She’s also involved with AHELP, which offers hospice care, end-of-life options

As she looks at a framed photo of her dog Max, a Rottweiler/Labrador mix, Anna Neumann gently touches the glass and speaks softly, as if she’s communicating with him.

“He lost the use of his back legs. At first, he was doing OK. We had surgery on him, he was very wobbly in the back,” said Neumann a former Bothell resident who now lives in Lynnwood, noting that Max also had open sores and a bladder infection. “Eventually, with Dr. Tina’s advice, we put him in one of those wheel carts and he spent seven years in that cart — he was as happy as a clam.”

Dr. Tina is Tina Ellenbogen of Bothell’s Mobile Veterinary Services. The 31-year vet was there for her friend and then-next-door neighbor Neumann each time Max’s health declined and the owner felt maybe it was time for euthanasia.

Ellenbogen offered advice and evaluated the situation, and Neumann ended up postponing euthanasia several times because they came up with some other ways to help Max get around the house (like the wheel cart, sling and ramps). After giving him another year, Max’s poor health caught up with him, and Ellenbogen eventually performed euthanasia.

“Having someone come in and basically advise you on how to deal with that … that just enables you to make the dog happy for a longer time,” Neumann said of her special relationship with Ellenbogen.

“It is really advantageous to be able to evaluate them in their own house and see what environmental adaptations or enhancements you can do,” said Ellenbogen, who has been making home visits since 1987. “You can’t ever see that in a clinic, nobody behaves the same in the doctor’s office — even humans.” She added that it’s also easier to visit animals — some of whom aren’t very mobile — on their own turf.

To return the favor, Neumann watched over Ellenbogen’s lab Lilly in her later years as it was hard to leave her alone for a long time. And the two women once paired up to comfort Smudge, a dying cat whose owner was a friend of Neumann’s. It was a stressful night, Ellenbogen said, because they were trying to help the owner — whom the doctor didn’t know on a personal level — through an emotional situation. Ellenbogen said she was thankful that Neumann was present to lend a hand.

NICHOLS’ AHELP

Ellenbogen also told Neumann about Michelle Nichols’ Bellevue-based nonprofit organization AHELP — the Animal Hospice End of Life Project — a coalition of veterinarians, allied animal-service providers and pet owners interested in providing education about in-home caregiving, hospice care and end-of-life options for beloved pets.

As a passionate pet owner, Nichols has been through so many “dogs, cats, animals that I loved and have done the typical euthanasia because they had cancer or some other condition,” she said. “I just felt that was so unfulfilling. It felt so insignificant and empty and disrespectful — not the ending to a life that I had shared with a friend for years and years.”

So when her boxer, Brodie, faced the end of his life two years ago, Nichols turned to a natural death.

Brodie also suffered with an irregular heartbeat and required intensive care throughout his life. As he got older, the family found out he also had a seizure condition.

Nichols knew she didn’t want to bring Brodie to the veterinarian for an emergency euthanasia, so her family shared time with Brodie and said goodbye in the middle of one night.

So that started her mission into the realm of animal hospice. It’s a new movement she found out as she attended seminars and went to house calls with veterinarians like Ellenbogen.

“You don’t have to be out there in the twilight by yourself, thinking by yourself you have to come to this euthanasia decision. That’s what I have seen over a couple of decades, is that people don’t realize they can talk to their vet (about options) or ask for a referral,” said Ellenbogen, who favors a holistic approach when seeing patients, meaning that she evaluates the animal as a whole. As a human example, a doctor might not just treat a patient for a sprained finger, but delve into how the accident came about: like how the person’s stressful life might have caused them to fall and become injured.

HOME CARE

Nichols learned that pet owners can take care of a terminal or special-needs pet at home if they are given the resources.

Last year, Nichols started her business, Partners to the Bridge, which supports companion animals and their families to end of life through home visits and case management. However, she soon discovered the community was unaware of what animal hospice is. So she turned her focus to AHELP to educate people about hospice, which supports the family as they provide increased caregiving to empower them and promote a healthy grieving process.

AHELP co-founders include Ellenbogen and several area animal service providers.

Nichols emphasized that AHELP does not advocate telling pet owners they should approach end-of-life issues one way or the other, rather the organization empowers people and gives them the resources and support to make those decisions themselves.

“We (AHELP) give you the information, try and answer all your questions, go through every step of the way to create the plan and then create the back-up plan and then create the alternate back-up plan so that you’ve been through that and you don’t have to make those spur-of-the-moment decisions,” she added.

Nichols noted there are currently several barriers to animal hospice. One hurdle is only a handful of veterinarians embrace the concept, she said.

“Veterinarians are very much about not letting the animal suffer and that’s been the model,” she said. “If there’s a question of suffering, then we go to euthanasia because there’s this whole gray area of whether they are suffering or not.”

(Ellenbogen noted that euthanasia — which she does only with patients and owners she knows well and after a lengthy evaluation — involves giving the animal pain-control medication and a tranquilizer that synergize together and relax them first.)

Neumann, who created and runs AHELP’s Web site, said that about 50 and 60 people, respectively, attended the organization’s informational workshop and open house in recent months. She and Ellenbogen added that about 20 people signed up as volunteers to help support families whose pets need care, like picking up medicines and moving furniture to make the room more accessible for the pets.

“They’re in a very demanding situation. Some tasks fall by the wayside and they feel overwhelmed,” Neumann said.

“The key to all of this was not only to increase awareness, but to help planning in preparation (for end of life),” Ellenbogen said of AHELP, adding that emotional and spiritual support for the family is a necessary part of the process.

— Kirkland Reporter editor Carrie Wood contributed to this story.