This Group Is Improving Life For Hospice Patients By Letting Them Keep Their Pets

By Matthew Russell

Hospice offers a better quality of life for those who are nearing the end. Holding family dear is important to many in their twilight years, as is the companionship of pets, but leaving them behind as they enter a hospice facility can be heartbreaking.

The disruption can be just as traumatic for the human as it can for their animal companion.

Rather than force patients to worry about the future of their animals, one organization is allowing them to keep their pets nearby until the end, and finding them loving homes afterwards. Pet Peace of Mind works as “an extension of hospice’s overall mission to provide care and support for patients and their families during the end of life journey,” said president Dianne McGill. “Since many patients consider their pets essential family members, the program is there to acknowledge and validate this important element of the patient’s support network.”

Source: Pet Peace of Mind
The bonds humans form with their pets are very strong.

According to Healthy Food House, Pet Peace of Mind helps hospice facilities train volunteers to help their patients with pet care, provides initial funding for equipment and training, and offers guidance to each pet program that takes shape in its network.

Source: Pet Peace of Mind
Pet Peace of Mind keeps hospice patients together with their pets.

As a nonprofit, Pet Peace of Mind is funded through donations and staffed by volunteers who see to the every need of the animals while they are in their care. They are important animals, and in some cases the only friendship a hospice patient may have.

“For many terminally ill patients, pets provide a powerful antidote – sometimes the most powerful antidote – to isolation, loneliness, and depression,” McGill said. “I know of countless patients who have said that their pet is their lifeline. Pets are great medicine for coping with the anxiety the comes from dealing with a serious medical condition.

Source: Pet Peace of Mind
Pet Peace of Mind helps hospice facilities train volunteers who help patients care for their pets.

“For many patients, keeping their pets near them during the end of life journey and finding homes for their beloved pets after they pass is one of the most important pieces of unfinished business.”

Source: Pet Peace of Mind
Best friends can be kept together until the very end.

Given the amount of time we spend together, it’s clear that humans and their pets can form very strong bonds. We humans typically live much longer than cats or dogs, and may know more than a few throughout our lives, but that doesn’t make it easy when they near the end of theirs.

Or, as we near the end of ours.

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This Group Is Improving Life For Hospice Patients By Letting Them Keep Their Pets

Company Provides End Of Life Pet Care For Terminal Patients

Source: Pet Peace of Mind

By D.G. Sciortino

Contributor at Animal Channel

Those in hospice will often be separated from their pets during a time when they need them the most.

Additionally, they have to worry about who will care for their dog when they are no longer able and who will adopt them when they pass on.

“I know of countless patients who have said that their pet is their lifeline. Pets are great medicine for coping with the anxiety the comes from dealing with a serious medical condition,” Pet Peace of Mind president Dianne McGill said.

“For many patients, keeping their pets near them during the end of life journey and finding homes for their beloved pets after they pass is one of the most important pieces of unfinished business.”

Pet Peace of Mind makes sure that terminal patients don’t have to worry about these matters in their final days.

They also make sure that their furry friends will be close by.

“The Pet Peace of Mind program provides nonprofit hospices with a turnkey approach to help them train volunteers to help patients with their pet care needs, provides seed funding to get the program off the ground, and offers advice and assistance for the life of the program. People have come to bond with their pets in much the same way they bond with people,” their Facebook page reads.

Source: Pet Peace of Mind

“Pets are treated and loved like family members and they comfort their owners much like a close friend or relative. It is no wonder then that during the end-of-life journey, pets can play a critical role. Unfortunately, as families deal with grief and loss during hospice care, pets may be overlooked, forgotten, or even ignored by family members unfamiliar with the patient’s bond with a pet.”

The organization runs on donations and volunteers who do all sorts of things from playing fetch with a sick person’s dog, making sure they are groomed, and re-homing them when their owner passes away.

Source: Pet Peace of Mind

“We had all seen things happen where the patient was in their ending days, and they were so concerned about what was going to happen to their pet, and the family would say, ‘It’s OK, we’ll take care of it,’ and then the patient would die and the dog was off to the pound,” said Karen Jeffries, volunteer coordinator for St. Luke’s Hospice, told U.S. News and World Report.

But that was before the hospice began to partner with Pet Peace of Mind.

Now pet owners can pass away peacefully knowing their dogs will be taken care of.

Source: Pet Peace of Mind

“The social worker said, ‘Oh, Karen, you’re going to have to rehome all five of these.’

The man is in 80s, can barely take care of himself let alone the dogs,” Jeffries recalls.

“On his deathbed, he signs his dogs over to me.”

“I said, ‘I promise I’ll give them all a good home.’ It took a while, but eventually, each of the dogs went to a new family. That was a real labor of love. He wouldn’t have rested peacefully if he didn’t know those dogs had gone somewhere.”

You can learn more about Pet Peace of Mind at petpeaceofmind.org and in the video below.

Full Article & Source:
Company Provides End Of Life Pet Care For Terminal Patients