Sky Dancer
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- Jan 21, 2009
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In the wee hours of September 16, 2001, Christine Church’s orange-and-white cat Taffy died of kidney disease in a Connecticut veterinary hospital. Church, who had been maintaining the cat at home for seven months by giving her fluids under the skin, had taken Taffy to the hospital two days earlier because the cat had stopped eating.
Church, who has nothing but praise for the veterinarians who care for her animals, is nevertheless filled with anguish. “I told the vet that I didn’t want her dying in a hospital,” Church recalls. “I asked if there was any way I could do her care at home. But the veterinarian said that Taffy needed IV fluids and round-the-clock monitoring that could only be done in the hospital.”
Five years earlier, in March 1996, Kathryn Marocchino, Ph.D., a cat “parent” in Vallejo, CA, reluctantly agreed to euthanize her 13-year-old cat, Nikki, who was stricken with acute kidney failure. Maracchino, who had trained as a human hospice volunteer at a nearby medical facility, agreed to euthanasia only because she could find no alternative that would spare her cat substantial suffering. But before the year ended, Marocchino and her husband had founded the Nikki Hospice Foundation for Pets, a nonprofit, charitable clearinghouse of information about pet hospice for interested veterinarians and hospice professionals, and for pet owners who do not wish to choose euthanasia, or who wish to postpone it in favor of a natural dying process in the home. In late September 2001, NHFP launched a website that includes an expanding nationwide database of veterinary hospice care providers, training opportunities for veterinarians and mental health/hospice professionals and related services.
http://www.petfinder.com/pet-care/pet-hospice-caring.html
In the wee hours of September 16, 2001, Christine Church’s orange-and-white cat Taffy died of kidney disease in a Connecticut veterinary hospital. Church, who had been maintaining the cat at home for seven months by giving her fluids under the skin, had taken Taffy to the hospital two days earlier because the cat had stopped eating.
Church, who has nothing but praise for the veterinarians who care for her animals, is nevertheless filled with anguish. “I told the vet that I didn’t want her dying in a hospital,” Church recalls. “I asked if there was any way I could do her care at home. But the veterinarian said that Taffy needed IV fluids and round-the-clock monitoring that could only be done in the hospital.”
Five years earlier, in March 1996, Kathryn Marocchino, Ph.D., a cat “parent” in Vallejo, CA, reluctantly agreed to euthanize her 13-year-old cat, Nikki, who was stricken with acute kidney failure. Maracchino, who had trained as a human hospice volunteer at a nearby medical facility, agreed to euthanasia only because she could find no alternative that would spare her cat substantial suffering. But before the year ended, Marocchino and her husband had founded the Nikki Hospice Foundation for Pets, a nonprofit, charitable clearinghouse of information about pet hospice for interested veterinarians and hospice professionals, and for pet owners who do not wish to choose euthanasia, or who wish to postpone it in favor of a natural dying process in the home. In late September 2001, NHFP launched a website that includes an expanding nationwide database of veterinary hospice care providers, training opportunities for veterinarians and mental health/hospice professionals and related services.
http://www.petfinder.com/pet-care/pet-hospice-caring.html
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