🐶 Navigating The Loss Of Your Pet

It's one of the hardest love stories we live — loving an ageing pet.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
And Amanda jam Nation Double a Chattery drops today. This
is the award winning podcast you do with.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
Your forensics winnings.

Speaker 1 (00:07):
A Stretch hasn't won awards, No, I.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Was nominated as a podcast for year, which was very nice.

Speaker 1 (00:13):
Well, in my book, it gets an award, and that's
not like one of those lame awards that your parents
give you.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
That sounds a bit like it.

Speaker 1 (00:19):
This is the podcast you do with your forensic psychologist's
friend Anita McGregor. And you touched many people with the
story you were saying a few weeks ago about your
dog getting old.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Yeah, I spoke about like my dad's unwell, my husband,
or my dad's ninety one. He's not unwell, but he's
ninety one, ninety one. My husband is unwell. And I
look at the dog who's now thirteen, and I think
she's the glue that's holding it all together for me.
And I'm not going to cry because I bored my
eyes out when I spoke about it. And two million

(00:51):
people have responded to that, talking about their own dogs,
their own dogs dying, how they felt when they lost
their shadow, which is what I was sixteen. You know
a relationship you can have with a pet for sixteen years.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
You know what, I love seeing you with me, The
way she just looks at you and follows you around.
It's so sweet.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
Oh, she's the sweetest thing. And one of the people
that reached out in light of that was a woman
called doctor Lizzie Kennedy. She's a vet who specializes in
end of life care for the dogs and the humans
that are going through it too, and so Anita and
I have interviewed her. It was an incredible podcast that
drops today. I cried of course through.

Speaker 1 (01:29):
All that as well.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
But she's quite amazing because she's, you know, in the
I don't remember when I was growing up and I
didn't have a family pet, but people didn't. You didn't
show your grief when a pet died. But I think
a couple of things. Social media has united people in
sharing how they feel about their pets and how they
feel when their pets died, the idea of the rainbow bridge.

(01:50):
People now acknowledge the grief, that the toll of the grief,
and how you feel when you lose this long loved pet.
But she gave me a lot to think about in
terms of how do acknowledge the passing of your pet,
how to navigate what's to come and navigate it when
it happens, and how to lean into the beauty of
the relationship. Here's just one of the practical things she said.

Speaker 3 (02:13):
But in the event of you choosing cremation where you
want the ashes returned to you, you enter that period
that I liken to weet between the death and the
funeral of a human. So somebody dies and then you
have seven to ten days and then you have the
funeral and you're in that period of mornings. I encourage

(02:35):
people to create an altar space, have a candle and
a photo and flowers, and then when the ashes are
returned home, that's a profound moment and opportunity to really
honor the bereavement process through a ceremony, particularly for families
with young children.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
That makes sense. Was we had a terrible time my
younger son, Dom's t twenty first birthday party. So we've
set up the everything, his mates are coming around in
a few hours and then Dom comes upstairs and his
ashen face, and I said, what's the man of mate?
And he said, Fizzle the cat, the family cat that
had died on his floor right there. And then I
was but I'd just literally seen the cat, probably an

(03:18):
hour before, you know, and it was the grumpy cat,
you remember, Fizzle, just grumpy. And I said, but I
just saw her. And then we went down to his room.
Sure enough, she was dead on the floor. She just
dropped dead. And then people were coming around and we
just sort of Helen and Dom and myself just sat
there just shocked, you know, and there were tears. It
was such an emotional time for young Dom. But we

(03:42):
in my day, my dad used to make jokes about,
you know, getting a car battery and throwing the cat
in the river and stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (03:47):
That was there open to acknowledging now and companies have
bereavement care. Companies allowed you to take some time off
work if you need to. And during the you know,
during COVID, our animals got us through. I think we
acknowledge the relationship we have with our pets a lot
more now. But she was so thoughtful. She's been with

(04:07):
families through all of this, and what she had to
say was so interesting. So that's Double a Chattery wherever
you your podcasts on iHeartRadio or you can just listen
to it on Double Achattery dot com.

Speaker 1 (04:19):
Nice work