptom by drugs.
Karen Wylie (11:16):
In most cases, yes for conventional.
Gail Pope (11:18):
And that's what's scary.
It's "Oh, God, it really is." So I don't know but the problem is that true hospice and palliative care as known in the human world is a beautiful thing.
Although it has its problems, it's ingrained in society.
So in the animal world, although in some ways it would be wonderful to change the name, I don't know that it could because it should be that same thing.
(11:43):
It shouldn't be different.
The closest we've come is bringing the word "Animal" in to the Animal Hospice Group.
So we've kept the "Hospice" word, we've put "Animal" in front of it.
It makes sense but in general use, to take out the word hospice or/and palliative care, I don't know.
What would you call it?
(12:03):
If you could actually just wipe it out completely, what would you call it?
Karen Wylie (12:07):
I don't know but I find myself talking about comfort care more as a way to further define hospice.
Certainly, we've talked about taking a soul-centered approach when we're looking at the hospice journey for the pet and looking at it from a spiritual perspective.
Which as you've said, not everyone will claim a particular form of spirituality or religion.
(12:28):
So I don't know.
Of course, we have quality of life care.
We put that into the Living Assessment Tool that we're monitoring quality of life care throughout the time that a pet has been diagnosed with a terminal—
Gail Pope (12:41):
I think you might have just got it.
Karen Wylie (12:44):
What?
Gail Pope (12:44):
In the word "Living" because hospice care isn't about dying, it's about living and living well to the end of life.
I guess I keep saying that and it's far too much, it's too long to use as what should we call it.
But the emphasis on living, not even just living but living well through the last chapter.
(13:04):
Those are beautiful ways to express hospice, I think.
But to change for one or even two words, I don't know how you're going to do that.
Karen Wylie (13:14):
It may be that we just have to define how we define it, how we see it and just keep talking enough and long enough and in as many places as possible to bring this up, to have this kind of discussion.
I think I've told you at some point in the past that my very first client in grad school, my first nonprofit organizational client was Hospice of Nashville, Tennessee.
(13:40):
They had just started a chapter.
So it was right after hospice came over from the UK to the US.
We had a student group that would be providing consultative services to nonprofit organizations as a way for each of us to learn how to be better consultants and analyze things and so forth.
So that was my very first one and I just remember because I didn't know what the heck hospice was.
(14:03):
I'm what 22 at the time and they would just say, "We help people who are dying and we help their families, too." And it was like, "Wow, really?
Isn't that great?"
So even at the very beginning, they didn't have a real understanding of how they were going to do it but their overall mission was to help and support the person dying and to also figure out how to support the family of the dying patient.
(14:28):
Sometimes just going back to a very general view of it all allows you to look at it differently and reinvent it a little bit because it's really not just about filling out a quality of life evaluation form to see if a pet is ready for euthanasia.
That is not hospice care and yet somehow for some people that's their definition of it.
Gail Pope (14:51):
So basically, bottom line is that all the students, vet students, just about anybody who would be interested in stepping into the world of hospice and palliative care for animals, once they become certified then while they're being certified— and of course that's going on and has been for quite a long time now.
(15:12):
But the word hasn't really got out into the veterinary community that once they start thinking about quality of life for one of their animals, they also start thinking about if quality of life isn't as good as it was, what do I have to offer?
What can't I fix anymore?
What wasn't I taught how to work with?
(15:34):
Oh, I can work with a hospice counselor for my client.
I can refer out or I could have somebody practiced in the art working within my clinic.
Could work either way but once the word is out and more and more people are actually asking for these services— what they receive and what they understand about hospice isn't necessarily what they're actually getting.
(15:59):
So they are actually seeking it now more.
I find that in consultation.
We've seen it in AHG.
Students have shared their stories, and there's a gap.
There's that gap that you were talking about.
The vets simply don't know.
It's not that they don't care.
Of course they do.
They want to do their best.
They do it with love.
They can only do what they've learned.
Karen Wylie (16:20):
And their job is to attend to the physical aspects of the pet, the medical.
That's part of their job.
And yet, the pet parent, their client, and the people who come to us as well, they're looking for that philosophy— the whole family care.
That is how we look at animal hospice.
Gail Pope (16:38):
A lot of the people who come to us and that I've experienced but a lot of the clients that I've worked with will already be working with an integrative veterinarian, which means they're a blend of conventional and holistic care.
Those people, I find very often, have a veterinarian who literally hears about the work of hospice.
(17:02):
Their ears prick up and they are absolutely, "Let's do this."
They have the right philosophy already ingrained in them because they've been working integratively.
They're used to switching from the idea of fixing to working with.
So symptoms aren't so big and scary for them because they're creating a balance of healing.
(17:23):
They do it all the way through towards the end of life.
So there you have the open-minded approach.
Karen Wylie (17:29):
Yes and the body, mind, spirit approach.
Gail Pope (17:31):
Exactly, yes.
Karen Wylie (17:33):
Yes.
And that's, I think, why so many clients that we speak with are often looking for an integrative vet. As their pet enters end of life hospice care, they have a difficult or terminal diagnosis and the pet parent is not finding the kind of support that they want.
(17:53):
It's not the medical support, that there's anything wrong with the conventional medical support that they're receiving but they want more than that.
Gail Pope (18:01):
And the other part that you've just made me realize that I hear a lot is because we talk about choices at the end of life.
We don't talk about natural death being the way for a life to end.
We don't talk about euthanasia being the way for a life to end.
We stay open.
For me, obviously, natural dying has become a way of life for me but I still hold euthanasia there as a possibility if it's needed.
(18:27):
I think the one thing that comes up for me over, over again, which is quite scary sometimes, is that people search because we tell them to for a mobile veterinarian.
So should the occasion arrive that they do decide on euthanasia, they have somebody to call for help.
But that somebody has to be open, again, to supplying the kind of meds that hospice care would provide, obviously, to humans.
(18:54):
Strong, fast-acting pain relief should it become necessary for an underlying illness that may have evinced itself throughout the process.
Mobile veterinarians for the most part aren't open to the kind of comfort care that hospice ensures.
So very often I'll have clients say, "Oh, yes, I spoke to her. I've got a wonderful mobile vet. They're very supportive. But when I make the appointment, it is for euthanasia." Again, they've missed the middle bit.
Karen Wylie (19:21):
They've missed usually many months of that middle bit.
It is sad that hospice somehow seems to mean that there's no hope of any kind left.
Although if there is a terminal diagnosis in play, if there is no cure then the physical life of your pet is going to end at some point.
But hospice care can give you a new kind of hope in terms of every day truly living, as you were saying a little earlier.
(19:46):
Still having good days and monitoring so that you're staying on top of it to make sure your pet is enjoying every day still whatever level of comfort care is needed.
I just think there's just so much positive about hospice care that finding a way to really be able to help people take advantage of it wherever they are is something I hope we can help happen as we continue to move forward.
Gail Pope (20:11):
We just have to keep on talking, don't we?
Karen Wylie (20:13):
That doesn't seem to be a problem.
That's something you and I have not had a problem doing.
Gail Pope (20:22):
I think coming back to the phrase that I tend to use quite often, "Healing for the highest good" is or should be the focus in that last chapter.
Let's spread it out.
Dying doesn't have to be a few days.
It's a chapter of life and living, and that's why I really love the wholistic approach.
(20:42):
Talking about healing for the highest good rather than curing because let's face it, most of us perhaps have an illness that is chronic that isn't fixable.
We live with it but it's only when we get into the later years or the disease progresses that we start to look at fixing, and why can't we fix it?
Let's do surgery, let's do another surgery until we finally realize that we've the life is ebbing out of the patient, whether they're on two legs or four legs.
Karen Wylie (21:13):
Very true.
Gail Pope (21:13):
And so applying a wholistic approach takes away so much of the negativity by looking at healing for the highest good.
We're healing body, mind, and spirit.
So the patient feels better.
They may still be in that same place, but it's a whole energy shift.
A whole energy shift, and once you've got that energy shift, that's where animals and people often rebound to better life.
(21:37):
They see it all the time in human hospice care.
When a patient is declining and they switch to hospice, the treatment plan changes around a little bit.
The patient starts feeling better.
They've still got the illness but they're feeling better.
They've got life again.
They're living.
They're not dying, and that's it.
Karen Wylie (21:55):
Yes and that's healing for everyone.
Gail Pope (21:58):
Maybe hospice could have a badge that you put on when you're in hospice care that says, "I'm living." Or something like that.
Karen Wylie (22:10):
It is why we called The Living Quality of Life Monitoring Tool because it's all about living.
Is there some way you would like to close this particular conversation?
Gail Pope (22:21):
Not really anything new or different.
I think baby steps come to mind as a huge reminder for all of us that all the way through life we should be taking baby steps rather than labeling periods.
So I think that's an important mention.
Possibly that love is the greatest healer for all stages of life.
(22:41):
It's all about love, isn't it?
Karen Wylie (22:43):
It is.
That's why we all are so focused on what we can do for our pets because we love them so much.
Gail Pope (22:49):
There you go.
Karen Wylie (22:50):
All right then.
Thank you as always for being with us.
Keep in mind that hospice is a philosophy of living as we're talking about it.
It's not a sentence of dying and it's not about the end.
It truly is about living.
So we'll hope to see you back here next week.
Take care.
Thank you.
Bye-bye.
Gail Pope (23:09):
Goodbye.
Thank you for joining us on Peace of Mind for Pet Parents.
We hope today's episode has offered you support and insight as you care for your aging or ill pets.
Remember, it's not just about the end.
It's about living well at every stage of life.
To continue your journey with us, explore more resources at BrightHaven Caregiver Academy's website— BrightPathForPets.com, where you'll find guides, assessments, and a caring community of pet parents like you.
(23:45):
Until next time, may you and your pets find comfort, connection, and peace in every moment.
Take care.
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