What pets can teach us about hospice

UCI Health hospice and palliative medicine specialist shares insights in The New Yorker

IN THE NEWS: Losing a beloved pet can be incredibly hard. For many people, this loss amounts to their first experience with death. It often mirrors the human experience where quality of life factors into hard decisions about what’s next.

The New Yorker recently published an article by Dr. Sunita Puri, a board-certified internist who specializes in hospice and palliative medicine and director of the inpatient palliative medicine consultation service at the UC Irvine School of Medicine. Her article highlights how palliative care helps to teach people what the process of dying looks like for pets and humans.

“As a palliative care physician, I was intrigued by the idea of pet hospice, which has burgeoned as people have struggled to answer these questions. I first heard of it in 2021, when a neighbor told me he’d used the service to care for his dog.”

“What my neighbor most valued was what [vet Jessamyn] Kennedy described as the heart of her work: teaching people what the process of dying looks like for animals.”

She also touched on the differences between pet and human hospice care.

“Although pet hospice is modeled on human hospice, there are fundamental differences between the two. Human hospice, involves treating the emotional, spiritual and physical suffering caused by a terminal illness as it unfolds naturally.”

“Pet hospice, by contrast, is usually an out-of-pocket expense without clear life-expectancy requirements, and it can include the decision to euthanize an animal. Humans enroll in hospice care for a variety of conditions, ranging from cancer to organ failure to stroke, but the veterinarians I spoke with told me that most of their referrals are for mobility issues and cancer in dogs, and cancer and kidney failure in cats.”

Puri also discussed the importance of separating the pain of loss from overall quality of life.

“Yet advocating for a pet requires separating what is human from what is humane, the suffering of the owner from that of the animal.”

Ultimately, embedded within all love, even for pets, is loss. According to Puri:

"Facing that loss, pet hospice reminds us, involves understanding the way suffering and joy can coexist.”

Puri is the author of That Good Night: Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour, a critically acclaimed literary memoir examining her journey to the practice of palliative medicine and her quest to help patients and families redefine what it means to live and die well in the face of serious illness.

A graduate of Yale University and the recipient of a Rhodes Scholarship, her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Slate, Wall Street Journal, and Journal of the American Medical Association. She has been featured in The Atlantic, People Magazine, PBS’ Christiane Amanpour Show, NPR, The Guardian, BBC, India Today and Literary Hub.