This podcast is for general information only and should not be taken as psychological advice.

Listeners should consult with their healthcare professionals for a specific medical advice.

Well.

Hello, I'm Amanda Keller and I'm Anita McGregor, and welcome to Double A Chattery.

I thought we'd talked today about something that I spoke about on the radio show, something that touched a huge nerve with millions, literally millions of people.

I was talking about my I'm going to cry just talking about it.

Nina, don't let me.

Don't let me.

This is going to be a hard one.

You have to put my fingernails out.

Okay, Okay, let's reach your Okay.

Did you notice how quickly I know you.

Were doing it already?

Weird?

This is something I said on the show about my aging dog.

Well, I was away with my I'm crying already.

I was away with my dog on the weekend.

And she's fine.

Anyone that knows me, she's not time, No, she's not.

But she's thirteen and I have to lift her into the car now, little front paws going off to pull up her back legs.

She's going deaf, she's gray in the face, she's kind of stands at the bottom of the stairs and tries to will herself to go up them.

And there's a lot that's hard for me at the moment.

My husband's m well, my dad's ninety one.

And I look at the dog and I think, you cannot go anywhere.

And I follow this woman on Instagram.

My name is Carol I mcchriisten, and she lives in this beautiful little tiny cottage in this I'm come back now in the Scottish Highlands.

And she has a Border Collie and she takes that dog out walking in the most beautiful scenery I've ever seen, and she bakes and she has this lovely life, it seems.

And she posted this some images of her dog having a dog sitting in the dog on the car, and she posted it to a poem written by a woman called Josie Bullcup and it's about her dog.

And I watched about a thousand times and I cry and cry, and I think of my dog and let's play the palm.

Now.

I have a bit of a week.

If it could be with this dog, I'd want the dog days to last forever.

It would always be this dog on the end of the leash, no matter the weather, rain or shine, taking our time on even the coldest of days.

It would always be this dog, leaving scratches on the hardwood and getting it my way while I vacuum up the very furry evidence that this house belongs to both of us.

It would always be this dog at the front door when I get home from work, pacing around like nothing has ever been more joyful than this moment, every single time.

If it were up to me, I'd have to leave every party early for the rest of my life to get home to this dog.

I'd forfeit the ability to swollowed in bed.

I'd share the last plight of every meal, apologize to every guest for the pread of excitement when they arrive.

I take a rain soaked coach and muddy pop burns in the front hallway, only find hairs on every sweater I ever wear.

But I only knew it for this dog, because if it were this dog, I don't want the dog days to last forever.

Oh.

Even hearing it again, then, Anita, you.

Know, all I could as I was listening to that, all I could think of is that first night that you had many and our friend Janet and me looked after Minnie and she was just.

This little bundle of her and it's just she was also a demon for that first year.

You don't have to deny that.

I thought, what the hell have we done?

Yeah she was a little yeah, yeah, would.

You'd like to say she was possessed?

And then it's like she trained herself overnight.

She just well, smartest breed in the world.

She kind of just sorted herself out and has as you know, she's my little soulmate.

She was, you know, absolutely, and she has guided us, shepherded us through all of our walks for years, and it's just it's it's you know, when you know she still comes along with us.

She's you know, she's a little slower.

You know, she likes to stop and have her you know, feet of bacon.

Yes she does, she does.

Oh yeah.

So many comments came from that, thousands of comments from people all over the world, because this is a thing that so many people go through, and we thought we'd just read out some of these comments.

I feel you're pain Amanda.

My mum has a terminal lung disease and my soul dog is now eleven and a half and I tell him he can't of believe me.

The two most important things in my life are my mom and my fur baby.

I cry every time I think of the day I have to come home without him there anymore.

And this is and this is from Megan Beckenzal, who says, we have two old gentlemen.

One is fifteen, the other is fourteen.

Both are on borrowed time going through the same thing.

I come home now and the don't hear me.

All the years are being rushed out at the front door.

And how I yearn for that now?

Oh amnop stop, I'm keeping gleanings in business.

I'm going to do one more, just to go, Okay, you tor true, do it do?

This is from Nicky Hopkins, who says the loss of my Chili Girl was way harder than losing my dad.

I know a lot of people look at me with shock when I say that, but it's true.

I had my dad for nearly nine decades, but my girl was my daughter that I was unable to have in human forum.

It's so true.

I've got another friend who talks about this.

She was very close to her mum, extremely close, but when her mom died, she'd kind of I don't know she had a different that's the world's biggest grief, but the grief of she said, then her dog died and that was every day harder.

But this one.

And as someone who has written this is Mitro Vixen nice anticipatory grief is tough.

That's what I'm going through now.

Absolutely, I lost my soul dog.

He was ten and a half.

But grief is love with nowhere to go.

And there was a lot of love, which is why there's a lot of grief missing him.

I'll spend my lifetime missing him, but the pain is worth the ten and.

A half years I had.

Oh, but she said, I agree with you.

There's something very graceful about an aging dog.

Now another comment we got, I think is really interesting.

You've got it there in front of you and someone.

Who reached out through the teacups.

This is like the Wegi ball.

Yes, And we responded, we read that we did.

This is Lucie Kennedy and she reached out.

She is what she calls a social hearted vat and she talks about that grace of an aging pound and she reached out to tie because she wanted to talk about how do we do this, how do we support pats and people through this profound what she calls the top end of life phase, how we hold hands and hearts and paws, and how we witness the magic and the awe of the human animal bond through this vulnerable time.

And well, we thought we'd get her on the show and she can talk us through what she has learned about how to handle.

All of this.

We'll be talking to listen next.

Thank you for reaching out through Double a Chattery to get in touch with us.

So many people were moved by the poem, by the idea of their pet dying.

But this is something that you well know.

Indeed it is.

It's my life actually, So being an end of life veterinarian and focusing on the human animal bond is what I do.

And end of life is such a precious time.

It's a sacred time.

It's a profound time.

So, you know, seeing that post and reading some of the comments, I reached out because I know that people want to talk about this topic and they actually need to talk about this topic.

Yeah, can I ask you?

I was thinking that that people now and is it because of social media that we do talk about it and people talk about their dog passing over the Rainbow Bridge.

I don't remember in years gone by that people would discuss this stuff.

Yeah, such a good question, because it has really shifted.

So I've been a vet for four decades now, and the shift in the end of life space, for people feeling comfortable talking about it, being able to take leave from work when they've lost a chair, fish pet.

It is a lot more normalized now.

And I do think social media has played a huge part in that because it's given people a platform to share tributes, and then the response that people get to their tributes is huge.

So you know, it's good.

It's really good, and we know we can do so much more for pets with after care and with supporting them through their end of life journey.

I mean, even palliative care in the veterinary space and the home euthanasia services that now exist, they weren't here ten years ago.

So I think that, you know, there's been a couple of things playing into that.

I mean, the human animal bond has intensified over the last you know, twenty twenty years.

No question.

When I first became a vet, A didn't talk about pet death.

There were no options for cremation and after care, and particularly in the last ten to fifteen years, we've seen an intensification of the human animal bond in people's lives.

And I think part of that is, you know, because of disconnection and you know, social isolation, people are leaning in on their pets.

The bond with their pet matters more now than it ever has.

And so that means that when a pet is approaching end of life, it's like losing a loved family member.

And as you mentioned before, for a lot of people, they'll say it's harder than when they lose a human family member.

Our pets are family members.

Yea, So let's see.

So it sounds so again four decades, what an amazing accomplishment.

But when you think about the how you came into this kind of end of life focus, was it one of those things that kind of gradually, as you know, culture changed, social media came up, or was there some event or a situation that kind of triggered you into this, Yes, into this process.

So much so the death of my mum.

So when I was thirty six, so that's what I'm sixty now to your mass.

All the time ago, so I had already been working as a vet.

I really felt comfortable in the death space with pets, whereas a lot of other vets didn't feel comfortable in that space.

So what I found back then home euthanasia services didn't exist.

I started my home euth in Asia service ten years ago, but back then it was within the context of a veterinary practice, and I found my receptionist started referring people to me and she would she would phrase it compassionate euthanasia, And I asked her one day, why are you putting compassionate euthanasia?

And she said, will you bring something to that ex experience for people that they're not getting from the other vets in this practice, And that really landed for me and made me start to think about our role as vets in supporting pets and their people through the death of their pet.

Then, when my mum died, I was with her, and that experience of seeing someone die was just life changing, and it made me She'd had a very long battle with throat cancer, so it had been a very long journey up to her actually dying, but we were with her seeing her die, and then I realized, Wow, you know, in my professional life as a vet, I am assisting pets to die every single day as part of being a vet, And from that moment it became very much as spiritual.

There was a spiritual element playing into my professional work as a vet assisting a pet to die, and I started to appreciate the magnitude of my responsibility in that moment to the pet and to the people, and it really shaped how I then progressed in that space as a bit.

Is there a good way to do it?

What have you learned that we can take from this conversation?

Yeah, there is a very good way to do it.

I mean, so many vets are assisting pets to die every day.

It's happening now, and there's different contexts for pet death.

I use the language death, which makes some people uncomfortable, but I actually think we need to be using the language.

And if you translate the word euthanasia, it does mean assisting to die.

And what I explain to people is that the role of euthanasia is to help pets die when they're dying anyway.

So I have developed I have three guiding principles around when it's time.

So people come to us as vets, and it's an agonizing decision because you don't want to get it wrong.

Because you can't reverse it once it's happened.

So it's a huge responsibility and people get very stressed by knowing when it's time to die, and that is our duty as their veterinarian to guide them.

So my guiding principles that have developed just by me working in this space is that the condition is terminal, and there's lots of things that contribute to that.

So a geriatric, frail old dog that's having trouble with mobility and not able to go to the toilet, that's pretty terminal, you know.

So aging is terminal ultimately, but we obviously assist pets to die for lots of other reasons when they're younger.

That the suffering is becoming irreversible, so the pain management or whatever options are available, that this animal is starting to suffer and there's not a lot of light.

And the third consideration that's really strong for me is the human animal bond element, how people are coping or not coping, how people are whether or not they have the capacity to meet extra needs of their pet, whether that's financial capacity or physical capacity.

I'm thinking of a client who had a really bad back and she was trying to lift her thirty five kilo labrador, you know.

And so we then guide that decision on its time, and then it's around holding people.

I often say we hold hands, hearts, and pores through that journey.

Yeah, you mentioned about after care, What does that mean?

What we mean by after caries?

So the death journey starts from that moment when we realize that death might be coming, and for some people that is.

And I'm going to just talk about pets here because I actually talk a lot about death and dying in people too, because it's so intricately connected.

And I find in my work as an end of life that you end up having conversations with people about their own death and dying.

You can't separate them.

They're intricately connected.

But the moment of death is coming from when we know that it might be that my dog has turned twelve and he's and old.

People come to us and he's old, what do I expect?

Or we've had a terminal diagnosis, or something unexpected happens, like a ruptured splinic tumor or seizureing, and a lot of the focus is to the euthanasia or to the death.

After care is pretty much what happens from death, how we support people, how we manage the body, what the options are for body disposal, whether that's burial at home or cremation, and then you're moving into that really sacred time.

So let's use the most common scenario is cremation.

The moment of death is when we have euthanased your cherished pet, and then the decision needs to be made what happens now, And often we've already had that conversation.

But in the event of you choosing cremation where you want the ashes returned to you, you enter that period that I liken to 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 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.

I'm sorry, Amanda.

I'm preemptively grieving, but please continue.

What you're saying is just so interesting and insightful.

I am just struck, you know, when you're talking about ways of creating this ritual around grieving, because you know, I think as you're kind of alluding to, grieving is grieving, it's grieving, and it's humans.

Perhaps it's all the same.

Let's see, I was going to ask you.

When I was thinking about preparing for this, I put one word down on my pece of paper about about having thinking about this.

So I've had two dogs.

I have not had a pat since coming to Australia, but in Canada I had two Bouviers, so you know, just one after the other, and they're just these big, boofy dogs.

They're just amazing.

And when we moved to Australia, our old dog, her name was Crunch, that we went to the vat they said she's too ill to come with us, she'd never make it through that whole process.

And so my in laws were so lovely and they took Crunch and she passed about about a month after we had to.

We euthanized her at that point.

And the word that I put down was just that guilt of just not being there, not being able to be with and not being like and I was, you know, obviously still able to grieve, but it was such a different experience than when we lost our first you know, our Cali, our first movie.

It was just so tough.

So any thoughts about how to manage that, you know that the complexity.

The guilt of choosing the moment or choosing the moment, and then the guilt of any way you choose to do it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean guilt and euthanasia.

I mean they go together, and guilt is such a part of grief.

People can be very you know, they will whip themselves and be very hard on themselves around making what is the most courageous and kind and loving decision.

I think where I come back to on that is having the conversations with people, and the role of the veterinarian in that experience is the professional objective neutral in a way because it's not our pet.

Having said that, it's impossible for us not to get a little bit emotionally involved, particularly for patients that we've known for a period of time.

But at the end of the day, our role is to support people and advocate for what's best for the animal, and so acknowledging the different feelings that come up with grief and guilties probably close to the most common one, but there's a whole realm of feelings that come out at that time.

And so then it's also vets aren't bereavement counselors, and so it's also around knowing when somebody needs additional support to what we've been able to provide as part of our service.

We actually so, I'm the founder of an organization called Cherished Pets.

Everything we do revolves around the human animal bond and as part of that, we provide a social service to support vulnerable people with their pets.

So we are blessed to have a social worker on our team and we're able to provide additional bereavement support to people when they've lost a cherished pet.

We also will connect into other services like Vanessa rolf here in Melbourne who's a grief counselor for pets and she's incredible.

Yeah, for many families, this is the first time a child has encountered death.

That's a big thing that you have to live through with a family too.

And it's beautiful, Amanda, and we work a lot with families with children and there's so many questions about should the children be here, not be here.

You know how to involve the children, and that is a whole conversation because it depends on the age of the children and the circumstances of the death, the timing, the urgency, and also the individual temperament of children.

But what I do say to parents is it may not feel this way now, but you will look back on this experience as a family and treasure the moment that it has been as a parenting opportunity as a family to introduce death into your children's lives in a supported and safe way.

So you know, Amanda asked me earlier about the actual planning for euthanasia, I can say this with a whole heart.

I have not had a youth in Asia that hasn't been beautiful.

So it is the opportunity for a pain free for your pet to pass without, free of pain, peacefully rounded by the love of the people that they know.

Or for some people, they can't be there, and I don't judge that.

So then it's who's there by proxy, and that might be the vet and the nurse, and we deliver the love that their humans aren't able to deliver, and in the comfort of their favorite place.

When that is possible, whether that's home or the beach or a park.

Just last night, I was supporting a family through an emergency euthanasia.

I was supporting them remotely, and their cat really needed to be euthanized, and they were in emergency at the hospital, and it had been their wish to bring their cat home and have a euthanasia at home.

And I just had to gently say to them, right now, your cat just wants to be dead.

I didn't use those words.

I said, he just doesn't want to be here.

He doesn't care whether he's at home or in emergency.

We need to try and create a bubble experienceerience for you with him in that emergency hospital environment, because our emergency vets are incredible and they do honor this time and they create space as best they can.

But it's not the same as being at home.

But for that little cat, there was too much risk of too much suffering if they were to relocate him home.

So you have to work with what's happening.

And you know, I reassure people it's not People get very anxious about the actual euthanasia, and I say to people, it's not scary.

It's actually quite a peaceful experience.

For a lot of people, their pet is the link to someone who they have loved dearly, who has died.

That's a very common scenario.

So this happens a lot where husband may have died and then five years later his dog.

He's that end of life.

And so for the family, you know, the wife and the kids or whoever the family is, it's that it brings up grief from losing their human family member, you know.

So pet loss is a web that connects into our lives.

Wow, I'm sorry that what you say is beautiful.

What you say is beautiful, and that these tears aren't sad.

Well, they probably are, but they're also you know, it's the inevitability of time that's coming.

Yeah, but I think I've got a better brain around it now.

Yeah, And I'm just thinking about the the the the idea that Jack and Liam and many al kind of grew up together and that this is going to be when many does go, that it's going to be what it is from now, in twenty years from now.

Absolutely that it's there.

It is complex, just thinking about all the dynamics of yeah, you know, the memories of the childhood and all the yeah, Oh, it's a lot.

It's a lot.

But thank you lot allowing us to acknowledge that it's a lot, which is why initially people responded to what I'd said on the radio, because it's a lot, and we finally get to say out loud, this is a lot.

Yeah, it's a lot, and it's sacred, it's profound, it's deep, it's love, it's human it you know, it is just one of the most memorable experiences we have.

So you know, the tears are good.

That's part of the journey and ensuring people have that person in their life that can hold hand, hand, hearts and pause through it all.

It's it's a we walk together and it's profound.

Thank you for bringing it into you know, the conversation through your post that had me crying in.

The part.

Lizzie, thank you.

I mean you are really doing important work, the Lord's work, and need absolutely and bringing and bringing a different perspective to the thing that we all you know, fear dread.

You know, you know those conversations about about death and dying are important ones.

So thank you so much.

I really appreciate it.

Thank thank you, thank you for having me lots of love.

Ah oh, big size, big size.

You know what I learned from that?

And I think I probably would normally have run away from thinking about what was to come, whereas she's saying, maybe plant and think about it and have some agency and how it happens.

Mm hmm.

Yeah, I would imagine that there are moments where you do wanna, can't make me ninety moments yep, But then there's going to be every once in a while when you're going to have to think about the inevitability of this.

Yeah, you know how I thought about.

I thought about doctor Chris Brown, who's a very good friend of mine.

He knows my love of many, he knows how much many means to our family.

But the guy he.

Might be the guy you know what I might do.

Actually, I'm not going to do this, but I read this week that Tom Brady, the NFL star, has cloned his dog.

He mentioned the company he's worked with.

You take the blood from your very very elderly dog and when the time comes new cloned dog.

Barbra Streisan did this, and apparently she said it wasn't like the dog that was cloned, wasn't her dog like inevitably wasn't going to be her dog.

It was a different because you can have from it well as it should be.

You can have you can have identical twins who's still a different, have different personalities, different soul energy.

Yeah, and yeah, I.

Think you don't.

I don't know if you want to your dog by bringing the same one back again.

No cloning has like it was.

Do you remember with Dolly?

It was a big thing and the sheep, Dolly the sheep, and then it's going to sing beautiful?

Is that the way it happened?

Is that true?

Amount you finished crying now, so at least now we can do glimmers.

Actually, my glimmer is you and Ea.

We spoke a couple of weeks ago, and you said, by the nature of your job, you don't cry.

I saw you, I saw your eyes get glassy, and I.

I think I saw a little tear escape.

I've witnessed this, You have witnessed it.

This was It was such a profound conversation, Amanda.

It's just you know.

When you were talking about Crunch, Oh.

Yeah, she was just I mean, my Bouviers were just such special dogs.

They were just amazing, and I just it just brought it just brings lots up.

I mean, grief is a layered thing, isn't it.

It just comes and comes and comes.

All right, well that's my glim I seeing you go the blob.

Okay, well yours mine.

This is my son told me this and it's.

Such a hilarious story.

So Connor was had gone into a one of those phone fix it places and because he needed the screen to get replaced, and in doing that, he went he walked back out to the car he had to go and pick up Logan, my grandson, and realized that the app on his phone had somehow been disconnected.

And this is how he got into his car and started the car.

So it meant that he stranded and he needs to go and pick up Logan from daycare.

I didn't have the key, he'd use the DApp to get in.

He was using the app to get in and turn on the car.

And so every parent's nightmare.

You don't want to go and be late for day you know, daycare pickup.

And so he you know, tried calling his wife and unfortunately Tia is kind of like me that she often has her phone on silent and people, you know, recently, my husband just called me ten times in a row to try to get my attention.

And so he was trying to get Taya's attention and couldn't and just but just think about this lateral thinking, Amanda.

He went and piloted the little rumba, the little you know, the little floor black vacuum cleaner because that app was still working, and drove it and was trying to like wave itself to go and get TIA's attention, to get to get her to answer her phone, and she wasn't.

She was still like in the kitchen doing something, and so he had to go and drive the little rumba thing into her to get her attention.

She did, she was able to go and get the key.

She was you know, it all worked out.

But I think that that was the most unique kind of lateral solution to a problem that I'd heard in a while.

He piloted the vacuum cleaner to smash her in the legs.

What did she think was happening?

Why am I being attacked by my vacuum cleaner?

Yes it was, but it was he was making it wiggle to kind of say, pay attention, and she finally she finally figured it out, looked at her phone, answered it and Yeah, isn't that hilarious?

Yeah, I wouldn't have paid attention to my phone.

I would have got some kind of priest to come around and throw that thing out the window.

It's possessed.

It's a little exorcism on your on your little room.

Brother.

It isn't that hilarious?

Wow?

Yeah?

Well we've covered a lot in this podcast.

Thank you for holding my hand through this, antail, hold.

Your hand any day around this and you're going to we will hold each other's hands through this because I will.

I will be.

I will be with you on.

This journey, even though I'm going to clone Miny and she's never dying.

Remember absolutely, I do remember that, Amanda.

All right, let me bash this back, all right?

Thank you, Tea cups, love you too.

We'll next see you next time.

See you.

M