March 31, 2024 • 28 mins
Episode 2: When Your Pet Crosses The Rainbow Bridge
In this first of a two-part episode, Lisa Desatnik, CPDT-KA, FFCP, FDM, CPBC, talks with Tammy Wynn, founder and CEO of Cincinnati, Ohio-based Angel’s Paws. You will gain a deeper understanding of supporting your pet, yourself, and others as your journey toward and past the Rainbow Bridge.
Angel’s Paws is the first complete end of life service offering in home pet hospice, including in home euthanasia, private cremation, free pet loss support groups and one to one grief counseling. The organization has compassionately helped over 30,000 pet parents through this process.
Tammy is a licensed therapist with over 30 years of experience. During the six years of preparation to open Angel’s Paws, she took a job as a hospice social worker to fully understand hospice and its operation in order to bring it to the animal world AND THEN studied to become a registered vet tech (RVT), the nursing equivalent in veterinary medicine, to truly bring the full spectrum of pet hospice to a reality.
Among the topics that will be covered:
The stages of grief
The Rainbow Scale and how it can help you to know when it is time to let go
The importance of self-care
Supporting a friend who is going through this process with their pet
Why celebration is helpful to your grieving process
In the second episode of this series, Lisa will talk with Tammy about how children grieve pet loss, and how to help them.
Learn more about Angel’s Paws here: https://www.angelspaws.com/
In this first of a two-part episode, Lisa Desatnik, CPDT-KA, FFCP, FDM, CPBC, talks with Tammy Wynn, founder and CEO of Cincinnati, Ohio-based Angel’s Paws. You will gain a deeper understanding of supporting your pet, yourself, and others as your journey toward and past the Rainbow Bridge.
Angel’s Paws is the first complete end of life service offering in home pet hospice, including in home euthanasia, private cremation, free pet loss support groups and one to one grief counseling. The organization has compassionately helped over 30,000 pet parents through this process.
Tammy is a licensed therapist with over 30 years of experience. During the six years of preparation to open Angel’s Paws, she took a job as a hospice social worker to fully understand hospice and its operation in order to bring it to the animal world AND THEN studied to become a registered vet tech (RVT), the nursing equivalent in veterinary medicine, to truly bring the full spectrum of pet hospice to a reality.
Among the topics that will be covered:
The stages of grief
The Rainbow Scale and how it can help you to know when it is time to let go
The importance of self-care
Supporting a friend who is going through this process with their pet
Why celebration is helpful to your grieving process
In the second episode of this series, Lisa will talk with Tammy about how children grieve pet loss, and how to help them.
Learn more about Angel’s Paws here: https://www.angelspaws.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hi. This is Lives Touched by Pets, a show for
those who love and are loved by pets. I'm your host,
Lisa D. Sadnik, a certified trainer with so much potential
in Cincinnati, Ohio. I am so glad that you're here. Welcome.
I don't know about you, but when I've shared a
(00:26):
life with a pet, the love that we shared has
been so profound and so beautiful that saying goodbye is
so difficult. And that's why today I'm joined by my friend,
Tammy Wynn, a beautiful soul who is founder and CEO
of an organization called Angels Pause, the first complete end
(00:47):
of life pet hospice. Tammy is a licensed therapist with
over thirty years experience and a VET tech. Her team
has compassionately helped over thirty thousand pet parents, and so
today I think her insight is going to help you
when it comes time to send your pet to the
(01:07):
Rainbow Bridge. I've known Tammy for years. She's such an
inspirational person and I am thrilled to be able to
talk with her and have her share her insights with
you today.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Welcome Tammy, Thank you, Lisa, and I want to say
right back at you. We have known each other for
years and you are an inspiration. The education that you
bring out to the world is so important, so thank
you for doing all you do as well.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Let's start with telling us about a pet that has
really inspired you and that means a lot to you,
either current or in your past.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
So I had two cats, Cagney and Lacy. They were
eighteen and Cagney began to fail. And I had never
been with anyone in my family who had gotten sick
and died. My grandparents lived out of state and so
they died and I went to their funeral, but Cagney
(02:11):
my child. I didn't have human children, so Cagney and
Lacey were my children. Was my first time to go
through end of life and they When Cagney began to fail,
I asked my veterinarian what was going on, and she said, well,
she's old, she's eighteen. It's time. And I'm like time
(02:32):
for what she's like to put her down? And I'm
like what? And there was just no compassion, no education
to me about what was going on with her. And
I just knew after I lost her, there had to
be a kinder and Geller way. So she was the
inspiration behind Angel's Pause, because sometimes what brings you to
(02:53):
your knees is what really demonstrates what you're here on
earth to do.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
I know about Angel's Pause when I lost Tester, who
was my soulmate bird I had like nine years ago.
Maybe she died in my arms, and that was so hard.
It was so devastating to have had your service. Then,
I think you're such a gift to so many people
(03:22):
that are in this journey, and so thank you. Let's
talk about some of your insight to help other people
and help our listeners. So I've heard you talk about
the stages of grief. Can you talk about that for
a minute and what that entails.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
So Elizabeth Koobler Ross is who I followed on this,
and she has stages of grief, and I'm going to
walk through them because it doesn't matter if you're grieving
and losing a inanimate object or a loved one, you
go through the same stages of grief, and I'm going
to prove it. So if I have to get to
a meeting and I reach for my car keys to
(04:04):
go to the meeting and they're not there, the first
thing I do is.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Go into denial.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
That's the first stage of grief. So this is an
inanimate object, and I'm already going into the first stage
of grief, so I can't believe they're not here. They've
got to be here. I'm looking for them. The next
stage is anger. Now wait a minute, I've got to
get to this meeting.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Where are those keys?
Speaker 2 (04:27):
So go through anger, and then the keys aren't coming back.
Then I bargain. I'm like, oh God, if you'll just
give me the keys this one more time, I'll hang
them on the hook every single time from now on
when I come back in, Just give them to me
this one more time. And keys don't come back. So
we go into the next stage of reorganization, like, Okay,
(04:47):
I have a spare set of keys, where are they?
And I go to the dresser drawer get out my keys,
and I accept that those keys are not going to
get me to the meeting, and I get on with it,
which is the last and fifth stage of grief, and
I drive to my meeting. But if you're like me,
(05:07):
you're at that meeting and you're not thinking about what's
going on at the meeting at that point, you're thinking
about where are those keys? So what I found as
a therapist was that people would grieve a pet and
they would do everything they could to put the brakes
on of ever getting to acceptance because they didn't want
their pet to go in the rearview mirror where they
(05:28):
would forget about their pet. Their pet had meant so
much to them, had given them unconditional love. They didn't
want that, so they kind of keep themselves in the
stages of grief without really fulfilling what that pet was
supposed to do for them, which was Elizabeth Koubler Ross
found on her own deathbed, was the sixth stage of grief,
(05:51):
and that is meaning what was this relationship all about?
What was this life all about? So when you grieve
a pet, you go through all those five stages of grief.
If you go through it for an inanimate object like
your car, keys, your phone, your glasses, then you're definitely
going to go through those stages for a loved one.
(06:11):
But meaning if you'll do the work on the sixth stage,
what was this relationship about? What was it meant to
teach me? What was I meant to learn from this,
then you really mind everything that you should have gotten
out of that relationship with your pet and their passing.
Their passing doesn't have to be an ending.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Oh my goodness. I love that metaphor talking about the
keys because that's so true and we definitely do go
through this. And you know, I've heard that it very well.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
I've seen it with my own heart. Is that people
can grieve more for a pet than they can for
somebody else, you know, another human being.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
Well, because human beings, unfortunately, are trying to be like
pets and they're not gonna achieve it. And what I
mean by that is pets just naturally give unconditional love
and humans strive to do it, but it's a lot
of hard work for humans. It doesn't come as naturally
(07:18):
for humans to give that unconditional love. So when you
receive it from a pet and that's all of a
sudden gone, it's not that easy to just replace with
another family member.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
It's huge. Oh my gosh. So self care is so
important when we go through this. Can you talk about
that and that and the importance of self care? Oh?
Can I talk about it?
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Jo? I even have a prop for it.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
Okay, are you ready for this? Yeah, let's see.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
So I finally invented what I call the self care fraud.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Oh my gosh. And you know, for those listening you
can't see that, but it Oh did you draw that?
I did it? Yeah? Oh, let me describe that for
a listener.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
So there's these round eyes and these huge eyelashes and.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
A round those and it says self care fraud. Okay,
So now you have to describe what does it mean
to have self care fraud? Okay?
Speaker 2 (08:22):
So that's on a paper bag that I put on
my own head because I have been a self care fraud.
I have been doing Angels Pause now for it got
put in my heart twenty years ago this year and
we've actually been open.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
This is our fourteenth year.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
And so I have been talking about self care to
my pet parents, who are amazing caregivers to their pets.
I've been talking about it to my staff, who are
amazing caregivers to our clients. But I have not personally
been doing it, and as a result, I became self
(09:00):
care fraud because I was very sick in the Angel's
Pause journey. Three years into starting Angels Pause, I was
diagnosed with breast cancer, a stage three metastatic breast cancer,
so a very aggressive form. I had the full gamut
of all of the treatments. Breast cancer did not run
in my family. So this stress and then not taking
(09:24):
care of myself is really the only culprit that we
can come up with that did it. And so then
we fast forward more years later to just this last Nay,
almost a year ago, I was put in the hospital
with five strokes. I had five strokes, and miraculously I
(09:46):
have no stroke symptoms. But it was determined I had
a blood clotting disorder and it was because of my diet.
I just was eating fast food and I was taking
care of everybody, but that meant I had to feed
myself in a very quick way, and I was feeding
myself junk, and as a result, I made myself very sick.
(10:09):
I corrected my diet. I drank green smoothies every single day,
and I am fully cured. And so I learned that
I can talk a good game to everybody. But I
was a self care fraud, and now I'm a reformed
self care fraud because I am taking care of me
so that I can continue my mission and my ministry
(10:32):
to take care of pets and people in their most
difficult part of their relationship with their pet.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
That is so important, and I've got to admit sometimes
I'm a fraud too. I think it's easy to be
that way. And when you're in a service industry, you
know I am too, and I work on some tough
behavior cases. Doing self care is so important for me.
Pickle well, it's my happy place. I love pickaball. I
(11:03):
have to stay healthy so I can keep any plickable.
But yeah, that is so important. And being with friends
and laughing and enjoying life. Absolutely. I love that you
brought that up because I bet a lot of people
can relate to that.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Y'all, take care of you. You can't take care of
that beloved pet or a beloved human. You just can't.
The saying that you have to put the oxygen mask
on yourself first before you can care for others.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
I mean, I've said that.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
I can't tell you how many times I've said that,
but it really is true, and I finally have taken
it to heart and it's made a huge difference.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Yay, Okay, So we need to talk about the rainbow scale.
People have a really difficult time emotionally. I think with
this decision, it's no surprise that this would be a
really difficult decision, and you talk about the rainbow scale
(12:05):
of recognizing when it's time, Can you talk to people
about that?
Speaker 2 (12:09):
I realized that one of the big statements that most
people were hearing from their vet was you're gonna know,
You're gonna know when it's time, and usually attached to
that statement was they're going to stop eating.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
And that was just one quality.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Of life indicator, and now we're overlooking so many other
quality of life indicators that the pet was kind of
raising their hands and I'm tired, I have a problem here,
but they're still eating. And as long as they were
still eating, then they just sort of overlooked that. I
created a rainbow scale because people ask me, how do
(12:49):
I know when it's time to send my pet to
the rainbow bridge, and so I use the acronym of rainbow.
The first one is we're looking for magnificant changes in
the routine. The r is routine, so they do things
every single day. Pets are very much in a routine,
(13:11):
and suddenly they start getting off off of their routine.
For example, I had a client whose pet absolutely hated water.
She hated water that through her whole life, she never
would she'd go by the bathroom door she would never
venture in because there was a lot of water in there.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
She would never go in.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
One day, she came home from work and her pet
was in the shower and she's like, hmm, this is
very different. So that's an example of something that's just
completely outside of the pet's routine. They will start doing
things to give you indicators like that. A is attitude,
their happiness, quotihit. So you know, it used to be
(13:53):
when you'd jingle the car keys to go somewhere, your
pet's right there at your ankles, like, okay, where we going,
Where are we going? What are we going to do?
They're no longer doing that with things when you open
the refrigerator, they're nowhere in sight. So there's things that
used to make them happy that they're just not engaging
with anymore. The eye is incontinence, and the thing is
(14:18):
about incontinence. Hats know that they're not supposed to go
outside of their litter box, and they know they're not
supposed to go in the house, and they actually feel
shame about it when it happens, and yet they can't
help themselves. So incontinence is something that we as pet
parents tend to accommodate, but the pet is still suffering
(14:38):
because they know they shouldn't do it. They actually have
kind of a sad look on their face. And I
don't know about you, Lisa, but there's emotional suffering and
physical suffering, and I think a lot of times emotional
suffering actually is worse, hurts worse than some physical suffering
you can get into. So we don't want to over
(15:00):
look the things that we're willing to overlook, but the
pet doesn't want to. The end is nutrition, and that
is willingness to eat and drink. The bee is breathing
labored breathing. A lot of times I hear about families
their pets starts labored breathing and they think they're hot,
and so they bring a fan to them. But actually
(15:23):
a lot of times labored breathing is a sign of pain.
So there are a lot of pets who are going
to mask their pain. But one of our tips that
we can see is that they get into some labored breathing,
so watch for that. The O is obvious pain, and
the obvious pain is when a pet is hasting, circling,
(15:45):
very restless, yelping, vocalizing. To me, vocalizing as a deal breaker.
It doesn't mean the pain just arrived. It means that
they can no longer hide the fact that they have pain.
So that's the obvious pain, and then the w is
walking in mobility issues. You know, I read a lot
(16:05):
about how do humans define quality of life? Humans define
quality of life many times as being able to be independent.
As soon as they lose their independence, it's rough. They
don't feel like they have quality of life. So when
a pet can no longer get up and go just
get a drink of water across the room when they
want it, or they're debating like I'm really thirsty, but
(16:29):
getting up and walking over there is more scary. I'm
just gonna sit here.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
And be thirsty. That's a rough life.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
It's not quality. So that is the rainbow scale.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
It helps us look just past.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
While they're not eating, they can be eating right up
to the end. In fact, we at angels Paus prefer
it when they're still eating because we want to bring
them some very special treats because I think it's a
bridge too far. When they're no longer eating, it means
that the one joy that they I really really loved
is gone and now they're in truth suffering.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
I love that analogy with the rainbow, especially as people
talk about their dog going over the rainbow bridge. So
what I heard you say is to look for these
symptoms in your dog that may help you and knowing
when the time may be right. The R stands for routine,
(17:27):
the A stands for attitude, the I stands for incontinence,
the N stands for nutrition, the B stands for breathing,
the O is for obvious pain, and the W is
for walking and nobility. Yeah, and that definitely goes a
(17:49):
lot further than just saying, well, my dog's not eating right.
So that's very helpful, I think, because especially it's such
an emotional time to have those concrete outline of what
to look for, I think could really be helpful and
(18:09):
help people through the process of understanding that and what
to look for. So, if you hear about a friend
who's going through this, what are some ways that you
can support that friend.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
So whenever you hear that somebody's suffering with this, first
of all, none of us want to think about it
for our own pets, so we immediately start avoiding that
person sometimes and just because we don't want to face
the facts for ourselves, and so that is exactly the
(18:46):
wrong thing to do. We want to engage with that person,
and the other reason why we avoid them a lot
of times is because we're afraid I don't know what
to say, I'm going to say the wrong thing. So
I'm better off just to like tiptoe around away from
this person and not deal with them. So that's exactly
the wrong thing. I learned this lesson the best from
(19:10):
a client, and his name was Simon. Simon was a
black lab So let me tell you about my experience
with Simon and how I learned this very important message
about what you do when somebody is going through anticipatory
loss or anticipatory grief for a loss that's coming. And
so I was called out to a family's home. It
(19:34):
was two little girls and a mom and dad, and
mom and dad were really concerned about the girls because
they did not know life without Simon. He was there
before them, and so they didn't know how they were
going to navigate these waters.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
So I went out to.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
Their home, knocked on the door, and Simon was the
first one who greeted me at the door, and he
had this big world tumor and he was drooling all
the way down to the ground.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
I mean, he was just but he didn't care.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
He was there to greet me with that unconditional love.
And he had his head right in my bag because
he could smell the treats that I had definitely brought
for him. And so we all came into the living room.
Simon got on his bed, I gave him some treats.
The family we all sat down on the living room
floor and we just started to talk and we Tara
(20:21):
started to talk about how important Simon was in everybody's life,
and there was not a dry eye in the house.
We were all crying talking about the how meaningful this
dog's presence was in their life. Well, we went through
the time and we started talking and I let them
know that it was no accident that Simon came into
(20:43):
their life at that particular time when the girls were,
you know, being born and coming up, because he was
meant to be their teacher and to be the first
one who actually taught them about the beauty of the
circle of life and what end of life can be like.
And I said, He's taught so many lessons to all
of you, and I'm going to challenge you to make
(21:06):
lists of the lessons that Simon taught you, and I,
in fact, I put him on teams. Mom and Dad
were on a team, and the girls were on a team,
and I said, I want you to outdo each other
with the list of lessons that Simon taught you. And
they started talking, trashed each other. The girls were this
bumping because they were going to win this competition, and
(21:29):
so the whole mood changed and I left. So I
was in the shower the next morning and I thought, well,
I met Simon for a little bit. What lesson did
he teach me in my very brief moment with him?
And what I realized, Lisa, was that he taught me
what Angels Pause is all about and what my job
(21:53):
in Angel's Pause is because we're not going to change
the outcome. Nothing Angels Pause is going to do. We
can certainly make things easier for everybody with information with
pain management, but we're not going to change the outcome.
And Simon sat over on his bed while we were
all crying, and he just sat there and laid on
(22:15):
his bed. He did not come over and lick everybody's
tears and try to fix everything. He also did not
run out of the room while everybody was crying. He
just stayed in the room and was present. And he
just took turns walking around the room making I can't
contact with all of us, and he'd finish with that
(22:36):
person and he'd start over again, and he was just present.
And I realized that's what he taught me, Angels. Pause
isn't going to fix anything. But what we will do
is we will come. We will run to families who
are having the worst moment with their pet, and we
(22:57):
will be with them. We will just us be with them.
And all of these people's families and friends could just
learn a lesson from Simon. And it's just that just
be there. You don't have to say the right things,
you don't have to do anything but be there, be present,
(23:18):
validate with your presence and listen.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
Wow, oh my goodness, I just have chills down my spine.
I love that story.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
You know, I don't like to see for Simon that
he is able through your show, Lisa, to be able
to reach so many people with that message.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
You know, there are so many life lessons all around
us that can be taught from so many of us,
from our humans and our non humans. Simon was a
pretty wise guy and you learn so much from him. Wow.
So yeah, the message just be there and just validate,
And so I loved the other thing that you talked
(24:03):
about is even in the sorrow, even in the greed
they've been in the sadness, you turn that around to
talk about celebration. And that's truly the gift that our
pets give us, and what we give to our pets,
to celebrate and not to forget in the midst of
(24:23):
the sick and us in the midst of everything bad
about that situation, to remember those gifts and celebrate them.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
I think a lot of times people want to focus
on the end and what the last few days were
even like, and they can't kind of shake that out
of their memory. And they just spent you know, twelve
to fourteen to sixteen years, maybe twenty, you know, they've
spent a lot of years with these pets. So pulling
out pictures and some people say, oh, I could not
(24:54):
possibly do that, I'm.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
Going to cry.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
Well, tears happen to be the most healthy and natural
thing that you can possibly do when you grieve. Your
body knows how to take care of itself. Your body
is manufacturing toxins at an exponential rate, and so releasing
the toxins through tears is very helpful because you're getting
(25:17):
the pollutants out of your body, and you will think better,
you will feel better after you cry. Nobody likes to cry,
nobody likes to be in the moment of crying. That
the afterward effect is very therapeutic. And so we try
to suck in those tears and keep the pollutants inside,
and it's exactly the wrong thing to do. So do
(25:37):
let yourself cry and induce tears by going your head
and pulling out those pictures, because you're going to have
a side effect that you don't expect. When you start
going back and you start reminiscing, you're going to remember
things that you had totally forgotten about. You forget about
the time that they completely knocked over the Christmas tree,
for example, and you're going to forget about the fact that,
(25:59):
oh my god, this was a world class jumper off
the dock every summer. You know, this pet could really
go the distance. I forgot about that.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
So you start.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
Really remembering what that life was like, and it's easier
to access the lessons that they taught you along the
way bravery for them. You know, maybe it was a
scary thing for them to jump off that dock the
first time and then you couldn't get them to stop
doing it. There's lessons in there for us with that.
You can also do things to commemorate your pet afterwards.
(26:34):
There's a lot of different things. I encourage you to
google it because you can see how do I memorialize
my pet? Just go online. There's so many different ways
and things to do. But you definitely want to do
something that marks the moment. You don't want to do
anything that is going to make you feel like you
have to forget this pet, because this pet came into
(26:56):
your life for a reason and we want to capitalize
on that.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
No. Absolutely, Oh, Tammy, I bet this is going to
be so helpful for so many people. Thank you for
sharing this time and your insight with us and the
Simons story. It's wonderful. So for those out there, we're
going to do a part two we didn't get to
(27:22):
in this episode.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
Tammy has a book out on helping kids to grieve
through this process with.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
You, so we're going to talk about that in our
next episode, and I hope you'll come back for it.
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider
subscribing to my podcast, Come back often, and tell your friends.
If I can be of any help to you and
your pet, Please reach out to me via my website www.
(27:54):
Dot so much potential dot com and for a lot
more information, fun and videos. Please follow me so Much
Potential on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. See you soon.
Hi. This is Lives Touched by Pets, a show for
those who love and are loved by pets. I'm your host,
Lisa D. Sadnik, a certified trainer with so much potential
in Cincinnati, Ohio. I am so glad that you're here. Welcome.
I don't know about you, but when I've shared a
(00:26):
life with a pet, the love that we shared has
been so profound and so beautiful that saying goodbye is
so difficult. And that's why today I'm joined by my friend,
Tammy Wynn, a beautiful soul who is founder and CEO
of an organization called Angels Pause, the first complete end
(00:47):
of life pet hospice. Tammy is a licensed therapist with
over thirty years experience and a VET tech. Her team
has compassionately helped over thirty thousand pet parents, and so
today I think her insight is going to help you
when it comes time to send your pet to the
(01:07):
Rainbow Bridge. I've known Tammy for years. She's such an
inspirational person and I am thrilled to be able to
talk with her and have her share her insights with
you today.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Welcome Tammy, Thank you, Lisa, and I want to say
right back at you. We have known each other for
years and you are an inspiration. The education that you
bring out to the world is so important, so thank
you for doing all you do as well.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Let's start with telling us about a pet that has
really inspired you and that means a lot to you,
either current or in your past.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
So I had two cats, Cagney and Lacy. They were
eighteen and Cagney began to fail. And I had never
been with anyone in my family who had gotten sick
and died. My grandparents lived out of state and so
they died and I went to their funeral, but Cagney
(02:11):
my child. I didn't have human children, so Cagney and
Lacey were my children. Was my first time to go
through end of life and they When Cagney began to fail,
I asked my veterinarian what was going on, and she said, well,
she's old, she's eighteen. It's time. And I'm like time
(02:32):
for what she's like to put her down? And I'm
like what? And there was just no compassion, no education
to me about what was going on with her. And
I just knew after I lost her, there had to
be a kinder and Geller way. So she was the
inspiration behind Angel's Pause, because sometimes what brings you to
(02:53):
your knees is what really demonstrates what you're here on
earth to do.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
I know about Angel's Pause when I lost Tester, who
was my soulmate bird I had like nine years ago.
Maybe she died in my arms, and that was so hard.
It was so devastating to have had your service. Then,
I think you're such a gift to so many people
(03:22):
that are in this journey, and so thank you. Let's
talk about some of your insight to help other people
and help our listeners. So I've heard you talk about
the stages of grief. Can you talk about that for
a minute and what that entails.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
So Elizabeth Koobler Ross is who I followed on this,
and she has stages of grief, and I'm going to
walk through them because it doesn't matter if you're grieving
and losing a inanimate object or a loved one, you
go through the same stages of grief, and I'm going
to prove it. So if I have to get to
a meeting and I reach for my car keys to
(04:04):
go to the meeting and they're not there, the first
thing I do is.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Go into denial.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
That's the first stage of grief. So this is an
inanimate object, and I'm already going into the first stage
of grief, so I can't believe they're not here. They've
got to be here. I'm looking for them. The next
stage is anger. Now wait a minute, I've got to
get to this meeting.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Where are those keys?
Speaker 2 (04:27):
So go through anger, and then the keys aren't coming back.
Then I bargain. I'm like, oh God, if you'll just
give me the keys this one more time, I'll hang
them on the hook every single time from now on
when I come back in, Just give them to me
this one more time. And keys don't come back. So
we go into the next stage of reorganization, like, Okay,
(04:47):
I have a spare set of keys, where are they?
And I go to the dresser drawer get out my keys,
and I accept that those keys are not going to
get me to the meeting, and I get on with it,
which is the last and fifth stage of grief, and
I drive to my meeting. But if you're like me,
(05:07):
you're at that meeting and you're not thinking about what's
going on at the meeting at that point, you're thinking
about where are those keys? So what I found as
a therapist was that people would grieve a pet and
they would do everything they could to put the brakes
on of ever getting to acceptance because they didn't want
their pet to go in the rearview mirror where they
(05:28):
would forget about their pet. Their pet had meant so
much to them, had given them unconditional love. They didn't
want that, so they kind of keep themselves in the
stages of grief without really fulfilling what that pet was
supposed to do for them, which was Elizabeth Koubler Ross
found on her own deathbed, was the sixth stage of grief,
(05:51):
and that is meaning what was this relationship all about?
What was this life all about? So when you grieve
a pet, you go through all those five stages of grief.
If you go through it for an inanimate object like
your car, keys, your phone, your glasses, then you're definitely
going to go through those stages for a loved one.
(06:11):
But meaning if you'll do the work on the sixth stage,
what was this relationship about? What was it meant to
teach me? What was I meant to learn from this,
then you really mind everything that you should have gotten
out of that relationship with your pet and their passing.
Their passing doesn't have to be an ending.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Oh my goodness. I love that metaphor talking about the
keys because that's so true and we definitely do go
through this. And you know, I've heard that it very well.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
I've seen it with my own heart. Is that people
can grieve more for a pet than they can for
somebody else, you know, another human being.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
Well, because human beings, unfortunately, are trying to be like
pets and they're not gonna achieve it. And what I
mean by that is pets just naturally give unconditional love
and humans strive to do it, but it's a lot
of hard work for humans. It doesn't come as naturally
(07:18):
for humans to give that unconditional love. So when you
receive it from a pet and that's all of a
sudden gone, it's not that easy to just replace with
another family member.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
It's huge. Oh my gosh. So self care is so
important when we go through this. Can you talk about
that and that and the importance of self care? Oh?
Can I talk about it?
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Jo? I even have a prop for it.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
Okay, are you ready for this? Yeah, let's see.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
So I finally invented what I call the self care fraud.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Oh my gosh. And you know, for those listening you
can't see that, but it Oh did you draw that?
I did it? Yeah? Oh, let me describe that for
a listener.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
So there's these round eyes and these huge eyelashes and.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
A round those and it says self care fraud. Okay,
So now you have to describe what does it mean
to have self care fraud? Okay?
Speaker 2 (08:22):
So that's on a paper bag that I put on
my own head because I have been a self care fraud.
I have been doing Angels Pause now for it got
put in my heart twenty years ago this year and
we've actually been open.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
This is our fourteenth year.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
And so I have been talking about self care to
my pet parents, who are amazing caregivers to their pets.
I've been talking about it to my staff, who are
amazing caregivers to our clients. But I have not personally
been doing it, and as a result, I became self
(09:00):
care fraud because I was very sick in the Angel's
Pause journey. Three years into starting Angels Pause, I was
diagnosed with breast cancer, a stage three metastatic breast cancer,
so a very aggressive form. I had the full gamut
of all of the treatments. Breast cancer did not run
in my family. So this stress and then not taking
(09:24):
care of myself is really the only culprit that we
can come up with that did it. And so then
we fast forward more years later to just this last Nay,
almost a year ago, I was put in the hospital
with five strokes. I had five strokes, and miraculously I
(09:46):
have no stroke symptoms. But it was determined I had
a blood clotting disorder and it was because of my diet.
I just was eating fast food and I was taking
care of everybody, but that meant I had to feed
myself in a very quick way, and I was feeding
myself junk, and as a result, I made myself very sick.
(10:09):
I corrected my diet. I drank green smoothies every single day,
and I am fully cured. And so I learned that
I can talk a good game to everybody. But I
was a self care fraud, and now I'm a reformed
self care fraud because I am taking care of me
so that I can continue my mission and my ministry
(10:32):
to take care of pets and people in their most
difficult part of their relationship with their pet.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
That is so important, and I've got to admit sometimes
I'm a fraud too. I think it's easy to be
that way. And when you're in a service industry, you
know I am too, and I work on some tough
behavior cases. Doing self care is so important for me.
Pickle well, it's my happy place. I love pickaball. I
(11:03):
have to stay healthy so I can keep any plickable.
But yeah, that is so important. And being with friends
and laughing and enjoying life. Absolutely. I love that you
brought that up because I bet a lot of people
can relate to that.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Y'all, take care of you. You can't take care of
that beloved pet or a beloved human. You just can't.
The saying that you have to put the oxygen mask
on yourself first before you can care for others.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
I mean, I've said that.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
I can't tell you how many times I've said that,
but it really is true, and I finally have taken
it to heart and it's made a huge difference.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Yay, Okay, So we need to talk about the rainbow scale.
People have a really difficult time emotionally. I think with
this decision, it's no surprise that this would be a
really difficult decision, and you talk about the rainbow scale
(12:05):
of recognizing when it's time, Can you talk to people
about that?
Speaker 2 (12:09):
I realized that one of the big statements that most
people were hearing from their vet was you're gonna know,
You're gonna know when it's time, and usually attached to
that statement was they're going to stop eating.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
And that was just one quality.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Of life indicator, and now we're overlooking so many other
quality of life indicators that the pet was kind of
raising their hands and I'm tired, I have a problem here,
but they're still eating. And as long as they were
still eating, then they just sort of overlooked that. I
created a rainbow scale because people ask me, how do
(12:49):
I know when it's time to send my pet to
the rainbow bridge, and so I use the acronym of rainbow.
The first one is we're looking for magnificant changes in
the routine. The r is routine, so they do things
every single day. Pets are very much in a routine,
(13:11):
and suddenly they start getting off off of their routine.
For example, I had a client whose pet absolutely hated water.
She hated water that through her whole life, she never
would she'd go by the bathroom door she would never
venture in because there was a lot of water in there.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
She would never go in.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
One day, she came home from work and her pet
was in the shower and she's like, hmm, this is
very different. So that's an example of something that's just
completely outside of the pet's routine. They will start doing
things to give you indicators like that. A is attitude,
their happiness, quotihit. So you know, it used to be
(13:53):
when you'd jingle the car keys to go somewhere, your
pet's right there at your ankles, like, okay, where we going,
Where are we going? What are we going to do?
They're no longer doing that with things when you open
the refrigerator, they're nowhere in sight. So there's things that
used to make them happy that they're just not engaging
with anymore. The eye is incontinence, and the thing is
(14:18):
about incontinence. Hats know that they're not supposed to go
outside of their litter box, and they know they're not
supposed to go in the house, and they actually feel
shame about it when it happens, and yet they can't
help themselves. So incontinence is something that we as pet
parents tend to accommodate, but the pet is still suffering
(14:38):
because they know they shouldn't do it. They actually have
kind of a sad look on their face. And I
don't know about you, Lisa, but there's emotional suffering and
physical suffering, and I think a lot of times emotional
suffering actually is worse, hurts worse than some physical suffering
you can get into. So we don't want to over
(15:00):
look the things that we're willing to overlook, but the
pet doesn't want to. The end is nutrition, and that
is willingness to eat and drink. The bee is breathing
labored breathing. A lot of times I hear about families
their pets starts labored breathing and they think they're hot,
and so they bring a fan to them. But actually
(15:23):
a lot of times labored breathing is a sign of pain.
So there are a lot of pets who are going
to mask their pain. But one of our tips that
we can see is that they get into some labored breathing,
so watch for that. The O is obvious pain, and
the obvious pain is when a pet is hasting, circling,
(15:45):
very restless, yelping, vocalizing. To me, vocalizing as a deal breaker.
It doesn't mean the pain just arrived. It means that
they can no longer hide the fact that they have pain.
So that's the obvious pain, and then the w is
walking in mobility issues. You know, I read a lot
(16:05):
about how do humans define quality of life? Humans define
quality of life many times as being able to be independent.
As soon as they lose their independence, it's rough. They
don't feel like they have quality of life. So when
a pet can no longer get up and go just
get a drink of water across the room when they
want it, or they're debating like I'm really thirsty, but
(16:29):
getting up and walking over there is more scary. I'm
just gonna sit here.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
And be thirsty. That's a rough life.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
It's not quality. So that is the rainbow scale.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
It helps us look just past.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
While they're not eating, they can be eating right up
to the end. In fact, we at angels Paus prefer
it when they're still eating because we want to bring
them some very special treats because I think it's a
bridge too far. When they're no longer eating, it means
that the one joy that they I really really loved
is gone and now they're in truth suffering.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
I love that analogy with the rainbow, especially as people
talk about their dog going over the rainbow bridge. So
what I heard you say is to look for these
symptoms in your dog that may help you and knowing
when the time may be right. The R stands for routine,
(17:27):
the A stands for attitude, the I stands for incontinence,
the N stands for nutrition, the B stands for breathing,
the O is for obvious pain, and the W is
for walking and nobility. Yeah, and that definitely goes a
(17:49):
lot further than just saying, well, my dog's not eating right.
So that's very helpful, I think, because especially it's such
an emotional time to have those concrete outline of what
to look for, I think could really be helpful and
(18:09):
help people through the process of understanding that and what
to look for. So, if you hear about a friend
who's going through this, what are some ways that you
can support that friend.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
So whenever you hear that somebody's suffering with this, first
of all, none of us want to think about it
for our own pets, so we immediately start avoiding that
person sometimes and just because we don't want to face
the facts for ourselves, and so that is exactly the
(18:46):
wrong thing to do. We want to engage with that person,
and the other reason why we avoid them a lot
of times is because we're afraid I don't know what
to say, I'm going to say the wrong thing. So
I'm better off just to like tiptoe around away from
this person and not deal with them. So that's exactly
the wrong thing. I learned this lesson the best from
(19:10):
a client, and his name was Simon. Simon was a
black lab So let me tell you about my experience
with Simon and how I learned this very important message
about what you do when somebody is going through anticipatory
loss or anticipatory grief for a loss that's coming. And
so I was called out to a family's home. It
(19:34):
was two little girls and a mom and dad, and
mom and dad were really concerned about the girls because
they did not know life without Simon. He was there
before them, and so they didn't know how they were
going to navigate these waters.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
So I went out to.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
Their home, knocked on the door, and Simon was the
first one who greeted me at the door, and he
had this big world tumor and he was drooling all
the way down to the ground.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
I mean, he was just but he didn't care.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
He was there to greet me with that unconditional love.
And he had his head right in my bag because
he could smell the treats that I had definitely brought
for him. And so we all came into the living room.
Simon got on his bed, I gave him some treats.
The family we all sat down on the living room
floor and we just started to talk and we Tara
(20:21):
started to talk about how important Simon was in everybody's life,
and there was not a dry eye in the house.
We were all crying talking about the how meaningful this
dog's presence was in their life. Well, we went through
the time and we started talking and I let them
know that it was no accident that Simon came into
(20:43):
their life at that particular time when the girls were,
you know, being born and coming up, because he was
meant to be their teacher and to be the first
one who actually taught them about the beauty of the
circle of life and what end of life can be like.
And I said, He's taught so many lessons to all
of you, and I'm going to challenge you to make
(21:06):
lists of the lessons that Simon taught you, and I,
in fact, I put him on teams. Mom and Dad
were on a team, and the girls were on a team,
and I said, I want you to outdo each other
with the list of lessons that Simon taught you. And
they started talking, trashed each other. The girls were this
bumping because they were going to win this competition, and
(21:29):
so the whole mood changed and I left. So I
was in the shower the next morning and I thought, well,
I met Simon for a little bit. What lesson did
he teach me in my very brief moment with him?
And what I realized, Lisa, was that he taught me
what Angels Pause is all about and what my job
(21:53):
in Angel's Pause is because we're not going to change
the outcome. Nothing Angels Pause is going to do. We
can certainly make things easier for everybody with information with
pain management, but we're not going to change the outcome.
And Simon sat over on his bed while we were
all crying, and he just sat there and laid on
(22:15):
his bed. He did not come over and lick everybody's
tears and try to fix everything. He also did not
run out of the room while everybody was crying. He
just stayed in the room and was present. And he
just took turns walking around the room making I can't
contact with all of us, and he'd finish with that
(22:36):
person and he'd start over again, and he was just present.
And I realized that's what he taught me, Angels. Pause
isn't going to fix anything. But what we will do
is we will come. We will run to families who
are having the worst moment with their pet, and we
(22:57):
will be with them. We will just us be with them.
And all of these people's families and friends could just
learn a lesson from Simon. And it's just that just
be there. You don't have to say the right things,
you don't have to do anything but be there, be present,
(23:18):
validate with your presence and listen.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
Wow, oh my goodness, I just have chills down my spine.
I love that story.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
You know, I don't like to see for Simon that
he is able through your show, Lisa, to be able
to reach so many people with that message.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
You know, there are so many life lessons all around
us that can be taught from so many of us,
from our humans and our non humans. Simon was a
pretty wise guy and you learn so much from him. Wow.
So yeah, the message just be there and just validate,
And so I loved the other thing that you talked
(24:03):
about is even in the sorrow, even in the greed
they've been in the sadness, you turn that around to
talk about celebration. And that's truly the gift that our
pets give us, and what we give to our pets,
to celebrate and not to forget in the midst of
(24:23):
the sick and us in the midst of everything bad
about that situation, to remember those gifts and celebrate them.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
I think a lot of times people want to focus
on the end and what the last few days were
even like, and they can't kind of shake that out
of their memory. And they just spent you know, twelve
to fourteen to sixteen years, maybe twenty, you know, they've
spent a lot of years with these pets. So pulling
out pictures and some people say, oh, I could not
(24:54):
possibly do that, I'm.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
Going to cry.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
Well, tears happen to be the most healthy and natural
thing that you can possibly do when you grieve. Your
body knows how to take care of itself. Your body
is manufacturing toxins at an exponential rate, and so releasing
the toxins through tears is very helpful because you're getting
(25:17):
the pollutants out of your body, and you will think better,
you will feel better after you cry. Nobody likes to cry,
nobody likes to be in the moment of crying. That
the afterward effect is very therapeutic. And so we try
to suck in those tears and keep the pollutants inside,
and it's exactly the wrong thing to do. So do
(25:37):
let yourself cry and induce tears by going your head
and pulling out those pictures, because you're going to have
a side effect that you don't expect. When you start
going back and you start reminiscing, you're going to remember
things that you had totally forgotten about. You forget about
the time that they completely knocked over the Christmas tree,
for example, and you're going to forget about the fact that,
(25:59):
oh my god, this was a world class jumper off
the dock every summer. You know, this pet could really
go the distance. I forgot about that.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
So you start.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
Really remembering what that life was like, and it's easier
to access the lessons that they taught you along the
way bravery for them. You know, maybe it was a
scary thing for them to jump off that dock the
first time and then you couldn't get them to stop
doing it. There's lessons in there for us with that.
You can also do things to commemorate your pet afterwards.
(26:34):
There's a lot of different things. I encourage you to
google it because you can see how do I memorialize
my pet? Just go online. There's so many different ways
and things to do. But you definitely want to do
something that marks the moment. You don't want to do
anything that is going to make you feel like you
have to forget this pet, because this pet came into
(26:56):
your life for a reason and we want to capitalize
on that.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
No. Absolutely, Oh, Tammy, I bet this is going to
be so helpful for so many people. Thank you for
sharing this time and your insight with us and the
Simons story. It's wonderful. So for those out there, we're
going to do a part two we didn't get to
(27:22):
in this episode.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
Tammy has a book out on helping kids to grieve
through this process with.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
You, so we're going to talk about that in our
next episode, and I hope you'll come back for it.
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider
subscribing to my podcast, Come back often, and tell your friends.
If I can be of any help to you and
your pet, Please reach out to me via my website www.
(27:54):
Dot so much potential dot com and for a lot
more information, fun and videos. Please follow me so Much
Potential on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. See you soon.
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