Rolling Dog Farm Blog

I saw that provocative headline in the Wall Street Journal online this weekend and had to read it. I thought you'd be interested in reading it, too, so here it is:

'It's Just a Dog. Get Over It.'

The death of a pet is often dismissed. But treating loss with gravity is better for animals—and humans

 By Jessica Pierce.

Last week, the singer Fiona Apple told her fans that she would be canceling the South American leg of her concert tour in order to be with her dying dog. Ms. Apple's announcement, made in a four-page handwritten letter to fans, has elicited some pushback and—let's face it—some downright snarky commentary, as in: It's just a dog, Fiona. Get. Over. It.

What's surprising, though, is that close to 80,000 people have "liked" Ms. Apple's Facebook posting of her letter, and the vast majority of fans have supported her decision. Such expressions of support are unusual. People with strong bonds to animals often feel that the larger society in which they live assigns relatively little moral value to pets and other animals. The death of a pet is often dismissed as unimportant. And unlike Ms. Apple, most of us generally are not able to miss work because our animal is ill or dying.

The singer's decision and the reaction to it represent an emerging cultural shift, one noted by the sociologist Hal Herzog in his book "Some We Love, Some We Hate, and Some We Eat." More Americans now see themselves as living in a multispecies family. (And, no, this doesn't mean that people view their animals as miniature humans or furry children, though this stereotype might fit a few pet owners you know.) Surveys conducted by the pet industry have found that 70% of pet owners in the U.S. share a bed with their animal, a figure unsettlingly close to the percentage of people who share a bed with their spouse. And we show our devotion in how we spend. This year Americans will fork out an estimated $53 billion in caring for their pets.

Owners facing the loss of a pet are beginning to feel less isolated, partly because social-media outlets like Facebook and Internet chat rooms allow them to connect with and draw support from like-minded people. The way we care for our animals is changing, too. Once euthanasia was the default response to an animal's mortal illness. Not any more. The rapid growth of the hospice and palliative-care movement for animals reflects the new attitude.

According to one animal-hospice expert whom I interviewed for my book on how we deal with the decline and death of our pets, there are somewhere on the order of 75 veterinary hospice/palliative care services in the country. (No hard numbers are available.) Another expert estimated that around 10,000 animals are treated annually by practitioners specializing in some form of end-of-life care, approximately a tenfold increase from a decade ago. Ancillary sales of such things as doggy wheelchairs, therapeutic beds and incontinence pads are rising.

As with humans, palliative and hospice care for animals involves a family-centered approach to providing comfort and support during the dying process. Working together, pet owners and veterinarians can often maintain a good quality of life for an animal long after we might, in past times, have simply euthanized it.

For example, we can help to keep a wobbly and arthritic dog mobile by making alterations to the home environment (ramps and throw rugs and nonslip "socks") and doing physical therapy and massage. Caregivers are educated about disease process and prognosis and how to recognize and address physical and psychological suffering in their animal.

At animal hospices, owners are encouraged to talk about the anticipation of loss, what they fear, how they perceive death and what comes after. A skilled veterinarian or bereavement counselor can help. Every vet is trained in pain management and can help to create an end-of-life care plan for an animal and his or her human family. A small but growing number of veterinary professionals are certified as pain practitioners by the International Veterinary Academy of Pain Management.

It is easy—and I say this from hard experience with my own dog—to let our own fear and suffering get in the way of really being present with our animal at the end. But one of the most important things we can do for them is to acknowledge death as a natural, inevitable and deeply meaningful event.

I've spent more time in the kitchen cooking special meals for my dying dog than I spent cooking for the humans in the house—and I know I am not alone. Crazy, maybe. But not alone.

—Dr. Pierce is the author of "The Last Walk: Reflections on Our Pets at the End of Their Lives."

A version of this article appeared December 1, 2012, on page C3 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: 'It's Just a Dog. Get Over It.'.

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Speaking of Dachshunds … did I mention last week we had two new arrivals to introduce?  Hmm…

First, we hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday!

Okay, so this particular welcome is a bit overdue — Bertie came to us from Atlanta Beagle Rescue back in August! But he got off to a bad start his very first night here, when he bit my hand … hard enough to draw blood but no serious damage. It was the first time I had ever been bitten in 12 years of doing this. Then we had a second incident a couple of weeks later, so we decided to hold off making his introduction until we improved his social skills. 

He was also loud, barked constantly, and had to go everywhere at 150 mph. Moreover, unlike any other Beagle we'd known, Bertie didn't seem interested in people. The folks at Atlanta Beagle Rescue had described him as an "odd duck," and they were right. 

We set to work on a Bertie make-over. As in, Miss Manners comes to Rolling Dog Farm.

Early on, every evening when we brought the dogs in for dinner, Bertie would careen around the room, running flat-out and crashing head-first into walls, crates, table legs, etc. He'd pick himself up, then zoom off to do it all over again. (Blindness + Speed = Headache.) Alayne called him "Pinball Bertie." This didn't seem to bother him, but it clearly needed intervention. I began to bring him in on a leash, teaching him to walk quietly and patiently by my side, and not releasing him until he gave me a quiet sit in front of his crate.

"Quiet" was the operative word in his training, because this was a dog who clearly had been able to bark and bay all day long his entire life. We suspect that he probably had been a hunting Beagle and lived in a kennel, where that is normal behavior. He learned that we don't permit that here, and he needed to cool it. That was a struggle, but by us staying on top of him and getting on his case as soon as he started to bark, Bertie is now a much quieter boy than when he first arrived.

We've had no more biting incidents, either, since he learned his place in the new pack.

Bertie is still relatively "distant" in terms of a connection with us, but he does seem a little more focused on us than he once did. Nothing like any of other dogs yet, but our sense is that he is slowly coming around and will one day be affectionate. He spends his days with blind Louie the Beagle and blind Bugsy, both of whom are very affectionate, so I think this will rub off on Bertie, too, just like Louie helped Bugsy turn the corner.

Miss Manners hasn't given Bertie his Certificate of Good Behavior yet, but we can see a day soon when he will successfully complete the course!

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A few minutes after we let the dogs out the other morning, our barn cat Smoke saw blind Penny the Yorkie drinking from the bucket by the fence and headed straight for her. Something about Penny caught his attention, and he kept trying to reach her by sticking his paw through the fence. (I took the photo with my phone, which is why the quality isn't so good.) It was odd because he so clearly wanted to physically touch her. Exactly why I don't know!

Between being blind and having her head in the bucket, Penny never seemed to realize Smoke was there — she was just out of reach by an inch or so — and I don't know what she would have done if she had figured out there was a mysterious cat's paw by her face. (Yes, we have smaller water bowls for the small dogs but as I've pointed out in other posts, they like drinking out of the big dogs' buckets and vice versa.)

The lumber on the driveway was for a remodeling/repair project — Billy the blind Beagle and Max the Dachshund have been destroying the lattice under the porch, and after several patch jobs, we decided it was time for some stout lumber to close it off instead of lightweight lattice that can be chewed up and ripped apart.

In any case, Smoke kept pawing at her for a minute or so until giving up and wandering away. Penny eventually quit drinking and sauntered off, none the wiser.

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