Kathleen Dunn is on call 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, but she's not a doctor. Her office, just off the lobby of Penn's small animal hospital, at 39th and Spruce streets, is always open so people and their ferrets can drop in.
Dunn is a social worker at the Center for the Interaction of Animals and Society at the School of Veterinary Medicine, a drop-in pet bereavement counseling service.
Bronwyn, a Pembroke Welsh corgi, entertains her owner Kathleen Dunn, as Sierra Lee of the vet school (left) looks on.
"When I open the door to the lobby, people are sitting, holding their shivering, shaking pets, petting them, comforting them," Dunn said. "Cats hate to be here in the veterinary clinic. Dogs are forever wrapping themselves around their people."
People's feelings for their pets are similar to their feelings for their children.
"Working here reminds me of working in pediatrics," Dunn said. "The baby or the animal can't talk, and the parent or owner gets very upset. You're always meeting very, very attached parents and pet owners. Dealing with stressed pet-owners can be difficult for the vet who's trying to treat the pet. At the Vet School there's a lot of emphasis on recognizing the feelings of pet owners."
Kathleen Dunn did not always dream of working with animals. She was not a zoo zealot, nor did she have a childhood filled with parrots, pythons or pussycats.
"I used to work with people who had pictures of their pets on their desks, on their walls, and they always wanted to talk about their pets. I tried to be nice about it, but I really couldn't understand what was so special. I couldn't understand how people could care so much about animals.
"No matter how kind and sensitive you are, you can't understand that bond, I think, unless you have a pet. You can't learn that closeness from a book.
"Then in 1978 my husband and I got our first pet, an Irish wolfhound. He had seizures, and we had to put him down. We were crushed.
"Most people who lose a pet say, 'I'll never have another pet. I can't bear the thought of another one dying.' Then they go home, and the house is quiet, and they can't stand it. So they get a new pet, and it's eating rugs, it's eating shoes, and they're laughing, happy to have a new pet.
"That's what happened to us. Soon we got a border collie, then a corgi. Four or five years later, I was taking the dogs to the vet for well-dog check-ups, and the vet told me there was a social worker at Penn's Vet School. I knew immediately that was for me. It took a while to work out the details, but here I am."
Dunn came to the Vet School in 1983 after a career as a people therapist - she saw individuals and families - and as a teacher and trainer in departments of human psychiatry. "Everything I learned about people, I use here, because pets become part of the family," she said. The issues of handling bereavement are the same for people and for animals."
The idea for a pet bereavement center following the human medical model came from Leon Weiss, M.D., who teaches parasitology in the School of Veterinary Medicine. In 1977 Weiss broached the concept to then-Dean Robert Marshak, who consulted with then-Dean Louise Shoemaker of the Graduate School of Social Work, who appointed Eleanor Ryder, a professor of social work with a keen interest in animals, to spend a year at the School of Veterinary Medicine evaluating the potential for social work.
Social worker Jamie Quackenbush, the name mostly widely recognized nationally in the area of bereaved pet owners, ran the clinic for seven years. Quackenbush wrote "When Your Pet Dies: How to Cope with Your Feelings," now available from the American Animal Hospital Association, 800-883-6301 or 303-986-2800. Dunn called the book "the definitive book on pet loss. I recommend it."
Quackenbush writes about the differences between how different people grieve: "You may think of your family as a unit or group. ... That doesn't mean you'll grieve for your pet as one. You're at various ages and in different generations. ... Others in your family may not react as you do - nor as you expect them to."
Men and women handle grief differently, Dunn said. Women are more comfortable crying openly, whereas men more typically pace the lobby and punch the walls. "You can tell they're upset."
About six years ago, Dunn started a pet-loss support group, which meets every two weeks and draws, usually, eight to 12 people. She blends people whose pets have died and people whose pets are ill.
" People are aching to talk," she said. "And you know? I'm taking courses now at the School of Social Work, and when I tell my colleagues what I'm doing, they laugh and giggle. They say it's silly. Later they'll come to me in private and tell me the most heart-rending stories about their pets."
The duration of treatment with Dunn depends on how ill the animal is and how early the referral was made. She sees some people only once, but owners of animals getting chemo or radiation might visit three times a week for four weeks. All 16 specialty clinics at the veterinary hospital (VHUP) are likely to refer pet-people to Dunn for TLC.
"All the owners think their pet is the most wonderful pet in the world. They have high expectations of the care they'll get, and it's inspirational to see the care the animals get from the staff and the pet owners."
Dunn teaches a five-week, first-year, course at the Vet School. "We talk about attachment, how people bond instantaneously with pets, how people live through the life span of their pets, which is never long enough - and pet owners want their veterinarians to understand. ... After a loss, some pet owners say, 'Never again.' We go through the disposition of the body and the mourning and grieving processes, how some veterinarians will write the owners a note, saying something like, 'Fido was a great pet, and it was a pleasure to treat him.'" That's the first hour.
"In the second hour we bring in a real live pet owner who has used Penn's veterinary facility," Dunn said. "I have a lady coming in next week. She had a cat who was in treatment for a tumor, and the tumor recurred. She had such respect for her doctor. When she came to Penn, she wanted the specialist to say it was time to put the cat to sleep, and then she went back to her local vet to put him to sleep.
"When she came to me, she wanted to talk about her feelings. When the cat finally died, she sent us all kinds of gracious, grateful notes. Later she bought a piece of equipment for the Vet School and put her cat's name on the plaque.
"She named her next cat after the Penn oncologist."
Another typical patient, said Dunn, had an older dog who died. Soon she got another puppy. Then, on an icy, rainy weekend, after a canine emergency, she drove to her local veterinarian clinic, where somebody mistakenly gave the puppy a shot intended for another dog. Although specialists at VHUP worked on the puppy for three days, he died.
The woman bought yet another puppy which she showed off to Dunn's class.While on campus, she introduced the puppy to the doctors who tried to save the first puppy. "It's common for people who lose pets to bring in the new one."
Kathleen Dunn likes working with people who love their pets. "I feel it's a privilege to be here. Even though their pet died, owners see what good care the pet got at Penn.
"People often say, 'We wish our mother was treated half as well as dogs are treated here.'" And they wish they had as supportive a bereavement service for human loss, too.
Return to Compass Features for July 15, 1997