Vet med students 'CARE' for grieving pet owners
A pet's death can be like losing a member of the family.
Many surviving family members get through this stressful time with help from
the Urbana campus' Companion Animal Related Emotions (C.A.R.E.) Pet Loss Helpline
in the College of Veterinary Medicine.
"So many people we talk to say, 'My friends are not animal people. They
tell me to move on. They tell me to get a new cat,'" said Cheryl
Weber, Helpline's faculty adviser. "They just don't get it. People
know when they talk to us they are going to talk to someone who gets it."
U of I veterinary students manage the tollfree Helpline three nights a week and
answer emails from grieving pet owners. The purpose is twofold: to provide a
community service locally and around the country and to give the
vet students insight into the emotional side of their field.
The Helpline phone rang 450 times last year, up more than 10-fold from
the 38 calls in 1997, the program's first year. The Helpline is paired
with a class Weber teaches, Bereavement Issues, where vet students learn the
importance of empathy and reflective listening — and how
to deal with their own emotions.
"Our pets don't live as long as humans, so in practice this is going to be
something [the students] will deal with a lot," explained Weber.
"Some experts have suggested that veterinarians deal with death five times more
often than their human counterparts because of the relative lifespan. So I am
trying to equip them with the communication skills to do a good job."
Fundraisers, also organized by the students, help pay incidental bills for the
program, including the cost of the toll-free phone lines. In 2007, first-family
dog Webster, pet of President B. Joseph White and spouse Mary, hosted the Oskee
Bow Wow fundraiser.
Reports were it was a howling success.
By Evangeline Politis '08, Office for University Relations
student writer
