424: Navigating the Unexpected Death of a Client’s Pet
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How do you deal with the sudden death of a client’s pet? As pet business owners, we will have client’s pets that pass away. We do our best to plan and prepare, but what about an unexpected death? We find ourselves reeling and wondering if we could have done more. We have to continue running our business, while looking for ways to find space and time to recover. On this episode, we walk through the implications at the personal, staffing, and business levels.
Main topics:
Unexpected death
Personal impacts
Staffing considerations
Business concerns
Main Takeaway: When a client's pet unexpectedly passes away, whether we were caring for it at the time or not, we have to control our thoughts around the 'what ifs' or we'll never be able to mourn in a healthy way.
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
pet, client, cat, grieving process, employee, talking, feelings, grief, business, pet sitter, feel, vet, unexpected, death, record keeping, deal, work, emotions, process, event
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin
Meghan 00:00
Oh, hello, welcome to episode 424. I'm Megan. I'm Colin and we are the hosts of pets that are confessional and open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Thank you to pet sitters associates and our Patreon members for sponsoring today's show. If you don't know what a Patreon member is, they have found value in some of the episodes that we have done over 400 At this point, and they want to give back they want to contribute to the show and to see it keep going. So if that is you, if you have found value in some of our episodes, and would like to support us, you can go to pet sitter confessional.com/support. On Episode 422, we walked through how to conduct a pet loss memorial service. And then we actually went through one on the podcast, we had some great feedback from that listener Carrie Anne with Nashville, Kitty sitter wrote in and said, Hi love you guys, can you touch on how to deal with a sudden death, I lost a client's one year old cat and a fire and her apartment burned to the ground. I was watching him do a drop in visits and the fire started at 2:30am. This is something rarely talked about and something you never think you'll experience as a pet sitter, especially in your first full year. I spent most of July crying my eyes out blaming myself even though it was out of my hands, fire investigators interrogated me and I'm so glad time to pet had GPS and timers so I could prove where I was. And where I wasn't. That note from the listener was very impactful. You know, one of the biggest things about pet death are the unexpected events, we very rarely talk about the unexpected pet deaths that we may experience. If you're in this business long enough, you experience many things and one of them could be walking in on a situation that you find a pet dead, most of our resources. And honestly, even our episode 422 with the pet loss memorial service, a lot of that has to do with expected pet death. And I knew it was time, I had to make this hard decision, I took them to the vet or a vet came to my home and and we did this little ceremony. And then it was it was time I gave them you know a steak dinner before. And it's this very procedural thing. But there are times in our businesses where the unexpected happens.
Collin 02:05
And it's the reason it's so hard. It's not talked about a whole lot. It's because every situation is different. And it is really hard to walk through processes and procedures and policies for that, you know, Megan, you mentioned about how a lot of pet death is is planned. And one of the gifts that having a planned death is is that you get to go through a pre grieving process, the process of planning their last few days, the process of scheduling all of the the last few that appointments and things like that, that is a procedure that helps you work through the grieving process. And when we don't have that we are suddenly thrust into grief and despair and uncertainty that there was no way we could have prepared for those feelings at that moment. Because there was nothing to lead up to them. It was fine one moment, and then it was not fine. The next. And so what we wanted to do on this episode was actually try and walk through this situation these these situations, these unexpected pet death situations from a few different angles.
Meghan 03:13
The first one being the personal level, we are human, we operate businesses, but our mental health is critical. In order for us to keep going we need good great coping strategies.
Collin 03:24
And when we talk about coping strategies, there are a lot of different options. And one of those is really seeking out a support group. And this could be any support group talking about grief talking about loss, struggling through the feelings of inadequacy or any you know, thoughts or mentality that you have that you're battling with. There are a lot of options out there, some of them are online, some of them are in person, whatever you're comfortable with, really seek out that option to be amongst other people who have gone through a similar situation, then another one is taking time away. This is one that we often push aside because we're running a business and we have to continue to work to put food on our table. But this is an option that you really need to consider seriously. Because if you don't take time away to focus on your feelings to make sure that you are personally Okay. These thoughts these feelings, these emotions just get buried and buried and buried. And they will come out in some capacity in a more uncontrolled way later on,
Meghan 04:26
or you may make mistakes and future visits if you're not focused on the pet visit that you're at and your mind is somewhere else. You may be making mistakes whether big ones or small ones, but mistakes are going to be made if you do not focus on the visits.
Collin 04:41
The coping strategies to use are meant to help you be more present in the in what you're doing at that exact moment as opposed to being caught up or distracted by other things or these feelings and emotions that you're working through.
Meghan 04:54
And we're not pushing these feelings away. We're not saying these are not valid or I'm just going to do never deal with ease and just push them off to the side forever. You are saying in this moment right now what is important is I feed this dog in this visit, you are basically managing your feelings in the moment and saying, I will deal with this just not right now.
Collin 05:14
And again, going and talking to a support group. So you have an outlet for these emotions for these feelings, taking time away so that you can process these in an in a safe and healthy manner, or going and talking to a professional counselor to work through any feelings of guilt, grief, or anxiety that may arise from tragic, tragic incidents. Because the anxiety aspect is okay, it happened one time, you may develop a sense of PTSD, where now you're incredibly anxious around certain situations or scenarios. And you you're you feel your anxieties go way up through the roof, and you have trouble explaining what's going on, but it's impacting your daily life. And it's because you're subconsciously worried about this one thing happening again, what if I open this next door, and there's another pet deceased behind them? What if I open the store and something terrible has happened, or there's, you know, whatever that is, whatever event that this is talking to somebody, and unfortunately, in the world that we live in, it is still awkward, and we feel awkward going and telling somebody, I am suffering, suffering these emotions, these feelings from the loss of not even my own pet. But the death of a client that happens suddenly, what we have to do is fundamentally reduce this down to this was and is a traumatic event that will deeply impact you in both seen and unseen ways. And being able to go to somebody will help you unpack that in a much healthier manner than simply pushing it aside. That's not how we approach and deal with trauma, we actually do need to go to a safe place a safe person and work through it. And that means talking about it them asking good questions, you putting in policies and procedures in your own life, finding those boundaries, knowing what's going to trigger those emotions and those feelings, getting professional help, will will actually end up helping you in the long run, right? That's why you go and talk to these people really. And there's no shame in that and going to somebody and going, I'm really struggling right now because of this thing. But that's
Meghan 07:24
after the fact. So in the moment, what do you do, you take a big deep breath that is going to help you you're going to say what you can see what you can feel what you can smell, taste, touch, what you're using your five senses is going to help ground you in that moment, going to pull you back and say, Okay, this is a bad thing that's happening right now, how can I lift myself out of this. So I know everything that's going on, and not just focusing on this one bad thing. So what must be done at that moment, you have to decide that you can't get caught up in the future implications for you and your business, you need to deal with the emergency here and now.
Collin 08:03
And that will also help you when you're processing these emotions and feelings later on. When you can know that you were present where you did everything that you could that you were aware, and you were able to communicate these things to people who needed to know them.
Meghan 08:17
As much at the end of the day, as these are business transactions with our clients, we really do become attached with the pets, we form a bond with that we're walking the dogs day in and day out, or we're forming that relationship with the cat of at first it was skittish and hid under the bed. But over time, I was able to say hey, we are we're making progress on this. And now I can pet the cat and hug the cat. And we are we are friends now we form these bonds with these animals that no other business really experiences. And so when a pet passes away, it kind of feels like our own. We are having to deal with that same sort of grief and rationalize. Is this going to be okay? Am I able Am I able to get past this?
Collin 09:02
Well, and especially when it is unexpected, when it when it is catches us off guard. And we haven't done that pre morning work that pre grief work. To get to that point that we talked about earlier of when a pet is getting older, you have time to get ready for it. But when we don't have that when we don't have that which truly is a gift, we find ourselves standing, wondering if we did everything that we could, wondering if we checked all of the doors appropriately or wondering if it was as secure and safe as we thought it was or wondering if there was a sign that we missed. And the truth is is that those what ifs can haunt us for the rest of our lives unless we release them. And this is where working with a professional and finding a support group is extremely beneficial because at the end of the day, you did as much as you could. And that's all there was no more However, there was no less that you could do. And in most instances, there was nothing that you could have done to actually make a difference in the outcome of the event.
Meghan 10:11
There are five stages of grief, denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. And with an unexpected event, I would assume that your denial phase is probably going to be a little bit longer than some of the other phases or some other expected outcomes, because you think could I have done more is there something that I could have changed or done differently, or at a different time, that would have not resulted in the death of the pet.
Collin 10:36
And so at some point, whether from yourself or whether from someone external from some external force, there will be it needs to be an absolution of your guilt. And this is where many of us just continue to struggle and wonder and ask for the what if question, but be getting plugged in to a wonderful resource that seeking professional help support group talking openly about it. And in this instance, where the listener wrote in and was talking about how they had a wonderful connection with even the owner, this can be a great sense of comfort and support as you grieve with one another, and you reach out to them. And while you may feel awkward, or maybe you fully embrace that aspect, that too, is an avenue that you can seek to find connection and find that support as you both work through your grief in the instance, whatever it may be.
Meghan 11:27
Situations like this become even more complicated when you have staff, you know, in the event of an emergency, have you trained them? Well? Do they know what to do? Our staff, our employees have been trained in pet first aid and CPR certification, so they know the steps to take if an unexpected pet needs help. We've done training with them on walking into a scene we always say we don't know what's on the other side of the door. Could be a naked person, it could be a dead pet, you have no idea. So when you go into that instance, and it's unexpected, you don't know. Look around address all of your senses, what can you smell? What can you see? What can you hear saying the Time Out Loud is also a good indication of you are aware of more than just the the bad thing that is happening, it pulls you out of that scenario and allows you to embrace more of your surroundings than just the one thing. We had an instance where our employee came into a client's home and found a dead cat in the entryway. The client had left that morning. And it turned out that the cat had suffered an asthmatic attack like never before, it was thought that the cat had the asthma under control, they had done medicine and she was just fine. But it was not the case it had come back. So our employee assessed to the scene to make sure that it was safe. She checked the cat for signs of life, she performed pet first aid and CPR. And then she called us.
Collin 12:54
And here's our process through throughout this was to gather all the information that I would need to report to the client and explained to the vet when I called ahead to let them know that we were on the way. So I had to ask her again, Megan mentioned the whole time thing. But this is a great tool. If you are in the situation where you are a manager, you're an employee, and now you are trying to coach and manage your staff member your employee, through a stressful situation like this and unexpected pet death, there are procedures to go through. And one of the first things that you can do to help get them back in the moment and kind of stop from freaking out is to ask them what time it is. Ask them to clarify their location, ask them what the color of the wall is something to get them to look around and outside of themselves. Then I told her to take a big deep breath. And I told her I'm going to have some questions for you. And I'm going to do it very quickly. I asked her about her senses. So I went ahead. I said what did you see on the floor? What are you hearing? What can you smell? Can you tell me about what the cat looks like what the cat felt like? Okay, and then I would say okay, now I need you to grab a blanket off the couch, wrap her in it, you've got the vet near emergency contact safe already. But I'm going to text you the DIRECT address, I'm going to call the client, then I'm going to call the vet and then I'm going to call you again to check in on your ETA and talk you through the next of the next steps. So expect a phone call from me in about five minutes. I had to keep her focused. The whole point was keep focused on the task at hand and continue to move forward with direct steps, time expectations, and then follow up to do that.
Meghan 14:29
Yeah, that time was really critical because we had to keep the client informed as well and the client when it was on vacation somewhere halfway across the world and they wanted to know exactly what was going on. And so we had to say okay, we are going to let you know as soon as we can we expect that to be in about X number of minutes, so that we had to keep our employee kind of on track as well as the client. We'd like to take a moment to tell you about our friends at pet sitters associates. As pet care professionals, your clients trust you to care for their furry family members. And that's why pet sitters Associates is It's here to help. for over 20 years they've provided 1000s of members with quality pet care insurance. Because you work in the pet care industry, you can take your career to the next level with flexible coverage options, client connections and complete freedom in running your business. Learn why pet sitters Associates is the perfect fit for you and get a free quote at Pet sit llc.com. If you would like a discount, when joining, you can click membership petsitter confessional and use the discount code confessional when you go to checkout, check out the benefits of membership and insurance once again, at pets@llc.com. What that
Collin 15:31
also does is it lets them know there's going to be help coming back right where there's going to be follow up this and to not freak out when the phone rings on them. They know okay, my phone's going to ring it's going to be from Colin and we're going to continue talking about this. So I could keep her focused and keep everybody in the loop at set intervals, just to check in. I then did go and meet her at the vet. And I was able to walk through the next steps of talking to the vet about what was seen heard smelled, what was touched what the scene was like. And then you know, the cat was unfortunately pronounced dead at the vet and by the vet. And at this point, I'm standing there I have my employee next to me, and she is now absolutely wrecked. The emotions are now coming full force, all the adrenaline has started to die down. And you can tell I could tell that she was really looking for some help in that situation. And so I asked, Would you like to say goodbye to the cat. And this meant a lot to her. She had some closure, she had an ability to talk to the cat while we were still there. She wanted a hug afterwards for reassurance. And then afterwards, we were able to ask her you know, do you want to take some time off? Do you want to continue to do some visits would you not want to have cats anymore, would you not want to have like, try to get a sense of how they're doing continue to check in multiple times after the event, even offered to let her write the condolence card to the client as another way of providing closure for her if she wanted to that. And then we knew she was really into plants and gardening. So we got her an ornamental flower for her home after this event, and continue to talk about this openly. And let her know that her grief was real. As our employee, it was important that she be seen known and heard as she worked through all of these emotions, because we were also she going to go, she now has as as her employer as her bosses, we can and should be there to help her through that grieving process. And the best way that we can help get her to get connected to better resources, if she needs.
Meghan 17:45
We also had to walk through with our other staff members because they were going to be on the visits as well with this cat, we had to tell them exactly what happened, how we what we did about it and the emergency. And we told them about our employee who walked in on this and to say, hey, send her a little note, message her if you think about it, just saying, Hey, we're here for you. We know this was a trying time. And if there's anything that you need, please let us know. Just Just so that she knows that she's not alone in this, that there are not you know, not just her bosses are here for her but her her other co workers too.
Collin 18:23
It's really an important time to in an event like this happens in your business, and you have staff to bring them together to show support with one another to have good resources on hand. So right now, if you have staff members, and you haven't encountered something like this, go look at local resources for counselors that deal with grief and death. And these topics go look for support groups so that you have those on file so that when this happens, it anticipate it to happen. You can provide those already have some good talking points, some things that you're going to say to your staff members, so that when the time comes, you have some words, you can be comforting, you can be a listening ear, you can have that time set aside to be there for them. It's incredibly important to provide this kind of thing. Not that we are counselors or mental health experts at all. No, we are not. We can be a listening ear. We can be somebody who, who empathizes with them through their feelings and emotions and allows them to feel like somebody gets them. Now, if they need more help than that. That's where you can say what I'm hearing right now is something that I really think you should go and talk with somebody who can really help you with this. Here are three phone numbers that I hear a lot of great things about or maybe you have a personal connection to them and you can refer them out to that so that they can get connected and then allow them the time to go through that. Allow them the time and space and listen to their needs. I feel like you know, walking that cat was just really traumatic for me. I don't know how I'm going to handle cat visits moving forward. Be You're ready to adapt to that. And try your best to make changes or implement new policies or new scheduling to make that work for them. Also support them
Meghan 20:10
in their grief cycle as well, just as we talked about the personal side of us, as business owners, how we can go through this, they are going through it as well. And also making sure that you tell them that there's nothing more that they could have done just as we have guilt, about what we could have done better or differently, they're going to have the same feelings. And so telling them like, it's okay, you did the best you could, there's nothing you could have done with language like that is going to help them heal in a healthier way.
Collin 20:38
Again, giving them that time to recognizing that the grief process is not just a one time event, to be months, things could surface down the line, be there ready and willing to listen to hear them out whenever they struggle, or they have those tough days, to let them know that you're
Meghan 20:55
still there. When an unexpected death comes up. We deal with it personally, we deal with our employees if we have them. And then we also need to deal with it at the business level. It doesn't sound really good. But there are things you need to consider at the business level to basically protect you. One of them is the the legal aspect of this, do you have comprehensive insurance is that in place, what are the steps that you now need to take if any, maintaining those clear contracts with clients outlining the responsibilities and the liabilities of the petsitter, you can highlight them and say I am not liable for this action, it was an act of God or whatever the case is. And then it's also about record keeping. We never really think about this, but your updates, and the pictures that you send really are for the client's benefit, but also for yours to cover your to cover your butt. You know the GPS on this the timer's on it, when you take pictures, they are time stamped with a geolocation and the time that you can go back and reference if you need to have your phone has metadata with that type of information.
Collin 22:03
Well, and even in Koreans example where she was being asked by some of the investigators about the blaze and about the fire and her whereabouts like this is they are doing their due diligence to make sure that they understand who was at the home and what times having this kind of record keeping allowed her to prove and show no, here's my GPS timestamp, here's where I was last at the house. Here's the month the rest of my day. We don't think about the importance of this for after the fact stuff like Megan, you said you always think of like, oh, this is a gift that we provide to the clients. This is peace of mind we provide to the clients, but also, it's to make sure that we have ourselves covered. And usually it's in the cases of when the client comes back and says I didn't see you on my ring camera, we can come back and say well, here's my GPS pin, here's whenever I sent my update, here's all that. But it can also be very beneficial if there are some legal concerns or we start to have questions about our whereabouts during investigations or even from the homeowners who want to know more. And so, you know, and then there are other forms of record keeping tools, technologies that would be beneficial to us, as business owners, this could be even having access to the clients cameras in the home. So this can be a great thing I know many of us feel like oh my gosh, I don't like the cameras that don't like being watched. But truthfully, this can really come back and save you if there are questions about your whereabouts. Where were you when the event happened? Where what is there footage of the pet passing away in the home without your presence without anybody else there so they can understand exactly what happened. And if you're not using software, this is where timestamps for messages comes up and outlining a lot of these clear expectations goes all the way back to having that solid contract of the times that you will and will not be there. What you are in are not responsible for trace it all the way back to that have that record keeping have that paper trail to make sure that you as a business are covered in the event something like this does happen.
Meghan 24:02
at the business level, we also need to think about any preventative measures that we could have taken. So we don't want to add to the guilt or the shame that we may be feeling. But it is a fact that we do need to be at a 30,000 foot view and looking at anything that we could have possibly done differently or better. How is you and your employees pet first aid and CPR training? Does it need to be renewed? Do you have all of your supplies that you need to administer first aid? Do you go home at the end of a long day and immediately delete all of your pet photos from that day and not have them backed up? Well, maybe that's something that you need to change in order to have a good record of which ones you sent and at what time
Collin 24:47
or maybe you need to add new questions to your onboarding process to understand medical histories and conditions or past experiences that the client has had with that pet or changing policies around your unreal stricted access to the outside or whatever that is, it's not saying that you did something wrong. That's the important part of the step as as it but as a business, you said to begin at the 30,000 foot level, it's not saying we are admitting guilt, or we did anything wrong. But is there anything we could have or want to do differently and assess. And in the moat, in most cases, in the event of an unexpected pet death like this, or it happens when we're not even there, or maybe the we just had a really good relationship with this pet after 10 years of caring for them, and the client calls us to let us know if their pet passes away, and we weren't even caring for them. We're talking, that's a big aspect of this two of those long term relationships that we build with our clients and their pets, you might not even be in charge of their care, when they pass away, the client just calls you one day and says this happened. So there's nothing the business level could have done. But we're gonna go right back to what we started off by talking about going through that grieving process, accepting that those feelings are real, that's very important. Again, your feelings are real. They're not something not a figment of our imagination. They're not trying to trick us. They are a clue to how we are feeling and dealing with things internally to ourselves and how we are processing that information. And we need to understand them and know what to do with them. That's the personal level. So then at the business level going okay, I know that, you know, Cindy just called and said, Baxter passed away. I go through my checklist. No, there's nothing I could have done. And I And so now, now, you know that I have that at least checked off my list.
Meghan 26:32
Well, in our scenario with the unfortunate death of the cat that was not actually on our watch. But we were just the one to discover it. There wasn't anything at the business level that we could have done differently, we already require at least one visit per day for cats, the client had a ring doorbell, so they knew when we were coming over, they also had our software so they could see on the calendar we would be over at this time. And we had a timestamp of exactly when we arrived, we kept them informed of when we were on our way to the vet when we had gotten to the vet and then when the vet pronounced the cat dead. So we had our records in place. Whenever a pet passes away, whether unexpectedly or Expectedly, we do send the client a condolence gift as a way to say, Hey, this is a hard time. We understand we are here for you if you need anything at all.
Collin 27:24
It is a way to just make that connection and contagious strengthen that relationship, even though that their pet has passed to let them know you did mean more to us than just a client that more than just a business transaction. There was more here and we want you to know that we see and feel your grief
Meghan 27:40
as well. This was not exactly a fun topic to discuss. But it is a reality that some of us are going to face and all of us are going to face the expected deaths of pets. But it's the unexpected that really kind of throw us for a loop. But know that there is hope out there that there is a process to work through that your feelings are real that one day you will get through this. And it is
Collin 28:03
important to know that in this context of we do run a business. So we have multiple levels to sort through we have different hats to wear along that grieving process. And so we do grieve at the personal level, we do help our staff go through the grieving process and coach them through and be a mentor and listening ear to them as they need it. And then at the business level, making sure that our policies and procedures are all buttoned tight, and that there wasn't anything else that we can do and and that really is what makes this such a complicated thing to walk through is because of all the facets that we have. It's not just personal, it's not just business. It's not just it's all of them all at the same time. Which is why getting connected to that support group seeking professional help is so critical to have an someone to listen to and to hear you so that you feel seen no matter which stage you are, no matter which stage in which hat you're wearing at that time.
Meghan 29:01
If you would like to share a story with us about an unexpected or expected pet death, you can email us at feedback at Pet Sitter confessional.com. Thank you to pet sitters associates for sponsoring today's show and thank you for listening to this. Again, not a very fun topic, but unfortunately the reality of our businesses so we will talk with you next time. Bye
