Jul 21, 2020
TITLE
When Your Fur Person Dies
GUEST
Jill Johnson-Young, LCSW
EPISODE OVERVIEW
We talk about why pet loss is so significant and why it’s
important to talk about it as well as HOW to talk about it.
If you are a single pet parent and you lose your pet, it is the
same as losing a spouse. Jill talks about things we can do when
we’re in the grief process, or anticipating death. She talks about
how to handle when others don’t recognize the significance of the
loss;the symptoms of grief; how to talk with kids about death; how
to prepare them, and involve them.
HIGHLIGHTS
- If you are a single parent and you lose your pet, it is the
same as losing a spouse.
- Your pet is a part of your family, and your pet is related to
as a member of the family. If someone is a single pet parent, and
that's the only primary relationship they have in their house,
that's as big a loss as losing a spouse. And there's research that
supports that.
- For the person losing the pet, they go through all of the
anticipatory grief if they realize the pet is sick, which is
something that happens with a lot of pet death. They get older;
they get sick, or even when they're young and they're diagnosed
with something. You go through the same process, as you do with a
human person in your house. The date of the diagnosis is
devastating. The deciding what to do for treatment or not to treat
is devastating. The taking care of them toward the end is something
you do out of love and devotion and dedication. The being with them
and the dying process is something you do just as you do with a
person. There's a significant difference in that with pets, we can
choose euthanasia, if it's needed, or if it's the kind thing to do.
With humans, there's no ability to choose one's death, except for
in a handful of states. And that's still very controversial, but
it's not controversial for pets. Then the afterward-- you are
literally leaving (if you've gone to euthanasia) the vet's office
with empty arms. It is just as devastating as leaving a funeral and
walking away from the casket going into the ground. It needs to
have a memorial. It needs to have a process. There needs to be
grace because you've just lost an integral part of your
family.
- We get unconditional love from our animals. This is the one
place of our life where our dogs don't get resentful. They don't
say unkind things. They don't shut us out. It's pure, unconditional
love.
- I think it's that unconditional love that we get. And it is so
pure. And I think so many people have such giving loving hearts
that we get so much out of caring for our pets, and the
relationship that we have with our pets and to lose that. It's
huge. It's a huge loss. But I don't think that we talk about it
enough and so people don't understand why it can be so hard, or
other people don't understand why we're having such a hard
time.
- We know when you lose a spouse, for instance, and you walk in
the door to the house at the end of the day, and they're not there,
it's a huge loss. Spouses don't usually meet us at the door with
their tails wagging and their tongues out and jumping on us and
wanting to kiss us all over. It'd be nice if they wanted to kiss
all over us. It’s the cat who insists on sitting on our laptops as
we're working at home right now. They integrate themselves into all
aspects of our lives. They sleep with us. I haven't had a moment in
a bathroom in years without a dog, either in the bathroom or trying
to be in the bathroom and sometimes there's three of them.
- Pets give us those eyes we can look into. And those ears we can
stroke. children when they have a pet, it becomes a primary
attachment. Similar to a parent, sorry, parents true. And they can
tell their pet anything. So you've got that girl in fifth grade and
she's got mean girl stuff going on; she goes home and she cries to
her cat, or her guinea pig, or her hamster. Maybe her Snake, I'm
not super fun to snakes, but I'll go with snakes. You know, that's,
that's the attachment. And that's who looks at them.
- How incredibly loud the absence of a pet can be. Whether it's a
cat, who when you come home, meows, or if you have hardwood floors,
the sound of nails, clicking on the floor. All of those little
things that we don't even think about. Little rituals-- when you go
to the bathroom, or when you go to feed them. The absence is
incredibly loud.
- And if they've been sick, and you've been caretaking them. All
of those pieces go away too. So you lose that caregiver role, and
you lose that additional relationship that builds over the
caregiving. As you know, I just lost my Adele. We have in our house
poodles because we have oodles of poodles, and if if you read my
kid’s books, you will see there's a poodle on every page. Poodles
go to funerals in the books that I write, as they should. They to
doctor visits. So we had Adele and Walter, who is blind, and we've
just added Gracie who's 20 and was living on the streets and weighs
about four pounds, and we have Fred who's all the trouble and likes
to take himself swimming. And then we have an extra one who is not
a poodle. Adele was a rescue. We got her when she was maybe 10. And
she chose us at at the pound, she had been a captive breeder. She
could never walk normally because she'd been locked in the cage for
so long, so her elbows and her knees never bent. until just before
her death, she could never bend them. Because they were so stiff
Shin PTSD, we could see from her dreams when we first got her. But
she shows us and she was ours and she became a primary For me, she
was my dog. And as she got sicker in the last six months or so, she
needed to be fed. I had to take her out and hold her while she went
to the bathroom. I did all the things that you do for a human,
which I've done with spouses who have died. And now coming home,
it's only been a few weeks. I come in and I've just stopped really
searching for her to make sure she's okay, and not splattered on
the floor somewhere. And I've just started to learn to sleep and
not look for her in the covers to make sure she's okay. Because she
had congestive heart failure. So it was hard, and she was hard to
move. So positioning was important for her. All those roles went
away when she died. And that's a big loss. That’s something that
happens with pet people when they lose a pet. People who are not
pet owners say, “Well, isn't that a relief?” Just like they say
when someone human has died, “Oh, look, it's a relief. They're not
in pain. They're not.” Oh, no! It's not a relief, because I'd
really rather have her back here. Yeah, yeah, but I don't want her
back in the condition she was in.
- It becomes our responsibility to honor and to let go. We want
that attachment. We want that connection. And I think that can be
really hard. I really believe that the ultimate form of love is
really putting another animal and other human’s needs before own,
even if it means that we're going to feel grief and sadness and
loss. We want the people that we love, the animals that we love to
have the best in life even if that means it's time to go.
- What are some things that people can do when they're in that
grief process? Oftentimes we don't know what to do. We don't know
how to talk about it. I think that people feel that it's different
than losing a person, so we need to do the same things that we do
when we lose a human that we love.
- We need to do anticipatory loss with them. As they are dying,
getting sick and dying, we need to be preparing to say goodbye. We
need to tell them the things we want to tell them. Love on them the
way we want them to go out of this world, so that as they're
leaving this world, they are still feeling those hands and hearing
those sounds in their ears. When we are losing a pet who's had
connections with other people, and because our dogs go to the
office, they had lots of connections. I put it out publicly, even
though it was a private loss. And we had some people come by who
needed to come and snuggle with each of those critters before they
died. I'd say goodbye, cry for them and do some sort of public
memorials. And then when we are grieving ourselves, we need to
honor that. And if other people are not, we need to call them on
it. If you lost your spouse and someone's acting like you should be
having just any other day, you're allowed to throw that grief card
down and say, I'm grieving. Back it up, I need you to be more
understanding. The same goes with pet loss. When you've lost a pet,
you've lost a member of your family. And that needs to be honored.
Yeah. I've had clients who've had ministers come out and actually
do funerals in backyards for them. When you have a pet who's like a
cat about town, (my sister had one), or now that we're in COVID,
they may be the primary visitor for a couple of your neighbors who
live alone. If that cat dies, that entire community needs to know
that the cat is gone and needs to be able to come together and
grieve together, because they all have a different relationship.
But they all had a relationship with that pet. Just like a
person.
- When you are the one who's had the pet loss, and you've got
people around you who are not pet people, that's sometimes an issue
because they tend to minimize it. They don't understand the depth
of the loss, and they may expect you to continue to do just the way
you were doing yesterday. And you have sort of an auspicious task
of explaining to some extent, just how big a loss it is, with what
energy you might have to give to them because when we're grieving,
we lose energy. And we lose the ability sometimes to be kind to
people because we're putting our energy into just getting through
the day, and not crying over our little friend who didn't wake up
with us that morning. Because when you lose a pet, you do the same
thing. You wake up in the morning and realize all over again that
they're dead for probably a month is normal for humans and pets.
But you also are faced with having to tell someone this was a major
for you, and this really counted. If you can't be kind, I need you
to back it up or take your requests somewhere else because I don't
have that much left in me right now. And you also need to monitor
yourself because you may think you've got all the energy you
normally do. And you don't.
- People need to have ceremonies and rituals. I'm a big believer
in those. I'm not someone who goes along with humans saying that
they shouldn't have funerals. And I don't think we should say that
about pets either. We're going to be getting Adele's ashes back
this week, and we'll be having a little service for her. And then
her ashes will go with the ashes of the rest of them. We have a
spot where we keep everybody together. And that's our Memorial spot
for the folks in our family who have died four footed at two
footed. I do advocate talking about the moments when you're missing
your pets. If I wake up and I'm having that moment, I will say to
whoever's around, “I just can't believe she's not here right now.
This has really been a hard morning right now. And I need to take a
little bit of a break.” And when I knew that We were putting her to
sleep. I backed up my schedule some, so that I didn't have to start
the week all over again at the same level of exuberance I normally
do. I’m usually very high energy, and I do a lot throughout the
week. The two weeks after her death I backed up a lot, because I
needed that time.
- How do you manage grief? I use a lot of coping skills. I have
another doodle on my lap. I'm stroking. I'm feeling the heartbeat.
I've got a cold drink in my hand, which changes the way your
hypothalamus is functioning. I can press hard on my leg which also
activates a different part of your brain. I do all the things that
you do for coping, to try and bring yourself out of the deep
emotion and to stay focused and present. So kind of the same things
you do with panic attack you breathe deep, breathe slow, you bring
yourself totally so you are in control of your brain, and it's not
in control of you.
- What might it look like if someone is grieving the loss of a
pet, but they just may not be aware of it. My guess is that this
the signs are similar or the same to when we lose somebody that we
love when we're in grief and we don't even realize it. If I'm
seeing someone who's not recognizing that they're grieving their
pet, I will point out some of the somatic signs that they are the
not sleeping well, craving carbohydrates, confused, short tempered,
lack of concentration, fatigue. It's not being tired when you are
grieving, you are fatigued, you just want that blanket fort and a
blankie and a pillow to lay across, and probably a Hershey bar or
something right? Or it's hot now. So maybe an ice cream bar. That
would be where I would go Ben and Jerry's, right. So I bring those
to the forefront and say now let's talk about how that relates to
grief. Because what I'm seeing and hearing, is you saying that
you're not feeling yourself. What I'm seeing is you're feeling
grief. And I know you just lost your beloved friend. Can you tell
me how these things might tie together? And I leave that sort of as
an open ended and let them see if they can tie it together.
Typically they do, and then they say I Didn't want it. I didn't
want to know it hurt that much. Yeah, I didn't want it to have to
hurt. I'm feeling guilty because I made the decision. I'm feeling
guilty because I made the decision. And then my vet wouldn't let me
go in with my pet. Which is something if you've got a sick pet, my
strongest suggestion is that you check with your vet to make sure
they will allow you to, if you have to make that decision, and if
they don't find someone who will. Because that's an important part
of saying goodbye. Being able to be the last loving arms that your
pet is in.
- When somebody’s pet dies in our family we send flowers and
cards because that pet is a part of the family. When I know that
there's a child losing a pet, I will try to get a small stuffed
animal sent to them so they have something to cuddle up with.
Immediately after, I like I get stuffed animals for kids going to
funerals, because they need something soft to hold on to and focus
on. And now there's these wonderful ones that heat up and they
smell they have like menthol, and they're just so snuggly and so
soft. And I like those for that reason. I think we need to really
be aware that this is a loss. And I think for those who are having
the loss or have had a loss, they need to be able to let themselves
grieve in the way that they need to. If it brings up past losses,
they need to also let those come forward. Frequently we adopt just
one pet, but lots of us take sibling sets, just like human
adoption. I've had clients who've had siblings and they lose one
and then they know that the other one is at some point also going
to die. So they're kind of grieving, but they're also holding out
hope that the other one is going to last a little longer. And then
whammo, they've got a double loss, so then we prepare for things as
we would for any other kind of loss--the anniversaries and the
holidays. If you're a single pet parent, your pets are part of your
holidays. I like to have people put, an ornament on the tree for
someone who's died if they do Christmas, or a special candle on the
menorah, if it's Hanukkah, or whatever holiday it is for you honor
those who have died. The church I attend has All Souls Day. I think
pets belong up there just along with people. Because that's a
significant loss in that year and it needs to be marked and talked
about. All the rituals are important; all the talking, all the
acknowledging, and then all the happy remembering. We don't want to
sit just in the grief; we want to also move into it. We were very
lucky to have them in our lives. We need to let go of any guilt or
holding on for whatever decisions we made. Because certainly making
decisions about a pet who is sick is different than
humans—especially for older pets.
WAYS TO COMMUNICATE YOUR LOSS; YOUR NEEDS; YOUR
CONDOLENCES
- If you can't be kind, I need you to back it up or take your
requests somewhere else because I don't have that much left in me
right now. And you also need to monitor yourself because you may
think you've got all the energy you normally do. And you
don't.
- What are some specific things that people can say when they
don't know what to say? They're signing a card. They're on social
media. Can you give people some phrases,
- when I'm sending a condolence card, I always reference
something-- a memory of that person or that pet. So for Waldo, you
know, I’m so missing his little face, and it was just amazing to
see how much he loved you. He was so blessed to be in your family
and to be that loved. That's an important message to hear when you
are missing someone And you may be feeling guilty. I gave my
creature the best home possible. I will say things like-- some
people may not understand, but I know you lost a family member. I
can only imagine how much it hurts to wake up in the morning with
them not there. Just know that I'm thinking about you. I wish I
could come over and be with you. Freaking COVID! just know that I'm
there with you. Yeah, if you want to call, or if it's a good time,
I will call but we're all missing your friend.
GUEST BIO
Jill Johnson-Young, LCSW is a dynamic and engaging speaker who
loves teaching both professional and community groups about
dementia, death and dying, and grief and loss. She is the CEO of
Central Counseling Services in Riverside, California, where she is
also a clinical therapist. She is a certified Grief Recovery
Facilitator after spending more than a decade with hospice as a
medical social worker and as a director of social workers,
chaplains and grief staff. She holds a BA from UC
Riverside and her MSW from the University of South Florida.
Jill has authored three children’s grief books and an adult grief
workbook with more in process, and created Your Path Through Grief,
a year-long, comprehensive grief support program which includes
resources for therapists.
PODCAST HOST
Patricia Young hosts the podcast Unapologetically Sensitive, and
works with Highly Sensitive People (HSPs) helping them to
understand their HSP traits, and turning their perceived
shortcomings into superpowers. Patricia is passionate about
providing education to help HSPs and non-HSPs understand and truly
appreciate the amazing gifts they have to offer. Patricia works
globally online with HSPs providing coaching. Patricia also
facilitates online groups for HSPs that focus on building community
and developing skills (identifying your superpowers, boundaries,
perfectionism, dealing with conflict, mindfulness, embracing
emotions, creating a lifestyle that supports the HSP, communication
and more).
LINKS
Jill’ Links
Website-- www.yourpaththroughgrief.com,
https://www.facebook.com/grieftalker/
Facebook--https://www.facebook.com/Riversidedementiasupport/,
LinkedIn--https://www.linkedin.com/in/jilljohnsonyoung/.
My pet is sick: It’s time to say goodbye by Jill
Johnson-Young
Someone is sick: How do I say Goodbye? By Jill Johnson-Young
Someone I love just died: What happens now? By Jill
Johnson-Young
Your own path through grief; A workbook for your journey to
recovery by Jill Johnson-Young
Amazon link for Jill’s books--
https://www.amazon.com/Jill-A.-Johnson-Young-LCSW/e/B07NPT5NYQ%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share
Episode 47: 20+ ways to manage change and loss through the
holidays with Jill Johnson-Young https://unapologeticallysensitive.com/episode-47/
Pet Loss and Grief Resources--https://resources.bestfriends.org/article/pet-loss-and-grief-resources
Pet Loss at Home—https://petlossathome.com/about/
Losing a Pet--https://www.helpguide.org/articles/grief/coping-with-losing-a-pet.htm
Pet Loss Support Hotline—https://vet.tufts.edu/petloss/pet-loss-support-hotline-support-group-link/
Resources--https://www.petloss.com/
Patricia’s Links
Website--www.unapologeticallysensitive.com
Facebook--
https://www.facebook.com/Unapologetically-Sensitive-2296688923985657/
Facebook group Unapologetically Sensitive-- https://www.facebook.com/groups/2099705880047619/
Instagram-- https://www.instagram.com/unapologeticallysensitive/
Youtube--
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOE6fodj7RBdO3Iw0NrAllg/videos?view_as=subscriber
e-mail-- unapologeticallysensitive@gmail.com
Show hashtag--#unapologeticallysensitive
Music-- Gravel Dance by Andy Robinson www.andyrobinson.com