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11. Are You Exhausted as a Senior Pet Parent? · Senior Pet Talk | for dogs + cats

• Amanda Steffen: No. You are listening to Senior Pet Talk, the show where we combine Western and Chinese medicine to give senior dog and cat parents the knowledge, the clarity, and the confidence to make sure that your pets' senior years are their best years yet. I'm Dr. Amanda Stefan. Let's get started. Hello, senior pet parent, and welcome to another episode of the Senior Pet Duck Podcast. I am extremely excited to have you here with me today because today I want to talk about you. We typically are talking about your pet, but today I want to talk about the impact that caregiving has on you. And I want to validate a couple things. I want you to feel understood in this episode. And I want you to feel less alone because those are the things that I hear people say the most. Just because my animal is not a person, then I feel like people don't understand how upset I am or why I feel the way that I do, or why it's so exhausting to take care of them the way that we have to take care of them, because it is draining and it is exhausting. And that doesn't mean that we would not do it all over again a thousand times because I know everyone would. I know if I had a moment to spend one of those very hard days with Floyd again where he was waking up every fifteen minutes and jumping off the couch and then he couldn't get back on the couch, so I had to go help him get back on the couch, or he wanted to go outside every hour or so and then he would go down the hill and he couldn't get back up the hill. So then I had to go help him. I would do that every day forever if it meant my guilt to hurt. So I'm not saying that we don't feel this and it's something we regret or that we don't want to have, but it also should be validated that this is really hard and what you're doing is exhausting and it's not something that should have to be done on your own. So I I just want you to feel a little validated in this podcast today and gonna talk through a couple of the different names of things. I'm gonna talk through a couple ways to prioritize and help on the end of this as well. Okay. So I know you have probably thought about I can't go to that dinner with my friends tonight because if I go, then I am not gonna be able to give Molly her mats at 7 PM. So I'm just gonna cancel. I'm not gonna go to that. And then one of the bigger ones is I can't go on this trip because I am afraid of leaving them alone. I just had one of my clients ask me to come do full physical before they went on a vacation because their pet is thirteen and even though he's generally healthy. You're always concerned about that, right? So that's entirely understandable. I think that we really have to think about the caregiver burden and the aspect of taking care of our pet on top of, you know, typically having a full time job or having a family to take care of, ⁓ kids and and relatives or even other older family members that we're caring for. We don't get a lot of time to really just sit and have a moment to breathe because we're always bouncing back and forth doing all these different things. And you can't tell work, ⁓ I can't come in today because, you know, my pet's not feeling well because your work is going to go okay. And I hope that changes. I I do hope that changes with time. I do know there are some places that are now giving pet bereavement days after like the loss of a pet. And I am so grateful for that to be coming into play. But I do think that this is something a lot of people feel like they are navigating a lot. And I just want you to know that if you're listening to this podcast with all the other people listening this podcast, if you're any someone who follows me on social media or anything like that, there's a hundred thousand other people that are just like you. I promise. And even more than that, right? So there's there are a lot of people. Everyone that I talk to on virtual consultations or in my in home clients or in my program. Pretty much everyone feels the same way, where they just feel like they there's a lot of burnout and stress associated with this. And it has real data behind it, right? So there was a researcher named Mary Beth Spitzdogle, I believe is how you say her name. And her and some other colleagues of hers basically took something that was used in humans and facilitated it over due pat parents. And the original research that was done on this found that owners of pets with chronic or turbulent illness showed measurably higher stress levels and higher symptoms of depression and anxiety than owners of healthy pets. Which makes complete sense and we know that rationally. Obviously if our pet is sick, you're going to have more of those symptoms and more of those things that go on. I just think the big idea here is that how our pets are doing really does have a dramatic effect on our well-being and our quality of life. And we have to make sure we are leaving space for that in our lives. They looked specifically at oncology patients and they found that more than one-third of caregivers were experiencing a significant level of burden. at the time that they were surveyed, right? So caregiver burden has been linked to other problems like lower adherence treatment plans, higher rates of considering euthanasia sooner, and burn out the transfers onto everyone, right? Your friends, your family, that workers, all those types of things. So there is actually a a ⁓ recognized validated questionnaire now, which I urge all of you to go find this questionnaire and take it and use that information to the best of your ability to maybe get some people to help you out or to, you know, go through some of these other things that we'll talk about at end of this. But it's called the and I do apologize. There's not a T line version yet. Cats are unfortunately kind of like the women of veterinary medicine. There's not a lot of research on them. Usually it's dogs first, then we have some cat studies. And that's not fair. And I do think a lot of times we can use some of these things across lines, but this is one where it's gonna be a little difficult because we know cats and dogs show decline differently, right? So some of these assessment tools may not be as efficient for that. However, I do think this is worth For dog and cat parents to look into. It's called the Canine Caregiver Burden Assessment Tool or C C V A T. And it is a 24 question tool that's built specifically for dog parents. I do have cat parents who do this too, and it they do feel like it does a good job at measuring things like quality of life, at your impact on your life, frustrations, difficulty providing care, and feeling involved. So you can find that at hit pet. Here, giveaburden.com, they do have the questionnaire on there. So you should be able to take that. So a story that is newer to me and I think is really helpful for people to hear is one of my program clients, Ellie, she recently moved and she moved with her 19 year old cat. And when Ellie joined my program in like six or seven months ago, she thought that she was going to be saying goodbye to Leo soon. She didn't even think that they would make it through the program. And here we are, six months later, and Leo ⁓ is doing better than he ever has been, you know, in the past two years at his senior hood, right? In his super senior hood, I guess I would say. And they have been surviving. And Ellie had to move. And Leo obviously had to move too. Leo has some vision issues. You cannot see very much at all. So she is very concerned about that. But Ellie did such a good job. She was so prepared. And she moved and she said he didn't skip a beat. He's eating, he's wandering around the new place. He's figuring out where everything is that he wants to do. He's he's doing so well. And he's sleeping through the night, like he's doing all the right things, right? Well The other side of this is Ellie is sick now, not in like a terminal way. She's just got a a cough and some other things that are going on with her. And she said, Look, I don't care if I'm okay or not. He's okay. And that's what matters. Like I I'll figure it out. And if that is not what every single one of us does, right? We all just go. You know, as long as they're taken care of, I will figure it out. But what I reminded her and what I'm gonna remind you is that you cannot pour from an egg deca. And also our pets sense when we're stressed. So we do have to try and make sure we are taking care of ourselves in all of this so that we are able to take care of them better, right? So I love that Leo is doing well. But one of the things that we talked about in our last meeting was I want Ellie to focus on taking care of herself and taking moment for herself and all of this, right? And one of the other main points that I do want to touch on with this is things with dogs and cats like Leo and Ellie. The things that we would look for in Leo would be him, you know, staying awake all night, him wandering around the house, yowling. Him hiding in the closet, him not eating, those types of things. Cats tend to do more of this like hidden, anxious type of thing because they're gonna mask on us so well. And it can make us as their pet parents live in this constant state of like, is this normal or not? Is this normal aging changes? Because you would think that it could be, or is this truly something to worry about if I see your cat? makes it very difficult to notice changes in these guys. And that I think leaves this chronic low level of stress on pet parents because we're just like, are we missing it or are they okay? For dogs, they're going to be more of these physical gear giver burden issues that I see oftentimes with like they can't get up and down the stairs anymore. They're having accidents at night, they're wandering around the house at night, they're you're having to carry them in outside, which I know we will do over and over again, but at the same time, it is a lot on our bodies. And it is a lot to see them, you know, trip and blood on the stairs, or if they fall when they're trying to get up off the hardwood floor, or we walk into the kitchen and we happen to find them split on the floor and they can't get up, right? That is not ideal for our pets, but it's also very stressful on us as pet parents. I've done all of those things with Floyd when he was here, and it is very hard to watch all of those things deteriorate and change. And I think that creates this chronic low level of stress in us as pet parents, right? There is a concept that I want you to understand. And this concept is called anticipatory grief. I am going to touch on a lot of things in this episode lightly, just so we can review them. And then we're gonna have deep episodes on each of these. Anticipatory grief is an episode that I'm gonna have with one of the veterinarians who's in my program and does live coaching calls twice a month, Dr. Jen. Dr. Jenna is very amazing at talking to people about anticipatory grief. And basically, this is like a grieving the loss of our pet before they're gone. And that can start from the day you bring them home. That can start at any point. So it can be very hard. And I was just talking to a virtual client yesterday about this too. We just look at them and we want to go. Just live in this moment, just pet them and just appreciate them being here right now. But this little part in the back of our head is going, they're going to break my heart, believe me. Right. And it's so hard to cut that guy in the background off and to not have that feeling come up all the time. So this is something that I feel like most people deal with. especially in seeing your husband, but it can happen at any point in our past life where we are just thinking about this, what what it's gonna be like when they're gone. Specifically, guilt is another part of this. What I talk about a lot of times is is hindsight bias, right? So we look back and I did this with Floyd. I ⁓ we did chemo, we did radiation, we did, and then we did surgery. I did everything that was offered and I thought would potentially give him more good time. We did always put good time at the forefront of our mind, but I was told with radiation therapy, he would get two years of, you know, good time. And he did it. And that's okay. But also in my head, looking back, I'm like, was it worth putting him through three to five weeks straight of radiation therapy we paid to get sedated for the no improvement that we got to see on the other side of that. And in hindsight, no, it wasn't, but I would have never known. And that hindsight bias is something that we have to understand is gonna be there, but we also have to give ourselves some grace. We have to understand that we can't see the future. And in every moment we are making the best decision for our pets that we can with the information that's presented in front of us. And one of the hardest things is that we have to make a decision, right? If you find out that your pet has cancer, you have to decide Am I going to do nothing? Am I going to do radiation and chemotherapy? Am I going to do the just supportive Palliative care medications? Am I gonna seek alternative therapies? What am I gonna do? And you have to make that call. You can't look at your pet and say, Hey, what do you want? Like we can with people a lot of size. So I think that can be another very difficult part of being that caregiver and having to also be the one who makes the decisions on their medical care. And then not knowing what the other side of that medical care is gonna look like. Is it gonna be the right answer? Or did I just make a really wrong answer? I think this is something too that I urge people always to give yourself raison and try not to harp too much on what choices you made that you might ha not have been as happy with because you didn't want. you were doing the absolute best that you could in that moment. And we just have to be okay with those things. I also think that it's really important for us to do a little touch on when the right time to let our pets go is. And I think there's a lot of caregiver anxiety around this. How do we know we don't want to make that decision too early? And feel like we're taking some of their life away from them. We also don't want to do it too late and have them have a string of weeks of just really bad days before they leave us as well. And they all respond a little differently, right? So I've seen hundreds of different pets at this point in their seniorhood. And sometimes they'll have you know, five good days and then they'll have one or two bad days, but then they bounce back. And they've bounced back seven different times. So when they have a couple low days, we're always like, ⁓ should we replant anything? And then we're like, well no, they usually bounce back. Well what if they don't on the other side of that? And that's always in your head, right? And it's just wondering like, okay, are those getting more frequent? What are we what decision are we going to make when We're not gonna let this keep happening when they have these bad strings of bad days. And I just want to say there's not gonna be one there may be, there may be one magical moment where you say it is time. And I have plenty of people tell me that if, you know, they feel like if they truly listen to their pet, they know. And I I felt a little bit of that with my dogs, but at the same time, you're never ready. You're never ready to make a phone call and plan, you know, for their end of life, you're never ready to feel like ⁓ you're letting them down or making that final call, right? And I am just saying other things that I know you're thinking. I don't I believe that euthanasia is one of the kindest things that we get to do. I think that it is a way for us to not have them suffer. My granddad was a DNR, which means do not results to pee. He coded. And the emergency career that picked him up did not know that he was a DNR. So they performed CPM on him. And they got him back, kind of. But he never made it out of the hospital. And I think about the interactions with him and suffering, being in pain for those last few days, and you know, was that really what he would have wanted or not? So when we're making these decisions for our pets, I know there are a lot of reasons people may decide not to. There can be religious r reasons and things like that. And I support all of those things. We do the best we can. And we always have the conversation of, you know, what's best for you and for your pet. And I'm always gonna respect those things. However, in my experience, I have held the hand of many human family members who were so ready and had to slowly go. And knew they were going, but they don't get this opportunity for saying when they're done. And I wholeheartedly agree with letting our pets go before they have that chronic separate that's going on. I think that is one of the kindest things we can do. Our pets' brains are not the same as ours. Their forebrain is not the same as ours. their critical thinking skills are not the same as ours. We cannot compare their thinking skills and things like that to ours. They live in the moment. They live so much in this exact moment of life. And I just think, you know, if if they were living in that moment and they just knew that moment was painful and always painful and they were in chronic pain as someone who suffers from chronic pain. I think that that's not a great way to live their life. Right. I do have chronic pain. I am treated for that. I am maintained right now. But I do know there is usually a time where the pain medications are not going to be enough or the pain control is not going to be enough. And unlike humans, we can't just place them on a morphoodrove until they pass. Right. So I think these things are really important. To talk about. They're very hard to talk about. But especially in this day and age, we care so much about our pets. And I think that if you opened up about this to family and friends who also had older pets, you'd be surprised at how similar your feelings on a lot of these things are and how less alone you would feel about it. Okay. So One of the really interesting things to me is that research on caregiver burden repeatedly connects owner satisfaction with the veterinary relationship and having a clear plan to lower the burden and reduced consideration of premature euthanasia. So meaning that the plan that we have in place with our parents and our vet team is fundamental to them feeling like they chose a good time or an appropriate time or helping with that caregiver burden and that carid giver fatigue, right? That is paramount. I know with the pet parents I see, I am very lucky to own a practice where I get to spend an hour with each of my clients each time I see them. And I see them every two to four weeks. So those pets are getting checkups with me monthly, you know typically as seniors and I see fifteen year old dogs, a lot of them. I see nineteen year old cats, quite a few of them as well. You know, I see a lot of these super seniors. And when we do get to that end of life time frame, they are very clear on what they want and when is time and we get to talk through those things. And that's something I really appreciate about What I do with my info business is I get to truly have that conversation with them and make them feel ready and heard and understood and I think help a lot with our carrier burden. I do would think on the other side of it, you know, they're sad, but most of my pet parents are comfortable with the decisions that they made because they felt like they truly got to talk it out with somebody. And I think that can be extremely helpful. So I want to go through five tips with you guys that helps with that caregiver burden and ways that you can help yourself so that you can help your pet more, right? One of these is having a flare plan. I do this with all of my roadmap program clients. So this is knowing ahead of time of what a bad day looks like and what to do about it. That's the big thing, right? So having a plan in place of like, if they're not eating, we do this. If they're having some pain, we have this plan in place of different things we can do. In the hostess and palliative care world, we often have like a a fox that's pre made up for pet parents at their home where there are some stronger medications or things like that in there. If we have these Flare-ups, especially getting towards end of life, to be able to help. As opposed to what I see often when I work in emergency medicine, is someone's coming in with their 17-year-old chihuahua who's having some pain and they don't have anything at home. They don't have a plan. They don't know what to do. So they're sitting in ER for four hours with their pet to get some pain medications and to get evaluated. Then if they had an appropriate plan set up in place before a Saturday night at nine o'clock, that wouldn't have had to happen. Right. So I am a huge advocate for these player plans. And I think they're extremely important for a good quality of life for our senior cats and for our comfort level and for us as caregivers to feel confident and comfortable about how we're caring for them. Right. I want you to, if something happens, I want you to be able to say, ⁓ I have my fire plan. I can do this. I I'm ready. One of the main goals of all of what I do in senior pet care is to empower pet parents and to make them feel confident as a partner in their pet's care. I want them to be the most important part of their pet security. And that's something I'm extremely passionate about and creating. And that's why I have the program that I have to teach you. Because I think I can tell you things all day long, but they're gonna show you a different sign later. So being able to teach people, make people feel seen and heard and understood is something that's extremely important in this senior pet to care era, right? The next thing is to track things objectively, so not just from memory. So I want you to do like a monthly or bi weekly journal of things like appetite, their mobility, their grooming, their litter box, their bathroom habits. So things like, you know, just saying, I feel like she's getting worse. And then, you know, you have two people in the room and one partner says, Well, I don't know, she ate last week and the other one's like, No, she wasn't eating as well last week. I want you to write those things down so that you can come in and you can say no, I know, you know, a week ago she she was not eating all of her food and she did, you know, she left this much in her bowl. She was leaving with her food in her bowl or something like that. And then, you know, she maybe she didn't go to the litter box. So she usually pees three times a day and she only peed once that day. Or she usually poops every other day and she has been pooping every like third day. That tells me a little bit like, hey, maybe her input or how much she's taking in isn't as effective as it needs to be, or we're having some consultation issues or things like that, right? So tracking these things objectively written down somewhere, not just doing it from memory is going to be extremely helpful. The third thing that I want you to do is to write out your own end of life red flags ahead of time. So this is something where you say Okay, well, I know when they're not eating. That's a big red flag. So my dog, Mabel, she's ten years old. I don't know a single time that dog has missed a meal except for when I know she had a foreign body and she had to have surgery. If she doesn't eat, if we get to the end of the road with her and she's having multiple days where she's not eating or eating less and doing this types of things, I know that is not the quality of life she would want. Because her right now and her ten year old self is chowing down on every single me. She does not miss food. So I think it's very important to know. With Floyd, one of his favorite things to do was go on a walk around the block. It was a very spug walk by the end of it, but he still wanted to go. And if there was ever times where he didn't want to go, that would to me was a very big red flag of he's not feeling good, something's going on, right? So write down what you feel like their quality of life markers are. What are the things that make them who they are? And when those things are deteriorating, we have something to look back on and actually tell us what's going on as opposed to being tired and stressed in that moment where we've been up every hour for the past two months and we just can't think straight anymore. This is a good way for us to have like a a data point to look at, right? Another thing is bringing someone else into the conversation. And this can be hard. I will say I had this. I took Floyd to Christmas, the last Christmas before we said goodbye to him. And my mom, I distinctly remember, she said, he doesn't ⁓ Scott. And that hurt. It did. And she named it in the nicest way. I know that. But at the same time, it did make me take a step back and say, ⁓ maybe I mean he was he was tripping up the stairs, he had lost a lot of muscle mass, he was having a lot of problems. And to her, who only sees him twice a year, you know That wasn't the dog that she knew. And she was right. But someone that you trust and that you know is gonna give you the truth, but in the kindest way, bringing them into that conversation can be really helpful. And sometimes it's more helpful than someone who only sees them every two weeks to once a month, so they can tell you truly what they've noticed over that time frame, right? So like making sure that you have someone you trust to bring into that conversation can be really helpful for you. Okay. Have you ever left the vet with more questions than answers? And then you drive home and you go straight on to Google. Yeah, I hear that a lot. And honestly, it's exactly why I created my senior pet virtual consultations. Imagine we have 45 minutes where we go through everything, your pet's full history, their specific challenges, their daily life, no rushing. We're gonna cover nutrition, integrative options, whole modifications, and quality of life. And I send you a personalized plan after so that nothing slips through the cracks here. But don't just take my word for it. Chelsea called it a senior pup therapy session and said she felt so much better afterwards. Adiba got recommendations her own vet had never thought to suggest, and Denise said that the consult was incredibly informative and helpful, giving her many options to help her dog Loki feel better. This is the conversation that your senior pet deserves. And honestly, The one you deserve too. The link is in the description. I'd love to help you. The last one that I want to talk to talk about here is talking to your vet about these hospice and palliative care supports if you know your pet has a chronic diagnosis. This is not, I think one of the misconceptions here is that this is for the last like couple weeks of life. And that's not what hospice and palliative care is. Hospice and palliative care can be for two years of their life. Anytime we get this chronic diagnosis. It could be as simple as arthritis, it could be a cancer, it could be ⁓ endocrine disease, like crushings or pituitary tumors, or like anything like that. Anytime we get these chronic disease diagnosis, I think it's very important to start having the conversation with your vet about, okay, what are the markers that I should look for in this disease to tell me that it's getting worse? And then we can start to talk a little bit more about like what is that gonna look like on the other side for me. And also as the caregiver, you have to decide whether these are things that you can handle, right? If I have a I have a a client, they are in their 80s and they have a German shepherd. The woman has had surgery on her back multiple times. So when we're talking about this dog, you know, if she were to become paralyzed or something like that, that is not something that they can handle. And that is something we have to be really realistic about, right? If you're not going to be able to care for them, it's also it's not fair to you or to them. To try and proceed with these things, right? And I think that's a really hard thing. But are there modifications that we can do? Are there other things we can do to help them? Right. So being able to talk kukoma with your gut, I think is one of the most amazing and underrated things to be able to do. So asking, you know, what does progression of this disease look like? What are things I need to look out for? Maybe what are things I can do to change up my house to better care for them given these scenarios? What are things that I can manage? What are some things that I can add in to do to help them? That's also going to help loosen your load when it comes to this caregiver component of things. So if this is a heavy episode and I appreciate you staying in here with me. We talked about a lot of things. We talked about ancestral grief. We talked about guilt. We talked about that kid because our burden itself. We talked about the different aspects of the hindsight bias and, you know, just being able to feel like we are doing a good job, but also not burn ourselves out. So I think it's really important I'm gonna round this off by giving you a couple of things to do for yourself. And I really want you to take this to heart. Okay. Take a 10-minute walk to yourself. It's not that much. Just to yourself. Take a 10-minute walk to think about things. Don't put headphones in. Don't talk to anyone on the phone. Just like 10 minutes by yourself. Take lots of videos and pictures and just try your best. Set up your set up your phone in the corner. Be be quote unquote cringy. I don't care. Set up your phone in the corner and just record you guys sitting on a couch together. And be in that moment. And that way you can know, well, I have this video so I can just truly exist in this moment with like it, right? Asking someone for help. We ⁓ are such a society, especially in the US, where we say we can do it all on our own. And I always like to say, but you don't have to. That's the thing. Just because you can't isn't you have to. So ask a partner for help. Ask a neighbor for help. I promise you there are so many people around you who truly want to help you. Maybe you Ask a friend, say, look, he stays up all night or he wakes up multiple hours throughout the night. I know that's a lot, but are you able to watch him throw at night and and get up with him and have the expectation you're gonna get up with him so I can go stay in a hotel for night and sleep for the night? That is not you pushing something off on somebody, that's you Allowing someone to help you so that you can fill your cup up and be a better pattern, right? So just taking those moments to truly try and refill your cup. ⁓ sit down and have your coffee and drink your whole coffee while it's five. Truly just try and take some small tidbit monets and truly rest. And Revitalize yourself and make some lists and make sure you know what your cutoffs are, make sure you know when you need some help. It's okay to ask for help. Okay. When Floyd was deteriorating, I was pregnant and I wasn't sleeping great. And he wasn't sleeping great. So every hour we were off. If I would say like I was up every two hours took him to take him out and go to the bathroom. And then every other hour, I was up for me to have to go to the bathroom. And with him, he would go outside and he would wander down the hill in the backyard. And then I have to go down there and get him like three o'clock in the morning. And after my daughter was born, he liked to be on the couch and I'm always gonna let him be on the couch. But he had a hard time getting onto the couch. So I'm trying to take care of my daughter. And every 15 minutes he would get up and get off the couch and then take a couple laps around the living room and then want to get back on the couch. So I put my daughter down and I would go over and I would help him back up on the couch. And Again, I would do that every day for the rest of my life if it meant I get to have a mirror with me. So I don't regret those times. But what I do wish I had done more on is ask for more help. I wish that I would have expressed how hard that was for me and that I did need help because it was very difficult to do on my own. So coming from someone who has absolutely been there. I'm asking you to break things down, to ask for help, to find ⁓ that team that you really are comfortable with and you feel confident with and you're able to ask questions too, because it will really change the game for you. Okay. I always want you to remember that you are doing a great job with the information that you have in this moment. You are a fantastic caregiver. If you are listening to this podcast, I know you're a wonderful pet parent. You're a wonderful caregiver and I am so proud of you. And take a moment for yourself sitting, okay? That's it for today. If this episode helped you, please leave a review or rate this podcast so we can get the word out to more pet parents who need to hear that they are doing a good job. And if you're interested in working more with me, you can find me on social media or at seniorpetconnection.com because we all need to stay connected. Remember that you are doing a great job with the information that you have in this moment. And I am just here to give you more of it. See you next week.