In this episode, the Kristiina, Joelle Andres of Bastian&Brews and Morgan Krug of Pawsitive Behaviors discuss the grief and loss of their beloved pets. The conversation also touches on anticipatory grief and the challenges of staying present during the grieving process. They discuss the sudden illness and decline of their pets, the emotional journey of saying goodbye, and the grief experienced by their other pets in the household. They also talk about the importance of community support during the grieving process and the physical manifestations of grief. The chapter concludes with a discussion on coping with negative comments and the complexity of grief. Finally, they discuss tools and resources that have been helpful in their own journeys. The conversation covers topics such as online harassment, the pressure to grieve 'correctly,' the benefits of journaling and reframing, the challenges of leaving the house, and the validation and healing that can come from psychic sessions. They also touch on the importance of preserving memories and finding comfort in nature. The conversation ends with expressions of gratitude and appreciation.
Takeaways
In this episode, the Kristiina, Joelle Andres of Bastian&Brews and Morgan Krug of Pawsitive Behaviors discuss the grief and loss of their beloved pets. The conversation also touches on anticipatory grief and the challenges of staying present during the grieving process. They discuss the sudden illness and decline of their pets, the emotional journey of saying goodbye, and the grief experienced by their other pets in the household. They also talk about the importance of community support during the grieving process and the physical manifestations of grief. The chapter concludes with a discussion on coping with negative comments and the complexity of grief. Finally, they discuss tools and resources that have been helpful in their own journeys. The conversation covers topics such as online harassment, the pressure to grieve 'correctly,' the benefits of journaling and reframing, the challenges of leaving the house, and the validation and healing that can come from psychic sessions. They also touch on the importance of preserving memories and finding comfort in nature. The conversation ends with expressions of gratitude and appreciation.
Takeaways
Kristiina (00:33)
Welcome to Hiss and Tell. I am your host, Kristiina Wilson. Today we're going to be speaking about grief. And my guests are Joelle Andres from the account Bastian and Brews. She's the human to Bastian and Kylie, and Morgan Krug of Pawsative Behavior, a certified dog behavior consultant. Welcome, Joelle and Morgan.
I don't know why I'm clapping, but I'm clapping. So do you guys want to tell us a little bit about who you are, your social media handles, even though I just said them, we'll repeat them, how we know each other, all of that good stuff. Morgan, let's start with you and then we'll go to Joelle from there.
Morgan Krug (00:52)
Hehe
Yeah, I'm Morgan. I run the account Pawsative Behaviors. I guess I'm dog mom only currently to Adora, Ash and Ollie.
well I met both of y'all through the Button community, through AIC. I followed you and Steve back in the day. I found you very inspirational for getting my start with Jasper. And then Joelle found us fairly early after posting and was like, come to us.
Kristiina (01:38)
Joelle, do you want to tell everyone a little bit about yourself?
Joelle Andres (01:41)
Sure. I'm Joelle Andres and I'm the human behind Bastian and Brews and Kylie's account was only Fanth Kylie had a very unique meow that very early on we thought sounded like she had a lisp.
I feel like I found Steve on TikTok first, and I was just so excited to see a cat, and he had just so much personality. I loved that he had all the silly buttons, like lady and all of that. And then Morgan, like you said, I got to see Jasper, and I was so amazed by your innovation in being able to create like essentially a Braille board for a blind cat using buttons. And...
Morgan Krug (02:08)
Thanks for watching!
Joelle Andres (02:22)
I've been fortunate to be able to meet both Jasper and Steve, so this is very special to me because their losses were very profound.
Kristiina (02:29)
And I want to just for people who may not know, Steve was my best friend and really soulmate and the cat that you see behind me here in my arms, I can't point it's backwards. he passed about seven months ago.
And that leads us to the topic of grief, which was really, um, pretty much the most requested topic from all of his followers on Instagram and tiktok um, who really watched me. And then also, I think the two of you go through your losses, all of which were pretty much around the same time period, give or take, you know, a few months. Um,
And we all went through our losses, I think, very publicly, because we had these animals who were so big on social media and such larger than life forces. And I think we all really shared our grief and how difficult it was. And so I think it's a good idea to do this first podcast of a series on grief, where I am next going to be having
on to talk about how, from a professional standpoint, how to handle everything. so I wanted to get the three of us together to just kind of talk about that process and shed some more light on it.
I know Joelle and I were discussing earlier before we started recording about how we have both felt really not great today knowing that we are coming into this discussion and Morgan you're nodding your head so I have a feeling you may have felt similarly. I had to go like take a nap because I was just feeling so depressed and having such a rough time knowing that I was going to be kind of bringing all of this stuff back up again. Not that it's not in my head 24 seven, but the idea of really kind of turning
it up and talking about it again was a little difficult for me. Um, and I think anybody who's grieving the loss of a pet, which is often such a disenfranchised loss, um, would understand that because it's not something that we get to talk about that much because people tend to think that we're nuts. I want to ask both of you to share a little bit of your story of your loss
Morgan Krug (04:26)
Yeah, I was just gonna talk a little bit about Jasper, our story, how we, I guess, came to be. I had actually been grieving the loss of a very serious relationship. I was in the process separating, divorcing.
And I was at a dog training lesson outside a local dog park, working with a pretty reactive dog on leash. And Jasper just pops out of the woods and starts begging for food. Dog is reacting at the end of the lead, and she's just like, okay, just give me the food. I don't care about this. And there was something about her.
I guess her being so tiny, her being so nonchalant about the dogs and living literally a few feet outside of a dog park in the woods, that I was just like, oh, I think you're my cat. I was not expecting this. I didn't know if I could even trap her at that point. So it took until the next day. I went back with food. And it actually...
Kristiina (05:15)
Mm-hmm
Morgan Krug (05:25)
required me bringing my dog out with me before she came out of the woods. Which is why I was like, okay. Because I mentioned before I'm a certified dog behavior consultant. I have a pretty revolving door of client dogs, fosters, my own dogs. And she was just such a kind of unique.
Kristiina (05:29)
Ow.
Morgan Krug (05:47)
being and that she was just like, no, I want to be with you guys. And I want to be around dogs, which I thought if the planets were going to align for a cat in my life, it would have been much later on. And I guess I kind of had this idea in my head that I needed to be more healed first, and Jasper was like, no, here I am. So that was kind of how she came into my life initially.
I don't know, Joelle, you want to share a little about Kylie?
Joelle Andres (06:09)
my mom came up with the idea of, you know, my birthday is coming up, what if I want a cat for my birthday? And we said, yeah, let's do it. And I told my sister like, listen, mom really wants a cat. We have to go get her a cat. And my sister begrudgingly agreed to go look at cats with me.
or like an acquaintance from high school that was at the time getting rid of a litter of kittens and wanted litter and I picked out Halle and I was like, this is the cat This is the one we're taking home Halle was so quirky and so vocal and my sister looked across the room at Kylie and she's Like no, that's the cat and I said
Kristiina (06:35)
Hehehe
Joelle Andres (06:42)
Oh, okay. I wasn't thinking of a tuxedo cat, but whatever. And so we ended up coming home with two cats, maybe a month later. And that's how we got Pally and Kylie. And then fast forward to, you know, I went away to college and my sister ended up.
getting married, having a baby, moving out, And so in the end they became my cats.
Kristiina (07:02)
are both lovely stories and I think also illustrate especially in your case Morgan the cat distribution system and how it really does find you when you least expect it a lot of the time and I think the cat that you need is the cat that you get not necessarily the cat that you sort of think that you want or whatever right um
Morgan Krug (07:10)
Yeah.
Kristiina (07:25)
I should tell people who may not know about Steve.
about Steve. So Steve came from the first litter of cats that I ever fostered with a pregnant with a with a mom. So they came from a foster from ACC, which is New York City's only open intake shelter. It's the city shelter. And she was a FIV positive feral mom, and she needed somewhere to be with her kittens. And so I was like, Okay, I, you know, I have cats, but I have my old photo studio
I don't know anything, but you know, I'll do my best they need they need somewhere to be because it was really the height of kitten season
And Steve was just Steve as soon as he his eyes open and he was the first one trying to like wobble out of the big den that I made for them. You know he was beating up on his brothers and sisters and making them all crazy and just being a little obnoxious little shit. You know and but also being super loving and he grew up in the studio where I was doing you know
So it was so great for their socialization. So that's a huge part also because he was just a confident little guy but it was a huge part of what became his personality of being so friendly and loving everybody and loving dogs and People and whoever came to the house and you know, just being super confident so I ended up keeping him found amazing homes for all his siblings and his mom and Yeah, that was it. We just I don't know Somehow we recognize something in each other and just became best friends
And so I had him for 14 years until around, I guess it was like May of last year, April or May, when I just noticed that he started.
Sleeping on the couch instead of with us, which was very strange. Otherwise he was eating everything was fine And he also had bad breath which you know cats often have bad breath and I always loved his stinky breath But I was like that's weird. You just had a dental like you shouldn't have stinky breath again so soon. So I got
panicky like right away because I'm always really paranoid took him to the vet. They found they were like, we can't find anything wrong. And then the vet was like, Oh, wait, there's like this little like white spot under his tongue. Like it's probably nothing. And as soon as I heard that, I was like, Oh, oh no. Um, and we took him to our beloved vet, Gina Rendon, who was the guest on the first episode of this podcast. She did a punch biopsy. It came back and it was SCC, which is
We had about three months with him, um, two of which were really great where he was feeling great, you know, we were able to like run around and still go on walks and, and do all of our normal stuff. The last one was rough. Um, you know, where he had an etube the whole time he was on chemo, he was on different therapies, just hoping to keep him comfortable. Uh, the last month was really a lot of palliative care. Um, and, and then he passed and, and we had made a plan, um,
for what we thought a good death looked like.
there is no such thing as a perfect death, right? But I knew very much in Ali, my partner and I really sat down and thought like what-
how do we want this to go? Because obviously it's only going one way and we wanted him to be able to pass it home with his family and his cat friends and to be comfortable, to not be in pain, and to have as much of a good death as you know we would want for ourselves. And so we really like wrote that out. We
talked to hospice through lap of love they came and made a visit and counseled us when it was time because even though I am a cat behaviorist it's very hard just like a doctor I think to you're not really you lose your sense when it's your own pets um and so I wanted to be sure that I wasn't like
pushing him or waiting too long or waiting, want to do it at the right time. And that vet was really lovely and wonderful. And I would highly recommend them as, as a resource they have just their website has so many amazing resources on it. Um, but sooner is always better than later. I think, um, I think what that's always say
better too soon than too late. I think is what they always say. Um, so our beloved vet, again, Dr. Gina Rundon came all the way out here from the city. Um, Steve loved her. She loves Steve. We were all together and that was, that was it. And it was really difficult.
Morgan Krug (11:40)
Yeah.
Kristiina (11:54)
Um, but I will definitely say, and I know one of the questions that I have for the pet loss and grief counselor from some of Steve's fans is can you get PTSD from grief from pet loss grief? And the answer is absolutely 100% yes. Um, I have it, you guys probably have it. Um, one of the first signs in me was constantly reliving that moment where he died.
Morgan Krug (12:09)
Yeah
Kristiina (12:15)
in dreams and in and you know real life day to day because it was probably you know one of the most traumatic experiences of my life even though i've gone through significant traumas in my life it was really an enormous moment um and so i will stop talking again now um and pass it over to you guys and whatever you feel like sharing
Morgan Krug (12:29)
Yeah.
Yeah, I can talk a little more about life with Jasper and kind of what's getting me right now is just talking about how it's a shorter story than I would like, obviously. I mean, I know it always is, but...
Kristiina (12:51)
Yeah.
Morgan Krug (12:52)
I lost her just after her fifth birthday. But in some ways it feels like I'm ungrateful to begrudge only having five years when I think about her story and she adjusted great into the house after I brought her home. I had this idea of I don't have room in the house for a cat and I have too many reactive dogs and...
Kristiina (13:11)
Mm-hmm
Morgan Krug (13:12)
That's important context. I live in literally just over 500 square feet. So that's why I was like, how am I going to fit a cat with all of these dogs, even though again she was kind of the ideal cat for that, just such a unicorn in that way.
I noticed after her spay that I just... something seemed a little bit off in how she was recovering, and she did this really cute quirk
I'd come up to greet her and she'd do this kind of headbomb that I couldn't tell was it an excited quirk, but I now know it was her vision going and she was, I think, trying to find the best way to perceive me.
So notice after her spay, things just weren't right. Took her in for x-rays thinking maybe she'd ingested foam. X-rays looked fine. And then her eyes just started, her pupils started blowing out like a major eye infection. Took her to the veterinary ophthalmologist multiple times. Had her on DOCSY, so many different things, in and out. And finally the vet was like, eye stuff.
nothing else coming up positive. I think we need to retest for feline leukemia. It may have been a false negative initially. And sure enough, came back positive. And at that point ran her blood work. And my vet friends were like, they saw the numbers and they're like, we don't know how this cat is alive. They were so off the charts. It was horrible, horrible in her bone marrow like.
She was given weeks if we were lucky. So I stopped all the medications. She was thrilled because she was doing three rounds of three different IMEDS plus antibiotics and all this other stuff. was just given basically a death sentence. There's nothing you can do. It's too late. Just.
give her the best life for a few weeks that you can. So she got to eat whatever she wanted, got to do whatever she wanted. And I basically got to grieve her. And then, and this was all just before a year of age, and I just kind of expected her to, you know,
crash out at any point for about a year after that. As it's kind of crazy thinking back, I don't know how I went into, if I just went into survival mode of just like, well, there's literally nothing I can do right now except give her best life with this short time we have left. And...
weirdly, so then we started the buttons, what, a year and a half after that?
And miraculously, I truly don't know, and people still ask her this day, how did you get her to recover? I don't know. I wish I could tell people, but we didn't do anything. And then started the buttons. She had autonomy over her food, control over when and how the door was opened, all these other things, and she just continued to thrive. And then her blood work came back normal. Like...
mind-blowingly. So she had gone regressive. All of my vets were like, we've never seen a cat come back from this before. And then she stayed like as healthy as could be, minus being blind and having occasional eye stuff up until a month before she died.
what really got me and still gets me, I think it's something like 80% of cats will not make it past three years with a feline leukemia diagnosis. And then it's like some other small percentage beyond that like...
go regressive. I really thought that she was in the clear, having been four years at that point without an active feline leukemia infection. She had just had at the beginning of April last year a healthy semi-annual vet visit. She was gone every six months just to make sure we stayed on top of everything. And then a few weeks after that vet visit...
felt a lump in her neck and unfortunately knew what that most likely meant only because of the feline leukemia diagnosis.
I know it was sudden, and I think I also expected going into the vet that day that they were gonna send off blood work, or take a sample, and...
I'd maybe find out in a few days to a week. And instead the vet that day was like, no, it's active, limbo-blastic leukemia at this point. And I don't even know how to give you a timeframe. It's that bad. Just enjoy whatever moments you have left. And she was gone three weeks later. So I think that's where it's been really almost...
the hardest in a way, is that I had already experienced all of that anticipatory grief and really accepted her death once before and then thought that we were on this great trajectory.
And so it felt like only once I'd let my guard down and had stopped kind of couching a lot of our videos.
And I had shifted out of that mindset and into long-term. So to then have to face it all again was really, really hard. But I almost didn't.
go into kind of a bargaining stage or like questioning it because I almost
Part of me was like, well, three weeks after, is that too soon? And again, that's where having a vet who you trust, using quality of life scales, I'm the kind of human that I use multiple quality of life scales and compare them just for my reassurance. But.
Kristiina (18:39)
Sure.
Morgan Krug (18:43)
It was almost like, I guess I had already grieved her in a way or had that anticipatory grief experience so that the re-diagnosis and the knowing that there really wasn't anything we could do, it was, yeah, it was just kind of at that point.
just getting ready to say goodbye. And I think, I mean, she was definitely slowing down at that point, she knew. And so it was a lot of just me being there for her, for her last moments, and really staying present and being my best self for her was kind of what it shifted into.
Kristiina (19:16)
Yeah.
Thank you for that. And I know it's so hard to, at least for me, it was often so hard to stay present. Like I tried really hard.
But that anticipatory period, it was so hard. I had longer than you did, obviously, and my experience was different, but it was very hard to look at Steve being like, you're here now and you look fine. And my dumb human brain could not understand, like you're gonna be gone in a month or two, you're gonna be dead. And I'm looking at you and you're alive and what? And it was such a disconnect and it was so difficult for me to conceive that like my other half, like my favorite person on the whole planet was gonna not be here.
was not prepared. Like I was, I was, I had always joked with our vet, like Steve has to live to be like 60, you know, like, and I thought he would at least live until he was in his 20s, you know, while I know 14 is a geriatric cat, um, he was still, you know, running around acting like a crazy baby all the time. So it was so shocking.
I had a really hard time with being present. The way that my brain reacts is that I wanted to isolate and just run away.
Um, and it was a real battle, um, to stay present. And I think I ended up, you know, medicalizing a lot of it because then towards the end we had so many, like so many medications and he had his e-tube and we had to feed him that way and flush it and like do all the stuff that really forces you to be present. Um, and I also did, did a lot of what you say, like we instituted what I called like a fuck it plan where we could just, he could do whatever he wanted, whatever he wanted, he could, he could eat like wherever he wanted to like go for walks that had been off limits
went into the forest, you know, where ticks were a concern. We were like, doesn't matter now. You can do whatever you want. And that was really nice. And I think we had a lot of our like, like really amazing.
Morgan Krug (20:56)
Yep.
Kristiina (21:03)
bonding moments during that time that were very, very difficult, but we're also so full of love and joy. And he was still so full of joy and love right up until the end, like that day, even though that last day, he really let me know that he was done, like really was done. Um, but he was still walking outside, even though he, you know, he had to have me hold him for a lot of it. Um, he was still trying to hunt. He was still
Morgan Krug (21:28)
Thanks for watching!
Kristiina (21:29)
Just himself, and it was just, it was just so hard to see his body fail him. And it was so unfair. It's just so unfair. And like, you wanna say it's unfair, but it's just life and it's coming for all of us, but it's fucking brutal. It is brutal to see and to go through and to have to like be an adult through.
Morgan Krug (21:42)
Yeah.
Joelle Andres (21:48)
I'm just thinking about to what you said about the PTSD factor and you know it's so true. I feel like Kylie was my person and it's so funny because I didn't pick her out. She was the cat my sister had picked out but she became, I can remember the exact moment of like we were at a vet's office and we went in with three cats but only had one carrier.
Kristiina (22:13)
No!
Joelle Andres (22:13)
so I had Kylie in my lap and in that moment she like looked at me made eye contact and then like nuzzled her nose in my like
arm and like the crux of my arm and from that point on she was like my cat like that was she was a kitten then and we were just like soul mates i don't know how to describe it
Kylie, we got her blood work back and it said that she was at the beginning stages of kidney disease. And so I had this idea in my head that I could like strategize this and I was going to stay ahead of it and I was going to be able to give her the best life because
you know, Lee and I are double income, no kids, and we're going to be able to afford all of this care that I wasn't able to do for my childhood pets and things that I, you know, I was gonna be able to do it better this time. And so, Kylie got the like, absolute best cares for us, going for acupuncture and going for like, the laser treatment, and she was getting a vet visit with updated blood work every three months, and she was seeing multiple vets to get different opinions.
And then...
On one of the visits we got updated blood work and it started to go in the opposite direction we wanted to. So again, medication adjustments, all this stuff. And one of the craziest things for me was, things were going really bad in August of 2022. And I was having anticipatory grief and getting very concerned about her care and what we were going to do and how much more time I was going to have and was she going to live for this and that.
And I remember going to sleep in the fall and having, like, negotiating with myself. Like, I just want one more summer with her at the cabin. I want one more, like, I want one more birthday with her. I want one more, one more of everything. I want one more year with her. And because I knew things weren't going well. And in that, that night, I had a dream that I was being gifted exactly one more year with her.
And it was such a... such like a real dream that it woke me up at five in the morning, an hour before my alarm goes off, and I put it in my calendar, one more year with Kylie. And I got that year. I got another birthday with her, I got her birthday, I got the summer with her, and then literally I...
51 weeks later, she just wasn't okay anymore. She just started to deteriorate. Her acupuncturist was in the hospital and I tried to bring her in and no one was able to do acupuncture. I brought her to the vet. The vet was like, I don't know. You know, the blood work is high. The numbers went up higher, but you don't, I can't tell if it's time or not.
And it was just so bizarre because I almost gaslit myself in the sense that I had this dream on November 16th of 2022 that I was getting one more year.
And now it's November 15th of 2023 and things are so bad
remember talking to a few friends that night and I was like, you know, one thing I have for Hallie that I didn't have for Kylie was that Hallie used the buttons to say goodbye.
And whether or not that is real or not, it was a peace of mind that it helped a lot with my grief. And literally from the other room I heard Kylie hit yes, all done And I was not in the room with her. Upon watching the video back, I don't think it looks like it was intentional, but it was just such a weird coincidence that literally like that moment I'm having that I say this thing out loud and she goes in and trips over those buttons.
Morgan Krug (25:33)
Thanks for watching!
Joelle Andres (25:48)
And so, um, Kristiina, you had recommended Lap of Love and I, I called them and she, she wasn't doing well. I could see that she was suffering. She was really having difficulty breathing. And they came and literally a year to the day that I had the dream, I said goodbye to her. And one thing that I think is...
very special. I was holding Kylie in the moments that she passed. And I felt her body that had been so tense for so long just relax after she got the first shot. And I felt her like exhale. And it felt like it was the first time she felt peace in so long.
I feel like I was actually witnessing a very beautiful moment in that. And yes, it's hard to talk about. It's hard knowing, like the grief that comes afterwards is impossible. But I actually find a lot of peace in having that moment because it was so parallel to that of the first vet visit when she got onto the Coca-Cola machine and found peace in my arms too. And the other-
Morgan Krug (26:48)
Thanks for watching.
Kristiina (26:49)
Yeah.
Of course.
Joelle Andres (26:55)
with Kylie, we did things differently. I had the vet meet us outside. She brought treats and was treating him as, uh, before she came in. She worked with him before she, um, met Kylie. And so when, um,
Kiley passed, Bastian was in the room, and he got to snip the body and almost like pay his respects, but he was very present for the whole thing. And that night he kept saying, look, cat, look, cat, and looking in the direction where Kiley had passed, but he has not said anything since then, and it's been like four months since then. So, you know, it's interesting to see how our animals grieve also, especially when they are capable of telling us.
Kristiina (27:38)
Yeah. And that's, that's another piece I wanted to touch on, um, is how has everyone else in your household? Cause we all live in multi-pet households. Um, how have they grieved and how have they handled it? And, and our guys, you know, Steve was the head of the house. Um, there still is no new head of the house. No one, no one wants the job. Um, well, Jean kind of wants the job butters.
Morgan Krug (27:38)
Okay.
Joelle Andres (28:00)
I think Butters is gonna come for it.
Morgan Krug (28:01)
Hello.
Kristiina (28:01)
Butters may, but Butters is also too young. He's not even a year, so he's, but he may, he may come for it, but none of our guys wants it because they were also, you know, Steve was everyone's best friend and love of their life. And it hit our guys so, so hard that, as a.
you know, behaviorist, I often recommend fluoxetine, which is Prozac to clients, but I had never put our cats on it myself. And I was like, Oh, you know, I'm just gonna work extra behavioral interventions, extra intellectual stimulation, extra attention for everybody. And it just wasn't cutting it because their grief was so intense, like so intense, because the you know, everyone's best friend was suddenly not here.
But they all knew he was sick and they would gather around him on the couch You know throughout his illness and sit next to him like there would be like a pile of six cats around him Some of them would put their arms around him
But it really was difficult when Steve died and so I ended up having to put a few of the boys on fluoxetine because their anxiety and their stress was turning into aggression and they were aggressing on each other. And it has been a very, very helpful tool and now I kind of kick myself that I didn't do it a little bit earlier.
But it's still only last week did what we always jokingly referred to as Steve's girlfriend Pam, who was one of the white cats. They always were together snuggling. They always slept with their heads together. She was so deeply in mourning that
did not leave this these two conjoined rooms for the past seven months since he passed and she only left a few days ago for the first time and we were so happy we're like are we really seeing this like Pam's finally come out of the room and she's come out now every day just for like a little bit but it's nice to see finally there's some
some forward movement because I think all of us have been locked in this really hardcore grief and the animals as well and I've had so many clients who come to me with behavioral issues being and then it turns out the driver is a huge loss sometimes a pet sometimes a person and the humans just don't understand that like of course animals experience loss and grief in the
that you might have noticed in your own families. I know you kind of just spoke to that, Joelle, so thank you for that, but I don't know if Morgan, you noticed anything.
Morgan Krug (30:32)
of what, I don't know, made it both easier and harder to lose Jasper was that I had just lost my senior dog, Delilah.
a year prior, and it was, I think there's five days between their passings. She was 16 and a half at least, it was definitely her time, but got, I guess, a practice run of having the vet come to the house. She was also formerly feral.
I struggle with society as I often do. But, so we'd gotten to practice the vet coming here, saying goodbye, her being outdoors for the passing, me having the rest of the household inside so that it could be kind of an easier crossing for the individual and then everybody, the rest of the household, the remaining four members when Delilah passed.
Kristiina (31:02)
I'm gonna go.
Morgan Krug (31:26)
came out and sniffed and it was very intriguing because Adora and Jasper, my two primary button users, they wanted to get very close to her body, sniffed her nose to tail, lay with me, stayed close while I was crying by her body. I'm lucky enough to have access to where I was able to do.
local burials for them so I didn't have to immediately hand over a body or anything like that and I think that helped me significantly, especially in Jasper's case, jumping a little ahead, but I was able to just hold her and carry her throughout the day until I had finished digging her grave and until I had family and friends come that evening to help me lay her to rest. But
Being able to grieve as a household, I think, was very helpful and just.
seeing the body, you know, and my other two, my senior mini-Aussies, or mini-American shepherds, They both didn't need to get more than a few feet to both my senior dog and Jasper's body. They were happy to.
just observe from a distance, could just tell there was no longer life. And none of them, not after Delilah's passing, Jasper didn't seem to my knowledge I didn't see any button use around it. They seemed to have understood, you know, she was old, she was declining.
and she's no longer here, as best I understand. And with Jasper, I assume that the dogs were able to smell the cancer. Part of me wonders if Jasper held on or hid it so well, because she knew I was still grieving Delilah so much, and Delilah was, you know, my demo dog, my medical alert service dog. My, like, she was.
She had, yeah, she, I mean, all of my animals are my world, but her especially, she was my first dog ever too. I didn't grow up with dogs, I grew up with cats. And.
I think Jasper was able to step up and kind of fulfill that.
almost, I don't know, like co-regulator role in a way, in that we were able to grieve together Delilah's death, but then she held on as long as she could until it was her time to go. And it was similar in that both of my boys, yeah, didn't need to spend a lot of time with her body, but Adora, my button using border collie.
She was very close with me and with Jasper throughout that day. But after her passing, you know, left the name button down and I see it almost, or I interpret it as they got the closure they needed and didn't feel the need to use her button after that.
Yeah, and she's buried where I walk by every day, so I get to see and think of her at least in that regard. And I feel like we almost hadn't found our equilibrium after Delilah passed and then Jasper passed. And we're maybe just now.
Kristiina (34:39)
Yeah.
Morgan Krug (34:41)
finding what that looks like now.
Kristiina (34:43)
I understand that. I feel like we're in the same boat. We're only just now starting to dig ourselves out of the hole and getting to a place where everyone's kind of normalizing a little bit as much as they can kind of finding their new footing. Um, and, and to kind of go off of something that you were just saying, you know, that
that she's found her home and on your property. Is there anything that you guys, I mean, what have we all done to memorialize our pets or what rituals did you find helpful? I will say that I had, we had Steve cremated, we did have to have someone come right away.
which was difficult. And I think what you were able to do, Morgan, sounds like it would have, like really lovely and really healing.
Uh, but I did take some of his, his cremains and put them into a little urn necklace that I wore all the time for the first few months. Um, and then I kind of got this feeling that like, maybe I don't need to wear this every all the time, but I did have a ring made that says his name and I wear that I wear this constantly. I never take it off. Um, you know, and we have a little altar for him. He's above our bed with some beautiful paintings that
have commissioned and sent to us. I know my spouse is planning to make a memorial garden once it is not frozen outside for him where he always liked to be with black and white flowers since he was black and white. Things like that. What have you guys found to be helpful in terms of rituals or memorializing your pets?
Joelle Andres (36:10)
I found crawling into a ball and sobbing very cathartic. Ha ha ha.
Kristiina (36:14)
Yes, yes, that's fair.
Morgan Krug (36:16)
Yeah.
Joelle Andres (36:18)
I can't say enough about the community. We have a really strong community of button users that have been so supportive. And you two especially, just losing your learners so closely to Kylie. It was very helpful. And being able to make the decision, knowing that I was being supported by people that cared and were just as invested in her.
life as I was. I got a lot of beautiful gifts. People check in with me, like even still sometimes I'll get a text message just saying like, hey, how are you doing today? Because it's not, I think that you know, you get this like burst of love and support when something happens and then it's the weeks and months that follow that
Kristiina (36:57)
Mm-hmm.
Joelle Andres (37:04)
you know, you have these moments of really intense emotion and no one even knows it because it's so far gone, you know, out of people's minds. But one of the things that I always admired is Pot Roast's mom and she had someone gave her a cat and she named it Pot Roast. It was like a robot cat.
Kristiina (37:23)
Vroom vroom
Joelle Andres (37:25)
Like, she took something so devastating and turned it into such a creative opportunity to memorialize it that I always admired her for that and her sense of humor. And so one of the things that I got after Kylie passed was Kylie bod. And I actually still want to fix her because she doesn't look exactly like Kylie, but Celine Kababalink's mom actually sewed a little pink toe on her just to make her look more like Kylie. But.
Morgan Krug (37:50)
Thank you.
Joelle Andres (37:51)
I have a lot of beautiful art to memorialize her. I have her ashes. And yeah.
Kristiina (37:55)
I do think that our communities, because we all are online and our pets were all online, that was something I also wanted to talk about. We're going to circle back to you Morgan about that question. But I do think it has been so, so helpful. I know at least for me also having Steve's community that I don't know how
my wife and I would have gotten through this without his community and you guys, but honestly the people who follow Steve and don't know us and never met him, being the kindest, nicest, most supportive, generous people,
it was mind blowing that these people that we don't know were so lovely and amazing. It has been so touching and that they still are checking in
it really was so, I don't want to say lovely, but it was really so helpful because like you said, I think after the first initial burst of people caring, it does kind of go away and people can often be like, why are you still upset? I literally had a neighbor who a month into it was like, you're still upset.
I was like, I'm going to be upset every day of the rest of my life. You know, it may lessen some days in intensity and then increase in other days in intensity, but I'm never going to not be upset. You know, this was my soulmate. Like I'm never going to not be upset. And I think it's hard for a lot of people who haven't gone through this kind of loss or had that kind of attachment to understand and to continue. Also, I think people just get fatigued.
Morgan Krug (39:27)
Mm-hmm.
Kristiina (39:27)
and it's hard for people to continue to be supportive. So I think having these communities that we have is so important and we're so lucky.
So Morgan, did you have anything that you did, especially in terms of memorializing or rituals or anything that you found helpful?
Morgan Krug (39:41)
Yeah, I'm not one for rituals per se, but I have a memorial garden that I started for her that I definitely plan on expanding in.
photos, artwork, that just seeing her remembered that way. And I think you're right in the community aspect and the having people remember her and know her helped,
I think where I find myself struggling the most with Jasper is almost mourning what could have been because she was such a special and unique soul.
I feel like, I mean, we had gone so, so much further with the buttons than I had ever hoped, expected, anticipated. Truly, I just wanted her to tell me that she wanted food.
But the way Jasper wanted and chose to use the buttons was on just a different communication style than my border colleague who's just transactional, you know, and everything's a game. And I love that, but Jasper, it was...
truly so much of it. it was just how can we best communicate with one another and to have a partnership that way and her wanting to explore in that way, and I just can't help but wonder like yeah, like how How much further could we have gone is such a new frontier like
and with her being blind and all the fun things we were discovering and exploring and the cooperative care opportunities that she showed me. So it's almost just mourning that too, you know? Like...
Kristiina (41:18)
Of course.
Morgan Krug (41:18)
Or maybe that's where some of the trauma or the suddenness or the adjusting to the loss can be tough because I almost feel like it didn't actually hit me until maybe four or five months after her passing because it was so sudden
I mean, literally six weeks after I held that visit, that was coming out of the house to say goodbye. Yeah, I just was not ready for that.
Kristiina (41:41)
shocking.
But I think the human brain is, and I'm very interested to talk about this with the pet loss psychologist. I think the human brain, we're just dumb. I think it's so hard for us to comprehend endings.
think concepts like this that are big, like the size of an infinite universe, someone suddenly not being here. What does that mean? That I think it can take us months to understand it. And then what rushes in to fill that space is some type of guilt, whether it is because guilt is that bargaining piece, right? That we hear about in the stages of grief, which are hilariously not actually about someone who's grits are about someone grieving their own.
imminent death, but I think it's something that the brain does to just try to understand and to fill that space. So I think it's just a kind of bargaining. It's a kind of bargaining because we don't really understand what has happened. And I don't know, I think we all go through that to some extent.
It's just something that I've noticed that it just tends to be a piece of the grieving puzzle. But for what? Like why are, do our brains turn on us in this, this way that we're kind of mourning extra, right?
Morgan Krug (43:02)
I think because I went into survival mode for Jasper at the end, I wanted to be myself for her, wanted to be present.
I, yeah, by the time I could handle it and allowed myself to really start feeling it, not that I wasn't in therapy and mindset work and all already, but when I really opened up the floodgates, yeah, I got shingles and I got it on my face and it affected my vision. So I'm...
kind of finally hitting my personal equilibrium and recognizing that like, okay, like grief, it's not just a mental piece, or if for some of us who do have a history of trauma or are neurodiverse or whatever else, that there is this physical and bodily grief piece to-
Kristiina (43:46)
Mm-hmm.
Morgan Krug (43:48)
and that it's not linear, we know healing's not linear, but it, yeah, it just weird. It, I think it, yeah, it almost kicked me off into such survival mode that I wasn't able to feel all of the loss until the fall. Again, not that I wasn't still grieving the entire time, but yeah, just a reminder to not.
put a timeline on things and yeah, that everybody's a little bit different and that it may be a physical response
Kristiina (44:20)
Yeah, I think the physical manifestation is important to talk about too.
It's not shocking that when we're under so much stress and we're grieving that we have these physical manifestations also. And also we, you know, repress our immune systems when we're grieving so much. And, and, um, you know, I was going through so much grief that I was suicidal and I had to talk to lots of people because I did not want to exist anymore without Steve. Um, and in many ways I still don't, but you know, you have to find ways to.
day and then you exist for one more day and you keep going but it's not easy.
Yeah.
that also leads me into what I want to kind of like wrap up with, to talk about like what tools and resources did you guys happen to find that were helpful at all to you? Is there anything that you would recommend to people? Like, I know some people like journaling. I really liked making really horrible photos the first few months of
Morgan Krug (45:17)
That's right.
Kristiina (45:18)
of, you know, I was doing this grief series that like every day at the time that Steve passed, I would just take a picture of whatever I was doing or whatever was around me. And usually I was just crying. And they're like, really horrible. But for me, it was helpful to just get that out and see like a visual representation of just how
I felt inside that was really cathartic somehow and to like put that out in the world to just be like this is how bad I feel right? That was helpful. Like what did you find that helped in any way?
Joelle Andres (45:50)
Well, first I'm going to start with what I found didn't help. And that is a lot of support groups. A lot of people invited me to Facebook groups. And I cannot listen to other people go through their grief alongside going through my own. So I found speaking to friends that had known Kylie very helpful.
Kristiina (46:07)
Right.
Joelle Andres (46:12)
and going through photos and sharing them, just like with friends or posting about them to be very helpful as well.
One thing that was definitely not healthy, but I found solace in for a while was because our nest camera has a two-month log And I would go back and watch it like it was a TV show like I was reliving my life But then on January 17th 2024 I had another meltdown realizing my timeline of the two months ran out and I had to grieve all over again Knowing that was it that I didn't even have that anymore
Kristiina (46:29)
Mmm.
Morgan Krug (46:32)
Yep.
Kristiina (46:33)
Yeah.
Joelle Andres (46:49)
And that was Kylie's 18th birthday. So I, whoo! I truly feel like investing time into preserving a memory of some sort is super helpful. I made Kylie merch where the proceeds go to rescues.
Kristiina (46:51)
Ugh.
Morgan Krug (46:52)
Thank you.
Joelle Andres (47:04)
Yeah, I still haven't fully gone through all of her videos because I don't have the ability to. Yeah.
Kristiina (47:10)
Yeah.
Morgan Krug (47:10)
I'm going to go to bed.
I found that reading this book when Delilah passed, Surviving the Heartbreak of Choosing Death for Your Pet, it's a very intense title. This was just handed down to me in piles of free dog training books. But it is for any pet. I don't know how easily it can be found.
Kristiina (47:14)
Mmm.
Morgan Krug (47:32)
But it was incredibly helpful, because one of the reasons I brought up what my life was like when Jasper came into it was because this was one of the first books that really went into how sometimes it's not just grieving them, but you're also grieving all of the life experiences that you went through together. And I know that sounds so simple and obvious, but it really, well, and for me, as someone who...
is, I don't know, yeah, I struggle with memories and depersonalizing and derealizing and dissociating around trauma and stuff. So it was, yeah, just so much of my life is more so, or what I remember is through the lens of the experiences with my loved ones.
And I've been single for the majority of the time that I've had Jasper and, you know, went through the pandemic together and working from home during that time and just being, yeah, there that whole time. So recognizing that like.
It's, yeah, the experiences that you go through. And I also went through time of, I mentioned like feeling guilty about not posting or just feeling like I wasn't, I don't know, grieving right or doing things right or like, I should be journaling, I should be meditating. All these shoulds piling on myself and then punishing myself via my thoughts for not doing things right.
So at first, trying to even keep a journal, so I had gotten, and I know we talked about, yeah, When the Loss is Deep, a companion animal grief journal by Deb Jones, PhD, who I'm a fan of through her cooperative care work. I picked that up, but I found that any expectation on myself, like journal, you should be doing this, was just too much, hence why a ritual didn't.
Kristiina (49:03)
Mm. I've got that.
Morgan Krug (49:27)
feel like the right fit for me. But I've just in the past few weeks been able to kind of reframe it as I'm just keeping a log of myself and like what memories come up and how I'm feeling and that has been enough.
If you hear journal and you immediately have your hackles up about it, a reframe when you're ready might be useful for whoever is listening to this, but also, you know, don't beat yourself up if that is not. I know that's like one of the most commonly given advice things out there, but yeah, it's okay if that doesn't fit either.
Kristiina (50:04)
Oh, of course. Yeah. I think also for me, just going out, like taking a walk, being in nature, getting out of this house, which I am still not great at doing. I have really become a little bit agoraphobic since.
Morgan Krug (50:11)
Yes.
Kristiina (50:20)
since everything, like I really don't want to go anywhere or do anything even more than before. And I've always been a crotchety kind of senior citizen type person, but it's been very difficult. I think as you have realized Joelle, to get me to go anywhere, it's really hard.
Joelle Andres (50:33)
Kristiina always bails when I invite her somewhere.
Kristiina (50:35)
So it's, that's, that's really difficult, but like just going out on our property and to nature is helpful. when I was really in the thick of it, um, what helps me a lot, cause I wasn't able to eat, you know, for months and months, I lost so much weight, but having like a good quality protein powder around that would just get something in me so that I wouldn't have blood sugar problems was helpful cause I could drink at least. So I would have water and I'd have like a protein drink and that was helpful
Morgan Krug (50:57)
Okay.
Get
Kristiina (51:01)
don't know if you guys have anything else to add in terms of things that were helpful to you kind of in the more immediate times. Or not. If you don't, that's fine too.
Joelle Andres (51:09)
I found...
So I know that not everyone's on board with psychics, but I think having a trusted psychic that is reputable was super helpful for me. I use Lily a lot, Lily Ludwig, and Lily actually did not have any availability after Kylie passed for like at least a month.
now the coincidence is that Bastian had won a psychic greeting from someone at the Halloween parade in New York City because he came in second place and he got this prize which was a psychic greeting and I was just like, I'd been sitting with it and I'm like, oh I'm gonna use it. And this like incredibly dangerous woman told me that Kylie was stuck because I was too, I was in grief and she wasn't able to move on to the afterlife. And it was like such a dangerous thing. And yeah, because I, if I had been
Kristiina (51:52)
Shitty.
Morgan Krug (51:53)
Good.
Joelle Andres (51:55)
suicidal, guess what would have done it for me? Fortunately, I've had so many positive experiences that I knew that this woman had absolutely no...
Kristiina (51:56)
Yeah.
Joelle Andres (52:04)
basis to say something like that. It was against any kind of ethics and morals that anyone that would be reputable would ever say to someone. So I was able to compartmentalize that as a bad experience, this woman didn't know what she was doing and is terrible, and then go on to have a really positive experience. But I think that if you can find someone that is reputable...
I found a lot of peace in that and having those conversations with a psychic.
Kristiina (52:32)
I will say that you were so kind Joelle and you guys all gifted us a session with her and my spouse used it and found it very, very helpful and very healing. And we're both so appreciative of that. And Lily is actually going to be on the podcast at the end of this month to talk about pet communication
Morgan Krug (52:52)
Oh.
I got a lot out of meeting with her. Joelle gifted me a session after Jasper's passing and when I
Joelle Andres (53:02)
I'm like Oprah! RELIGIOUS FOR EVERYONE! HAHAHAHA I'm like Oprah!
Kristiina (53:02)
Yeah, you are. With your experts, yeah. I know.
Joelle Andres (53:07)
Lily Ludwig comes in and tells you about Jasper and Steve!
Morgan Krug (53:10)
I wasn't sure what to expect, but I know enough people who have gone to different pet psychics or had good or mediums or however they identify. I don't want to mislabel anybody. Yes, that's right. Thank you.
Joelle Andres (53:21)
She'll call herself a communicator. She communicates with ones that are alive too.
Morgan Krug (53:27)
Yeah, I was, I found it to be very helpful and healing personally and I...
was, I don't know, I kind of went into it expecting like, okay, Lily's just gonna say what I need to hear because she can see that I'm a deeply grieving, hurting human. But I found it to be direct and honest and I had even asked as hard as it was because I was having a little bit of regrets and wondering after, you know.
Should I have fought to get the vet to come out the day prior instead of the Thursday morning? Should I have pushed for Wednesday? Or if I had known better, then I would have recognized this on Tuesday. And was just really kind of beating myself up about those last 48 hours. And all she did was sleep the majority of the time.
And I was able to talk to Lily about how I felt like I should have done sooner. Like, did I wait too long?
and she talked to Jasper about it, and I was kind of expecting just this, you know, like it was the right time, you know, just kind of a.
Kristiina (54:38)
Stock answer. Yeah.
Morgan Krug (54:39)
Yeah, and instead she told me very honestly and directly that, you know, that Jasper wasn't, didn't feel like it, it was too long, that it, that yes.
knowing what we know now, yes, saying goodbye sooner would have been appropriate, but that she wasn't, she wasn't suffering, she didn't begrudge that time, like, so it was a yes but no, like, just, I don't, like, more of a nuanced and, in a weird way, I guess, also kind of having it even be a gray area for me, like, beyond or whatever, kind of helped that, like, yeah, of course, like,
in hindsight, you know, she's not going to bounce back, obviously, but yeah, it was really helpful in validating in a way to just hear that,
Kristiina (55:27)
I'm glad that everybody had such positive experiences with that and that it was helpful
Morgan Krug (55:33)
a little macabre, but part of me wonders, after seeing one of the pot roast moms' videos about the crystallized skull, part of me is like, do I?
Kristiina (55:43)
Oh yeah.
Morgan Krug (55:47)
recover her skull and leave, but also do I, I don't know. So, yeah, no rush to decide at least.
Kristiina (55:54)
Yeah, I would give that a while. Give it a while.
Morgan Krug (55:56)
Yeah, yeah.
Joelle Andres (55:57)
I was just, that's what I'm thinking is like, Yeah, you know, it's what's interesting about I saw someone recently talk about being buried and they were like, I don't want to be in a coffin. I want to like return to the stardust of the universe. And that's, and that's kind of what I'm thinking right now is that I have these boxes of for
Kristiina (55:59)
Yeah, you don't. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, same. Just toss me in the forest.
Morgan Krug (56:08)
That's me. It's in my will. Yep.
Joelle Andres (56:20)
I can't think of anything more beautiful than reintroducing them back to Earth rather than keeping them tied up in this like little... this little box. And so that might be part of my tribute down the road. I don't know when or where. Because there's still something so like permanent about putting them somewhere. You know, like if I put them at my house and then I move, it's just like, oh my god, I just moved away from my cat's cremains even though they're not... I don't know. You just get in your own head.
Kristiina (56:28)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Morgan Krug (56:38)
Sure.
Kristiina (56:43)
Yeah.
Morgan Krug (56:46)
Mm-hmm.
Kristiina (56:46)
No, I get it. I mean, that's what I did with, with Mr. Who I mentioned was our big orange Maine Coon guy, who was the head of the house. When Steve was a baby, and he loved to be outside in our yard. And so when he passed, I put his cremains like under the tree that was growing in our yard in the city. And then we moved and I'm like, uh, you know, I, but.
you know, he had no connection out here. So like, of course he's going to stay there, but it is, it's a little weird. Like that he's just there, Um, for now, I really need the comfort of having Steve in his little box. And I don't think Steve would care one way or the other, but I do think it is, it's a nice idea because he did love being outside, you know, that was his most used button was outside. So maybe at some point, you know, we'll
Morgan Krug (57:26)
Hehehehehehe
Kristiina (57:28)
Let him be back out there, but for now I need his box over my side of the bed. Well, I really appreciate you guys talking for so long about such a difficult topic and opening yourselves up and...
sharing all of your stories and all of your thoughts and feelings. I know this has been a lot. I know it was a lot for all of us in anticipation today of this. And it's, it's a heavy topic, but I think it's something that is going to be helpful for other people to listen to. I hope this whole series is going to be helpful to people as they go through this and process their own grief or their own anticipatory loss. And again, I just really want to thank Joelle and Morgan for coming on, sharing everything with us for their wonderful
pets. I want to thank the pets that we all talked about today, who are hopefully wherever it is they are all watching us record this stupid podcast and being like, what are they doing? So embarrassing. Yeah. Losers. Yeah. Yes. There you go. Yeah. So on that note, I'm gonna
Joelle Andres (58:22)
Hahaha
Morgan Krug (58:26)
Silly primate things.
Joelle Andres (58:31)
LOSERS!
Kristiina (58:38)
hit stop, But thank you again and love and appreciate you guys.