Part 1: What Are the 3 Stages of Pet Hospice Care?

I first met my beloved cat, Mikey, when I was a veterinary student in Colorado. He had been living at the clinic for about three months after he was brought in with a severe injury to his back foot, an upper respitory infection, and eyes swollen shut. Though he was still on antibiotics, the clinic had done a great job rehabilitating him and I just knew he was destined for a forever home with me.I’ve had several great years with Mikey, but recently he started to experience some health problems and decreased quality of life. It’s truly heartbreaking to see Mikey’s health in decline, but I’m grateful for strides our field has made in palliative pet care, specifically Pet Hospice care. Pet Hospices focus on enhancing quality of life in sick animals while providing support to pet parents transitioning through the 3 stages of Hospice Care. In this piece, I’ll just focus on the first two stages and provide examples of my experience with Mikey, to give you greater understanding of the value these services have to offer.Similar to the 5 Stages of Grief, pet parents go through a series of emotional steps as they come to terms with the idea of saying goodbye. Pet Hospice providers offer comfort, guidance, and expertise as you navigate the following stages:Stage 1: Initial DiagnosisDiagnosis marks the first stage of the process. In many cases, the vet will discover a terminal or debilitating illness in your pet. You experience grief and a whole roller coaster of other emotions. With Mikey, we weren’t able to diagnose a specific problem; unfortunately, sometimes we don’t have all the answers. What we do know is he has a condition that will progressively decrease his quality of life. We’ll need to do our best to manage his quality of life for as long as possible. Understanding this allows us to help Mikey by focusing on the next stage.Stage 2: Managing and Evaluating Quality of Life The focus of the second stage of pet hospice is assessing an ailing pet’s quality of life and coming up with strategies to manage it. In my own experience with Mikey, we’ve had good days and bad. One day he’ll eat and we think things are under control, the next day he wants nothing to do with his food. Your brain is so fried, because you're emotionally stressed out, making it hard to be objective. It’s a really awful and lonely place to be.This is where pet hospice is truly valuable. Having an unbiased pair of eyes to help you make a plan and evaluate quality of life when you aren’t thinking clearly is a godsend. Pet Hospice providers can help you come up with a plan and define parameters for if/when you are going to make a decision of life and death. Luckily we haven’t reached this stage yet with Mikey, but if we ever do it will provide me great comfort knowing we did everything we could for him.