Inside AAHA November 2022

View from the Board

Seniors Are Magic

I have a secret to share with you. Like the majority of veterinarians, I do love our puppy and kitten patients, but my most favorite patients are the curmudgeonly cats and crusty old dogs, and especially the eternally angry Chihuahuas. They’ve earned a special place in my heart.

Our practice, like many, has been blessed with some amazing clients who adopt the oldest pets at our area shelters to ensure a loving home at the end of their life. As one owner of a new senior adoptee recently said, “It breaks my heart to think of a pet relinquished to a shelter in their senior years and we decided we could act locally to take care of one more in our household with love.” I hope that we continue to encourage, recognize, and support these owners with extra heart.

There is so much that we can accomplish in supporting our senior patients through all their changes. Every year is bringing new tools, medications, and other advances for their benefit. A great starting point is the many resources available in a large number of our AAHA guidelines to assist in the care of our mature and senior canines and felines. This issue of Trends also highlights newer resources for senior care.

And with aging inevitably comes changes, including many potential health issues, from arthritis to diabetes. Make sure that you utilize the updates made in caring for diabetic patients in this issue and online at aaha.org. Our 2018 AAHA Diabetes Management Guidelines for Dogs and Cats is full of valuable resources to help ease your journey managing this very individual and sometimes frustrating disease.

Make sure you refer to the 2022 AAHA Pain Management Guidelines for Dogs and Cats and its variety of tools to help assess pain in our stoic patients and develop a therapy plan with both pharmacologic and nonpharmacologic modalities. One of the great tools in our practice has been cold laser therapy. There is a unit that is reasonably priced for any practice, making it feasible to gain a pain management tool and a small stream of revenue.

Having been around so many special animals all my life, a part of my love of our profession is in helping these pets age with comfort and grace, along with assisting their owners through the difficult emotional ride that is the end of the life of a beloved pet. We have to fill the huge need to communicate, educate, and work through end-of-life considerations from palliative care and hospice to euthanasia while balancing the sometimes uncomfortable human emotions.

This is an essential part of our work as veterinarians, but it can be a significant part of our emotional stress and distress as practitioners and individuals. The good news is that there are guidelines resources in the 2016 AAHA/IAAHPC End-of-Life Care Guidelines to help not only patients but also ourselves and our teams.

Thank you for the excellent care you all take of our magical senior patients.

Margot K. Vahrenwald, DVM, CVJ, is president of the AAHA Board of Directors. She is the owner of Park Hill Veterinary Medical Center in Denver, Colorado.