“Gotham Gigs: She pets the patients - Crain's New York Business” plus 3 more |
- Gotham Gigs: She pets the patients - Crain's New York Business
- A hospice service for pets - Palm Beach Interactive
- Terminally ill pets and their grieving families find ... - Post-Crescent
- Pets to Adopt - Baton Rouge Advocate
| Gotham Gigs: She pets the patients - Crain's New York Business Posted: 02 May 2010 02:51 AM PDT The content you requested ... Gotham Gigs: She pets the patients ... requires a digital subscription. Five Filters featured article: The Art of Looking Prime Ministerial - The 2010 UK General Election. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
| A hospice service for pets - Palm Beach Interactive Posted: 02 May 2010 02:08 AM PDT By ALEXANDRA ZAYAS The Associated Press TAMPA, Fla. — An hour before, Dr. Dani McVety begins to prepare. "Come on, girls," she calls to her two rat terriers, "in the crate. "You too, Foose." A big, brown mutt settles into the third cage in McVety's Lutz home as she shuts the door and heads out to the garage. She pulls a green scrub shirt over her head, opens her trunk and unlocks a black box to reveal liquid-filled bottles. She inserts a syringe in one and slowly extracts a pink fluid, the last she'll use today. It's part of a list of things she does before she gets to someone's home, things she doesn't want them to see. She also fills out their authorization form in advance, because she has seen how hard it is to write with shaking hands. As a rule, she never arrives early. So she heads to Starbucks first and orders a dark cherry mocha — decaf, because she and her husband just found out she's pregnant for the second time. In many ways, the 28-year-old veterinarian is just starting her life. Yet on this morning, the career path she has chosen takes her to a Land O'Lakes home. To end one. McVety is a hospice veterinarian, part of a growing movement to revolutionize the way animals die. It's modeled after human hospice, focusing on pain and grief management and creating a comforting scenario for families and pets when the end comes. Some veterinarians have been doing these things for the past few decades, but hospice care is only now becoming a recognized field in veterinary medicine. It's no surprise. Pets have evolved into family members, and better medicine means they're living longer with serious illnesses. Meanwhile, more and more people have had good experiences with human hospice. The demand is high. McVety performs five in-home euthanasias a week. In one day this week, she had four. When she graduated from the University of Florida's vet school last year, she never imagined this would become her job. She grew up with horses in Odessa, wanting to become an equine veterinarian, but shifted to a different kind of pet care because she preferred the connection she felt with owners of dogs and cats. She knew losing animals came with saving them, but she dreaded her first death. She was at the Tampa Bay Veterinary Emergency Service on Bearss Avenue when she realized she had a talent for dealing with people in pain. A woman came in at 8 p.m. with a cat that had only hours left. The woman insisted her cat could not die that day, the one-year anniversary of her last cat's death. She said she didn't know how she could drive home, but told McVety she wanted to leave the cat there, and asked the doctor to call when her pet was dead. McVety told her she needed to stay. Her cat needed her. At 12:01 a.m., they put the cat to sleep. And the woman, who had the time she needed to say goodbye, was able to drive home. All she needed was for it to happen on her terms. The doctor saw herself in the grieving pet owners who walked into the clinic night after night. She was a year or two into college when her childhood dog, Dusty, developed such severe arthritis she couldn't stand. The family had to pick up the 80-pound Doberman, put her in the car and unload her at the clinic. McVety already had enough medical knowledge to know how much pain that caused Dusty. She remembers walking into the waiting room and having to pass a bouncing puppy. Seeing the doctor for two or three minutes. Wishing she could hold her dog, but not being able to because of where the IV was placed. Wanting to rip the tube out of her dog's leg once it was over. In August, she started a hospice practice. She settled on a name after watching a chihuahua die curled up in a woman's lap. She called it Lap of Love. McVety runs her hand through the thick white fur of a German shepherd sprawled by the sliding glass door of a lakefront Pasco County home. "He's gorgeous," McVety says. His name is Rudy. He is 14 years old. He has arthritis, bad hips and tumors throughout his body. His hearing and sight have faded and he can't stand up or hold his bladder. His family — Judy Turner, her husband and their 14-year-old son, Jacob — scheduled this visit weeks ago to fall on spring break. They feel like they've waited too long. They tell McVety about Rudy, the way he used to dip his paws in the swimming pool, as if he were soaking his nails. The way he used to squeeze out of the yard when they were gone, but return just before they got home. The way he wouldn't go into the house before each one of them was inside, safe. Five Filters featured article: The Art of Looking Prime Ministerial - The 2010 UK General Election. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
| Terminally ill pets and their grieving families find ... - Post-Crescent Posted: 02 May 2010 02:22 AM PDT Ten years ago when Brenda Herubin and husband Bob adopted Woody, a yellow labrador/German shepherd mix puppy, Brenda thought she might have gotten more dog than she bargained for. And she was right. "Wonderful, wonderful," is how the Clintonville woman now describes Woody. "Everyone says, oh my dog is so smart. But he does seem to be an intelligent animal. And you know labs, they like to please. He's been great." When the couple learned in December that Woody had liver cancer, they understandably were devastated. They braced for the heartbreak to come. Lisa Peters, emergency and critical care veterinarian at the Fox Valley Animal Referral Center in Appleton, suggested hospice care for the terminally ill dog. "She is so respectful and warm, such a great listener and source of comfort," Herubin said. "Someone who I didn't feel foolish to cry and talk about what he meant to me. … And so she's my safety net with (Woody)." Pet hospice is based on human hospice, which began in the early 1970s as an alternative for terminally ill patients dying in hospital intensive care units while undergoing heroic but hopeless treatment. Hospice provides compassionate care to patients at the end of their lives and also supports families in the bereavement process. Nearly identical to its human counterpart, the purpose of veterinary hospice is to maximize the quality of life for terminally ill or dying pets in their own home, to embrace owners' decisions concerning the remaining time they have left with their pet and to give dying pets and the people who love them quality time together. "It's just a matter of respect," said Hajek Adams, director of Healing Heart Pet Hospice and president of the Healing Heart Foundation. "It is my job to support you in a compassionate and loving way." A CVT since 1972, Hajek Adams has spent the last 14 years working in emergency and critical care at the Fox Valley Animal Referral Center. The job was an eye-opener. "We witnessed animals that we could cure and heal and they'd go home and animals that perhaps were at the end-stage of a disease process and all people wanted to do was get them home for a little while instead of (have them) dying in a hospital," she said. Extending palliative care to the owners of pets seemed a given to Hajek Adams, who spent two years researching the topic and hooked up with others already practicing pet hospice. People like Alice Villalobos, a well-known pioneer in the field of cancer care for companion animals, founding member of the Veterinary Cancer Society and creator of Pawspice end-of-life palliative care. There also was the Colorado State University's Argus Institute, which offers support to people who are facing difficult decisions regarding their pet's health, and Dr. Amir Shanan, who has offered animal hospice for more than 15 years as owner of Compassionate Veterinary Care of Chicago. Hajek Adams and a colleague also attended ThedaCare hospice training through ThedaCare at Home and found all the information concerning human hospice completely transferable to pets. Research completed, Hajek Adams recommended starting pet hospice at the referral center, which fully supported the idea, but had just launched an ophthalmology department and, from a business standpoint, had to decline. One of the veterinarians there suggested starting a nonprofit organization and backed the suggestion with a donation. Healing Hearts Foundation was launched with the premise it would sponsor programs honoring the spirit of the human/animal bond. The first program was the pet hospice, which began in May 2008. Also planned are a program on pet loss and bereavement and another on medical and financial aid for veterinary hardship cases. Healing Heart Pet Hospice, which leases space at Fox Valley Animal Referral Center, is comprised of Hajek Adams and fellow CVT Christy Rach, Peters and Lisa Flood, also an emergency and critical care veterinarian. Forming a doctor/client/patient relationship is mandatory per Wisconsin law. Once hospice is called, a CVT conducts an at-home assessment. The hospice care team then meets to discuss the pet, medications and problems, and to form the best plan to make the pets remaining days the best they can be. Cost is dependent on the intensity of care required. Guy and Karen Smith's purebred big standard poodle Monte, who died a year ago this week, was a prince among pups. "You could live a hundred lifetimes and never find another one," Guy Smith of Black Creek said, recalling the time four years ago when the poodle protected Karen from two charging pit bulls. When Monte was diagnosed with cancer of the spleen at Fox Valley Animal Referral, Karen ran into Hajek Adams, who she'd met years before at a horse rescue. She offered her help. The couple was told Monte could die in a day but for sure within weeks. "It was wonderful," said Smith, adding that Monte was a part of the family and, for them, had the same status as a child. Like the Smiths, Herubin's goal also is to help Woody live his best life now. But there are a lot of misconceptions about pet hospice, Hajek Adams said. "We have a camp that thinks this is just a way to prolong life at any cost. We have another camp that says why don't we just euthanize these animals." It also is a bit of a paradigm shift for those in veterinary care. "This certainly is not for everybody but to give somebody the option is everything," Hajek Adams said. "It is my job to give you information. It is not my job to tell you what to do. It is my job to give you all the tools to make a good decision as an advocate for your pet. "At the end what we have with our clients is they are still sad but the regrets are not there because you have somebody walking with you, not ahead of you and not behind you but with you to make these decisions." Smith has felt that comfort. "The last few days we had Monte at home was as normal as it could be," he said. "If we would have taken another direction, we'd always have regrets and wonder if we did it right." "A common misconception is that hospice emphasizes death, which is not the case," Hajek Adams said. "Hospice care is about finding hope." And it's a dignified way to say goodbye to a beloved pet — a pet like Woody. "That will be his end then," Herubin said. "And (Hajek Adams) said it should be peaceful and not painful. He'll just get tired and feel kind of weak and just want to sleep."
When to seek out veterinary hospice care Hospice info Cheryl Anderson: 920-993-1000, ext. 249, or canderson@postcrescent.com Five Filters featured article: The Art of Looking Prime Ministerial - The 2010 UK General Election. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
| Pets to Adopt - Baton Rouge Advocate Posted: 01 May 2010 10:04 PM PDT
The Animal Control Center, 2680 Progress Road, has plenty of animals that need good homes. There are all types of cats and dogs available at the center, which is open from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Mondays through Fridays and from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturdays. The center also will conduct mid-month Saturday remote adoptions, using its mobile adoption trailer, at locations to be announced. The center is closed on Sundays, holidays, holiday weekends and in special circumstances. All animals will be spayed or neutered prior to adoption. Also, volunteers are being sought to foster a dog or cat at home for a period of one week to two months. Contact Animal Control by phone at (225) 774-7700 or visit http://www.brgov.com/dept/animal/ for more information on adoption of animals or what to do about stray animals. Click "Report Abuse" to notify our moderators that a comment may contain objectionable content. Your comment appears to contain objectionable content and must be reviewed by a site moderator. If your comment is deemed objectionable, it will not appear on the site. Five Filters featured article: The Art of Looking Prime Ministerial - The 2010 UK General Election. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
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