April 7, 2024 • 14 mins
EPISODE 3 SHOW NOTES
Episode 3: Helping Parents Support Their Children Through Pet Loss
This is my Part Two episode with Tammy Wynn, founder and CEO of Cincinnati based pet hospice, Angel’s Paws. In Part Two, we talked about supporting your pet, yourself and others through pet loss, on the journey to and past the Rainbow Bridge. If you haven’t already, I encourage you to listen to that episode (Episode 2).
In this episode, our focus is on pet loss through the perspective of parents who share a life with human and non-human kids. Tammy and Joel Altman co-authored a beautiful book Gaining Wings, that helps families with kids deal with the grief of losing a pet over the Rainbow Bridge.
In the book, pages are compassionately mixed with explaining love and loss through a story for kids, and well thought out tips for parents. In a very gentle way, this book normalizes loss and grief, and reminds families to cherish the experiences and love shared. There are suggestions for creating a bucket list of activities to maximize families’ remaining time with their pet, and preplanning ways to celebrate their pet so as not to forget.
Some of the points that will be covered in this discussion include:
Why you should put on your own oxygen mask as a first step
An explanation of a child’s perspective on pet loss
How to talk to your child about pet loss
How you can involve your child in the process of saying good-bye
For more information about Angel’s Paws, please visit www.AngelsPaws.com
To purchase the book, Gaining Wings, please visit www.GainingWings.com
For information on your host, Lisa Desatnik, please visit www.SoMuchPETential.com.
Episode 3: Helping Parents Support Their Children Through Pet Loss
This is my Part Two episode with Tammy Wynn, founder and CEO of Cincinnati based pet hospice, Angel’s Paws. In Part Two, we talked about supporting your pet, yourself and others through pet loss, on the journey to and past the Rainbow Bridge. If you haven’t already, I encourage you to listen to that episode (Episode 2).
In this episode, our focus is on pet loss through the perspective of parents who share a life with human and non-human kids. Tammy and Joel Altman co-authored a beautiful book Gaining Wings, that helps families with kids deal with the grief of losing a pet over the Rainbow Bridge.
In the book, pages are compassionately mixed with explaining love and loss through a story for kids, and well thought out tips for parents. In a very gentle way, this book normalizes loss and grief, and reminds families to cherish the experiences and love shared. There are suggestions for creating a bucket list of activities to maximize families’ remaining time with their pet, and preplanning ways to celebrate their pet so as not to forget.
Some of the points that will be covered in this discussion include:
Why you should put on your own oxygen mask as a first step
An explanation of a child’s perspective on pet loss
How to talk to your child about pet loss
How you can involve your child in the process of saying good-bye
For more information about Angel’s Paws, please visit www.AngelsPaws.com
To purchase the book, Gaining Wings, please visit www.GainingWings.com
For information on your host, Lisa Desatnik, please visit www.SoMuchPETential.com.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hi.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
This is Lives Touched by Pets, a show for those
who love and are loved by pets. I'm your host,
Lisa d Satne, a certified trainer with so much potential
in Cincinnati, Ohio. I am so glad that you're here.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
Welcome. In the last episode, you heard me talk to
Tammy Wynn, founder and CEO of Cincinnati based Angels Pause
Pet Hospice. She shared some incredible insights, stories and really
helpful information. If you haven't listened to that, I really
(00:41):
recommend that you go back and listen to that. In
this episode, we're going to take this a step further.
Tammy has come out with the wonderful book that she's
partnered with Joel Altman on a beautiful book called Gaining Wings.
It's a children's book, well really, I think it's an
(01:03):
adult book disguised as a children's book, but it's all
about supporting parents and their kids through the Rainbow Bridge journey.
Thanks again for being here again, Tammy.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Thank you so much. And you're exactly right. That's good
insight on your part that it is an adult book
that's really disguised as a children's book.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
So you okay. The book revolves around a dog named Suki,
and I think there's a personal story there isn't there
there is.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Suki was my dog, and when Joel approached me about
writing this book, she was a dog that I had
just most recently lost. So it was really a great
honor to write that book with her being the central
figure of it. So the story actually just helps kids
understand the circle of life, the beautiful circle of life.
(01:58):
And yet in the book there are purple boxes that
are for parents that help kids navigate those waters. But
those are the little tip boxes that I think are
also very helpful just for adults to navigate those waters
as well.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
I love how you start it with the empathetic gear
that you so well do and you talk about from
the parents. The first thing is putting on your own
oxygen mask. Talk about that.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
So a lot of times these pets come into families
prior to the kid's arrival, so they really are the
bigger brother or sister to the human children that trail
behind them. And so the deep, deep relationship a lot
of times already resides with the parents, and as a result,
(02:54):
the parents tend to transfer their deep, deep bond and
connection that they have with the had over to the
human kids and think that that connection is the same,
and it isn't the same. And so a lot of
times parents have a bigger worry about their human children
and how they're going to handle it, then the kids
(03:15):
actually wind up having and so that sometimes is a
little bit of a surprise, you know. For me, Lisa,
it was a surprise because when I started Angels Pause,
I created a whole bereavement center in my facility for
kids that I kept open for the first two years.
I had a pet loss support group four children, even
(03:38):
at the exact same time as I was doing my
adult pet loss support group. And in the two years
that I had all of that open for kids, I
had exactly two children come through it, No, Yeah, and
I had a couple of hundred adults come through the
pet law support group.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
So that was a big revelation to me.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
Kids are very resilient, period, but when it comes to
pet loss, a lot of times the last few years
of a pet's life, the kids are really being warned
to stay away from the pet because the pet is
no longer as mobile to get away from them or
to tolerate all the crawling on them that they do
(04:24):
because they hurt more, and their parents are very worried
that this pet, though sweet as they could be, could
actually snap and try to bite the child. So the
kids are being warned, stay away, stay away, stay away.
So that bond is already being broken as the pet's declining,
and the pet parents really not thinking about that, because
(04:46):
while the bond is being broken for the human children,
it's actually intensifying for the adult human because their caregiving
has intensified for the pet. They're spending more time figuring
out what kind of food can I feed this pet?
How can I help them get out to the bathroom
and back in safely, So they're thinking more about the pet.
(05:06):
The kids are thinking less, and so the parent just
hasn't made that connection that what they're going through is
not necessarily what their kids are going through. That is
not to say that there's not still that random child
that is struggling with pet loss. They are still out there,
(05:27):
it's just not the bigger population that I thought it
was when I first opened Angel's Pause.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
It's really kind of surprising. Yeah, I was shocked. Yeah,
I think about kids really grieving in their pets because
they love their pet and they do, and they do.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
And the other thing that kids do that's pretty amazing, Lisa,
is they will grieve authentically. They have no problem wailing
and crying. They let their emotions out fully, and we
adults could really learn a lot from kids on how
they grieve because they get it all out and then
(06:05):
they're out playing in the backyard thirty minutes later, So
because they got it out. It's not because they really
didn't love the pet, but they express their grief. And
if we would allow ourselves as adults to do the
exact same thing, we would be so much better off.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
We can learn so much from kids. I love talking
to kids. They're so insightful. And the fact that you
know they do cry it out and then just go
on and do other things, that is definitely a very
important lesson for us. So, you know, they do react differently,
(06:45):
but they still may have questions. When is it okay
to talk to them about death? And is it okay
to even mention that word death or dying to a child?
Speaker 1 (06:57):
Great questions, Lisa, I'm so glad you asked, because because again,
people want to tiptoe around the whole concept of death
and death is a part of life. And this is
a part of a parent's responsibility to teach their children
that death will occur. And I think it's a beautiful
(07:18):
thing that the pet is going to be the child's
teacher in this. They take on that role, they take
it on very gracefully and will demonstrate that. So putting
death on the table with the child is a very
important thing. There's age appropriate things to do and say
with kids, and there are many developmental skills out there
(07:42):
that are available that tell you what a child knows
about death and what they think at certain stages. But
what I can tell you that's the trick of all
tricks for parents is this, if your child asks you
a question, answer it. Don't avoid it, don't change the subject,
don't try to run away from it. Answer the question
(08:06):
in an age appropriate way to them, don't elaborate, don't
go on beyond the question that they ask. But the
thought process is, if a child asks you a question,
they can handle that answer. So if you stick with
the script that the child gives you, then you're going
(08:27):
to be in pretty good shape as far as talking
about what's going on with the pet.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
So what I heard you saying there is that really
you know, don't tie away from answering these questions. If
your child's asking the question, he can take the answer,
but just don't elaborate on the answer exactly exactly. Well,
what about how can parents involve their kids in the
(08:55):
process of saying goodbye?
Speaker 1 (08:57):
This is a very special time, it's a very sacred time.
I feel like for the family to capitalize on what
their pet is going to be demonstrating to them, because
there is going to be lost in the future for
these children, they are going to lose humans in their life.
That this pet can pave the way for them and
(09:20):
they can experience what it's like to grieve through that
process to come out the other side, so that when
a human is lost in the future, they can see
that the grief that they feel is not going to
be a lifelong feeling. It's something that is a process
that they'll work through and they're going to come out
the other side. If we grieve properly, we actually come
(09:43):
out the other side better than we were going into it,
because we've learned so much more and we're more developmentally
sound on the other side, because there's things that we
couldn't possibly teach ourselves without going to through this process,
so involving their children in beautiful ways by talking about it,
(10:08):
by creating a bucket list about what do we want
to make sure we get done before our pet passes,
and so allow the whole family to brainstorm those ideas.
And the most important part about this is making sure
that the things that we are going to be doing
with our pet aren't overly strenuous and aren't hard on
(10:30):
a pet who may be terminally ill and suffering with something.
So if we say, you know, we want to just
spend some time all watching a movie together, then that
would be probably something that the pet would really enjoy,
having the family all come together and spending time but
doing something very low in strenuousness. So let's all watch
(10:54):
a mo be together, or let's all watch a couple
of movies together with our pet between when we lose
our pet, coming together and just brushing our pet and
gently because sometimes they can get a little bit ouchy
with arthritis and things, so we don't want to pull
there here, but we want to do some very gentle
(11:17):
brushing if that's something that the pet has enjoyed. So
bucket littlest kind of things, and brushing is something that
we can do. That is that you think about that
you can do right in your home. The pet doesn't
have to go anywhere. You can begin creating a scrap
(11:37):
book by while your pet is still with you. Pulling
out the picture albums and starting to put together that
scrap book of the pet while they're there will make
it a little bit easier when you continue the scrap
booking after the pet has gone. So getting things started,
so the memory is a transitional period over to we
(12:00):
actually did this. We started this project when our pet
was here.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
Oh, I'd love that memory is a transition that is beautiful.
And those activities are just fantastic because they're calm. They're
things that both the dog can enjoy and that the
children can enjoy and the adults too. So celebrating your
pet is an important way to help with this whole process.
(12:29):
Sounds like it's really important. Your pet comes in and
teaches us amazing life lessons. So writing down a list
of all of the lessons that your pet taught you
is a way that you can truly celebrate them for
what they gave to you as a gift. But how
you can actually make yourself a better person incorporating those
(12:50):
lessons into the rest of your life, and then you
carry your pet with you from that day forward. Tammy,
where can people buy the book?
Speaker 1 (12:58):
So it's available in all of your bookstores Amazon. You
can also go to Gainingwings dot com and you can
order autograph copies from there as well.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
Great, and we'll have a link on the show notes
so people can access that super well.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
Thank you again, Tammy. It's been wonderful talking to you.
I always enjoy our conversations and I hope that this
is going to be very helpful for a lot of people.
I have a feeling it will be.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
Thank you, Lisa, and thank you for the important work
you do by bringing great information to people. So thank
you and keep it up.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
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.
Speaker 4 (13:50):
Me via my website www. Dot so much potential dot
com and for a lot moreformation, fun and videos, please
follow me so Much Potential on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
See you soon.
Hi.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
This is Lives Touched by Pets, a show for those
who love and are loved by pets. I'm your host,
Lisa d Satne, a certified trainer with so much potential
in Cincinnati, Ohio. I am so glad that you're here.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
Welcome. In the last episode, you heard me talk to
Tammy Wynn, founder and CEO of Cincinnati based Angels Pause
Pet Hospice. She shared some incredible insights, stories and really
helpful information. If you haven't listened to that, I really
(00:41):
recommend that you go back and listen to that. In
this episode, we're going to take this a step further.
Tammy has come out with the wonderful book that she's
partnered with Joel Altman on a beautiful book called Gaining Wings.
It's a children's book, well really, I think it's an
(01:03):
adult book disguised as a children's book, but it's all
about supporting parents and their kids through the Rainbow Bridge journey.
Thanks again for being here again, Tammy.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Thank you so much. And you're exactly right. That's good
insight on your part that it is an adult book
that's really disguised as a children's book.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
So you okay. The book revolves around a dog named Suki,
and I think there's a personal story there isn't there
there is.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Suki was my dog, and when Joel approached me about
writing this book, she was a dog that I had
just most recently lost. So it was really a great
honor to write that book with her being the central
figure of it. So the story actually just helps kids
understand the circle of life, the beautiful circle of life.
(01:58):
And yet in the book there are purple boxes that
are for parents that help kids navigate those waters. But
those are the little tip boxes that I think are
also very helpful just for adults to navigate those waters
as well.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
I love how you start it with the empathetic gear
that you so well do and you talk about from
the parents. The first thing is putting on your own
oxygen mask. Talk about that.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
So a lot of times these pets come into families
prior to the kid's arrival, so they really are the
bigger brother or sister to the human children that trail
behind them. And so the deep, deep relationship a lot
of times already resides with the parents, and as a result,
(02:54):
the parents tend to transfer their deep, deep bond and
connection that they have with the had over to the
human kids and think that that connection is the same,
and it isn't the same. And so a lot of
times parents have a bigger worry about their human children
and how they're going to handle it, then the kids
(03:15):
actually wind up having and so that sometimes is a
little bit of a surprise, you know. For me, Lisa,
it was a surprise because when I started Angels Pause,
I created a whole bereavement center in my facility for
kids that I kept open for the first two years.
I had a pet loss support group four children, even
(03:38):
at the exact same time as I was doing my
adult pet loss support group. And in the two years
that I had all of that open for kids, I
had exactly two children come through it, No, Yeah, and
I had a couple of hundred adults come through the
pet law support group.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
So that was a big revelation to me.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
Kids are very resilient, period, but when it comes to
pet loss, a lot of times the last few years
of a pet's life, the kids are really being warned
to stay away from the pet because the pet is
no longer as mobile to get away from them or
to tolerate all the crawling on them that they do
(04:24):
because they hurt more, and their parents are very worried
that this pet, though sweet as they could be, could
actually snap and try to bite the child. So the
kids are being warned, stay away, stay away, stay away.
So that bond is already being broken as the pet's declining,
and the pet parents really not thinking about that, because
(04:46):
while the bond is being broken for the human children,
it's actually intensifying for the adult human because their caregiving
has intensified for the pet. They're spending more time figuring
out what kind of food can I feed this pet?
How can I help them get out to the bathroom
and back in safely, So they're thinking more about the pet.
(05:06):
The kids are thinking less, and so the parent just
hasn't made that connection that what they're going through is
not necessarily what their kids are going through. That is
not to say that there's not still that random child
that is struggling with pet loss. They are still out there,
(05:27):
it's just not the bigger population that I thought it
was when I first opened Angel's Pause.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
It's really kind of surprising. Yeah, I was shocked. Yeah,
I think about kids really grieving in their pets because
they love their pet and they do, and they do.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
And the other thing that kids do that's pretty amazing, Lisa,
is they will grieve authentically. They have no problem wailing
and crying. They let their emotions out fully, and we
adults could really learn a lot from kids on how
they grieve because they get it all out and then
(06:05):
they're out playing in the backyard thirty minutes later, So
because they got it out. It's not because they really
didn't love the pet, but they express their grief. And
if we would allow ourselves as adults to do the
exact same thing, we would be so much better off.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
We can learn so much from kids. I love talking
to kids. They're so insightful. And the fact that you
know they do cry it out and then just go
on and do other things, that is definitely a very
important lesson for us. So, you know, they do react differently,
(06:45):
but they still may have questions. When is it okay
to talk to them about death? And is it okay
to even mention that word death or dying to a child?
Speaker 1 (06:57):
Great questions, Lisa, I'm so glad you asked, because because again,
people want to tiptoe around the whole concept of death
and death is a part of life. And this is
a part of a parent's responsibility to teach their children
that death will occur. And I think it's a beautiful
(07:18):
thing that the pet is going to be the child's
teacher in this. They take on that role, they take
it on very gracefully and will demonstrate that. So putting
death on the table with the child is a very
important thing. There's age appropriate things to do and say
with kids, and there are many developmental skills out there
(07:42):
that are available that tell you what a child knows
about death and what they think at certain stages. But
what I can tell you that's the trick of all
tricks for parents is this, if your child asks you
a question, answer it. Don't avoid it, don't change the subject,
don't try to run away from it. Answer the question
(08:06):
in an age appropriate way to them, don't elaborate, don't
go on beyond the question that they ask. But the
thought process is, if a child asks you a question,
they can handle that answer. So if you stick with
the script that the child gives you, then you're going
(08:27):
to be in pretty good shape as far as talking
about what's going on with the pet.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
So what I heard you saying there is that really
you know, don't tie away from answering these questions. If
your child's asking the question, he can take the answer,
but just don't elaborate on the answer exactly exactly. Well,
what about how can parents involve their kids in the
(08:55):
process of saying goodbye?
Speaker 1 (08:57):
This is a very special time, it's a very sacred time.
I feel like for the family to capitalize on what
their pet is going to be demonstrating to them, because
there is going to be lost in the future for
these children, they are going to lose humans in their life.
That this pet can pave the way for them and
(09:20):
they can experience what it's like to grieve through that
process to come out the other side, so that when
a human is lost in the future, they can see
that the grief that they feel is not going to
be a lifelong feeling. It's something that is a process
that they'll work through and they're going to come out
the other side. If we grieve properly, we actually come
(09:43):
out the other side better than we were going into it,
because we've learned so much more and we're more developmentally
sound on the other side, because there's things that we
couldn't possibly teach ourselves without going to through this process,
so involving their children in beautiful ways by talking about it,
(10:08):
by creating a bucket list about what do we want
to make sure we get done before our pet passes,
and so allow the whole family to brainstorm those ideas.
And the most important part about this is making sure
that the things that we are going to be doing
with our pet aren't overly strenuous and aren't hard on
(10:30):
a pet who may be terminally ill and suffering with something.
So if we say, you know, we want to just
spend some time all watching a movie together, then that
would be probably something that the pet would really enjoy,
having the family all come together and spending time but
doing something very low in strenuousness. So let's all watch
(10:54):
a mo be together, or let's all watch a couple
of movies together with our pet between when we lose
our pet, coming together and just brushing our pet and
gently because sometimes they can get a little bit ouchy
with arthritis and things, so we don't want to pull
there here, but we want to do some very gentle
(11:17):
brushing if that's something that the pet has enjoyed. So
bucket littlest kind of things, and brushing is something that
we can do. That is that you think about that
you can do right in your home. The pet doesn't
have to go anywhere. You can begin creating a scrap
(11:37):
book by while your pet is still with you. Pulling
out the picture albums and starting to put together that
scrap book of the pet while they're there will make
it a little bit easier when you continue the scrap
booking after the pet has gone. So getting things started,
so the memory is a transitional period over to we
(12:00):
actually did this. We started this project when our pet
was here.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
Oh, I'd love that memory is a transition that is beautiful.
And those activities are just fantastic because they're calm. They're
things that both the dog can enjoy and that the
children can enjoy and the adults too. So celebrating your
pet is an important way to help with this whole process.
(12:29):
Sounds like it's really important. Your pet comes in and
teaches us amazing life lessons. So writing down a list
of all of the lessons that your pet taught you
is a way that you can truly celebrate them for
what they gave to you as a gift. But how
you can actually make yourself a better person incorporating those
(12:50):
lessons into the rest of your life, and then you
carry your pet with you from that day forward. Tammy,
where can people buy the book?
Speaker 1 (12:58):
So it's available in all of your bookstores Amazon. You
can also go to Gainingwings dot com and you can
order autograph copies from there as well.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
Great, and we'll have a link on the show notes
so people can access that super well.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
Thank you again, Tammy. It's been wonderful talking to you.
I always enjoy our conversations and I hope that this
is going to be very helpful for a lot of people.
I have a feeling it will be.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
Thank you, Lisa, and thank you for the important work
you do by bringing great information to people. So thank
you and keep it up.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
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.
Speaker 4 (13:50):
Me via my website www. Dot so much potential dot
com and for a lot moreformation, fun and videos, please
follow me so Much Potential on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
See you soon.
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