End of Life Planning

Though we all wish our animals would live forever, we know that the end of life will happen. How do we make the decision on what to do with our friends? Do we plan ahead, or wait until there is a serious diagnosis? It can be that our dog our cat companion seems only slightly ill, yet a blood test has our veterinarian telling us that death or euthanasia is imminent, and we are shocked. 

After 45 years of teaching and treating animals, it is crystal clear that there are many options, as well as many different opinions on lifestyle, treatment approaches and end of life. With your family, your friends, whomever you have on your healthcare team, there will be strong opinions about what should be done. There is no one right answer, no one right expert. 

If there's no one right answer, let’s start to connect with the animals. What do they want? Often we question if our decisions are for our sake or our animals, when most do involve all those with two and four legs in the family. The time to prepare is NOW. 

Steps to help all of your medical decisions, now and towards the end of life. 

• Start now to communicate in many ways with each of your companions. Offering daily living options will train you to listen well at the end of life
• Build a holistic health care team
• Have books, member groups for support
• Learn one or more energy healing techniques
• Learn and practice the power of love 
• Keep a journal to better know what works best
• Discuss approaches to healing and death with family and close friends

Start now to communicate in many ways with each of your companions

Now, when not in the midst of a crisis, of illness, or even end of life, use your curiosity to observe your animals, be in touch with them, see if you can learn what they like and honor that. Offer options to your animals in every way, then notice what they choose. Maybe you can even intuitively learn what their choice will be, to be even more in tune. 

• Dog walks: Which direction? How long? What triggers them? What excites them? Honor their wishes when possible or politely say,  “no, we can't do that this time, maybe tomorrow”. Cat play: which toy? Food treat needed at the end of the hunt? Catnip or Silvervine?
• Food: Fresh food that is the best for you to eat as well, is important to everyone’s health, including the planet. Even if you have not yet made the switch, offer a bit of every food you are eating. Notice if a cat or dog comes into the kitchen when you are making something. One sign of health is an appetite for many foods. You will not know if they are starting to be out of balance if merely feeding the same cardboard every day. More about end of life and feeding later. Prefer it hot, cold, hungry more in the AM or the PM? One of the issues when animals are very ill, whether it's end of life or not, is food. It may be a need to rest the digestive system, it may be the wish a different food. One way to know is how they are feeling otherwise. Be patient and observe for a few days. 
• Happiness triggers for dogs and cats: quiet petting or being on their own; active hard play; games; learning tricks or how to be of service to you. Notice if they perk up or purr when you sit down to read; laugh a lot; dance; sing; cook; etc. While this may change a bit when they are ill, usually you will be so in tune that you can continue to offer what they now need. 
• Take a class now, read a book, listen to tapes about  learning animal communication. While you have this innate ability, classes help you learn to trust yourself. Trust your intuition when selecting from the many classes available. 

Build a holistic health care team

When your companions are well, or not critical is the best time to do this. If you have multiple people that you respect that you can turn to who have been working with you and your 4 legged critters they will be better able to help you with end of life decisions and interpret what the animal is wanting at this time. 

• Many people claim there is no holistic veterinarian near them when they have merely used google. Read this entire article and take each of the steps to find holistic  veterinarians who can help you locally and virtually. You may have a conventional veterinarian who is open to your approaches for physicals and diagnostics. An increasing number of veterinarians and technicians are offering in home hospice care, so think about the end as you settle on one or more local clinics. A number of homeopathic and holistic veterinarians can work virtually – all over the world. This article details how to evaluate the practitioner. If, after you start working with them, you are not happy – switch. Keep a list of other possibilities as we do retire or move. You may need to consult with me to help find one, evaluate their quality of care or clarify what they are doing. 
• When you research, keep a list of several possibilities as back up or for second opinion or if one retires.
• Ask in next door, facebook, other social media  for holistically inclined groomers, trainers, kennels, TTouch, and more.
• Also seek anyone who works with people holistically that may also help with animals – craniosacral, massage, reiki, theta healing, chiropractic, essential oils, herbs, vibrational (flower) essences and more.
• One the most important members of your team, IMHO, are animal communicators and intuitives. There are many different approaches and recently many who are not very well trained. Apply similar criteria as in the article to find holistic veterinarians. Penelope Smith’s site has been valued for decades. A few other sites now have listings. Soon, a new animal communication organization will be carefully evaluating members/classes and providing a trusted directory. For now, bookmark the website, though there is not yet much information. I will be keeping people updated on this in my monthly newsletter.

Have books, member groups for support 

A good group will not claim that they have the right answer. They will accept different people’s opinions and provide explanations as to why one approach seems better. 

• Holistic Actions Academy is the very best place, IMHO, to learn much of what I am encouraging here. Starting now you will learn how to access the resources and help your animals be healthier, which can make the end of life easier. If you, right now, are facing end of life decisions, you can search the forum for free (members can post 24/7). 
• Facebook groups can be great if they are considerate. A great one for Cavs is the the Healthy Cavalier King Charles Spaniel one started by Marita Tilley. They also have a separate feeding one. Each of the healing approaches may have a FB page along with you tubes – like Tellington T-touch.
• Get my newsletter!
• Website support for different treatment approaches – be careful to choose ones who accept different approaches, not just their way.

Learn one or more energy healing techniques and daily practice the power of love 

Keep a journal to better know what works best

Create your own – read an article here. Or purchase the print or ebook version of the one I wrote. ( free if you are a member of Holistic Actions)

Discuss approaches to healing and death with family, friends and your health care team 

Most likely, there will be different opinions. And again, there is no right or wrong opinion. And there is no one right time. 

Now, why the opposing opinions? Well, often it's because of the experiences we've had over life. So there was a veterinarian who owned a practice and he would never do the euthanasia. He said he was so torn up when he needed to euthanize an animal that he just couldn't do it unless he was the only one around and it had to be done. When he thought back about it during an exercise that we both were in, he remembered at age six, his snake in a aquarium, he put it on a radiator that wasn't on and the radiator got turned on and the snake died. And that had impacted him the rest of his life. So you never know when you're working with people that you're asking their opinion of, what's behind it? And so that's why collect different opinions, then sit down with your animal, sit down with your family.

Ask your animals as well. 

Topics could include:

• Euthanasia or only a natural death
• How much time and money is available (of course that can change over the years)
• Are some members of the family/friends good at caretaking
• Do we want insurance
• Integrative or only conventional or only holistic
• Disposal of the body
• Celebrations of life, ways to remember and honor each animal? Do we want a paw print made? Do we want hair in a locket? Photos?

Your animals love you regardless of any decision you make for them. That's a huge point to remember. Yes, they do love you whatever you do. And I know it's really hard. I mean, I've seen it so often, been there myself and do the challenging work to let go of that guilt as our animals really want us to be happy. It's all right. We're all learning. So here's another thing to know as you're approaching end of life is each one of us is on a journey.

And we might have even decided ahead of time before we came here what journey we wanted to be on. And sometimes it's a twisty journey with lots of problems. And other times it's an easy journey with dying in bed or dying very easily.

And we honor our animals by honoring their journey and by honoring ourselves. 

Every morning is a new morning. And some people say, well, that animal is miserable because he's sleeping 20 hours a day. Yes, but the four hours that he's awake, he's following every move that I make.

And when I do a happy dance in front of him, he lifts his head up and really looks at me. What is the quality of life? Sleeping most of the day and then being awake for some happy times or not? Again, either way would be a fine decision to make. So having confidence that you are paying attention to you, paying attention to your family and paying attention to your animal is really important.

There are many animal communicators, animal intuitives, doulas and chaplains who are specializing in these end of life decisions and can support your challenges after death. 

If asking if time euthanize, they are listening to where the animal is right now. Are they always right? Have you ever had the flu so bad that when you woke up in the morning, you went, “oh, I wanna die”. Well, sometimes in an animal, you've never had that.

Once I had food poisoning and was sure I would rather die. 

So you can imagine then that an animal may have a time where they feel really punk. And if the animal intuitive checks in then and isn't real careful, they might say, yeah, he really wants to go. So again, you are taking all this information in and evaluating it from your heart and your love connection.

And then there are also animal intuitives and communicators who can communicate with your animals once they've passed. And sometimes that's what you need to be able to help resolve your concerns.

At any time, they can help validate your observations about what your animal needs at this time. Maybe they want to be warm or cold. Offer them both. Maybe they want you, maybe they want to retreat and you think that's a bad sign. It could just be to pull themselves together. Missing the litter box. Ah, maybe he can't step into the litter box. Maybe I should do a tray that's this high with a pad on it or maybe it's bothering his feet or like that. Can’t jump on the couch/bed, maybe a bed on the floor, or you sitting on the floor. 

Being curious helps us choose for our animals. No judgement. Why is she not getting on the couch? Why not eating that preferred food? Why is he licking me a lot?  Why did that veterinarian say that? Well, what's behind that animal communicator's conversation? I wonder if there's another question I should ask. 

Some of you are here listening and you're in the midst of it right now. Just breathe. Because if you're stuck, breathing can open things up and you can hear better. So if you're in a crisis right now, breathe. 

Reach out to whoever you could. But if you're not in a crisis, and start now with all the wonderful things we've talked about. 

Finally, for every one of you who is living with one or more animals and no humans, I want you to make sure that there is somebody in your life who you speak to on a regular basis, your work, a friend, who knows you have animals in your home.

If they do not hear from you or if anything happens to you – within 24-48 hours someone will come check so your animals are taken care of. It's called a contingency plan. Chances are you'll never need that plan – create one. 

Christina Chambreau, DVM