Helping caregivers support aging pets at home: full analysis
Helping aging pets often comes down to small, practical changes that make daily life safer for both the animal and the person caring for them. In recent dvm360 coverage, Mary Gardner, DVM, known for her work in hospice and end-of-life care, highlighted budget-friendly mobility supports and the need to address caregiver fatigue as part of senior-pet medicine, not as an afterthought. Her advice centers on common household adaptations and clear veterinary guidance that can help families maintain comfort and quality of life at home. (dvm360.com)
The broader context is that veterinary medicine is caring for more geriatric patients than ever, driven by longer lifespans, closer human-animal bonds, and better chronic-disease management. The 2023 AAHA Senior Care Guidelines frame senior care as a proactive, individualized healthcare plan designed to preserve quality of life and the relationship between the pet and family, rather than a passive acceptance of decline. Those guidelines also explicitly recognize the caregiver-pet bond, the emotional strain around end-of-life decisions, and the need for practices to educate and support clients through those stages. (aaha.org)
Gardner’s practical recommendations are notably low tech. In the dvm360 article, she recommends yoga mats or bath mats, booties or toe grips, harnesses to help pets rise, and ramps for mobility support. In separate AAHA commentary, she also points to orthopedic or heated beds, elevated food and water bowls, pet stairs, strollers, and outdoor safety adjustments as ways to reduce strain and preserve enrichment for older animals. The throughline is that clinicians can often improve comfort and function with environmental modifications alongside medical treatment, rather than relying on medication alone. (dvm360.com)
The caregiver side is just as important. AAHA’s senior-care guidance recommends tools such as senior pet questionnaires, caregiver education materials, low-stress handling, in-room procedures when possible, and regular updates during hospitalization to reduce anxiety and build trust. In Gardner’s AAHA article, she explicitly calls out caregiver burden, advising veterinarians to ask families what they’re struggling with most, acknowledge that stress and fatigue are normal, and connect them with support resources. That approach mirrors hospice principles, where the unit of care is effectively the pet and the caregiver together. (aaha.org)
Industry context supports why Gardner’s perspective carries weight. She co-founded Lap of Love, a veterinary hospice and in-home euthanasia provider founded in 2009. According to the company’s media materials, the organization now offers hospice, telehospice, quality-of-life assessments, pain and anxiety management, and pet-loss support, and says it has helped more than 700,000 pets and families since launch. While those figures come from company materials and should be read in that context, they underscore the scale of demand for structured end-of-life support and the normalization of home-based care models. (lapoflove.com)
Why it matters: For veterinary teams, this is a reminder that geriatric care plans should include home-function questions, caregiver-capacity questions, and realistic, budget-sensitive recommendations. A traction aid, a harness, or a conversation about respite may do more for adherence and quality of life than another handout full of ideal but impractical instructions. Practices that build these conversations into senior visits may also strengthen continuity of care at a stage when families are vulnerable, decision-making is harder, and pets are at risk of dropping out of veterinary oversight. (dvm360.com)
There’s also an operational implication. AAHA recommends making senior care visible in practice culture through team training and client education, and suggests adapting the clinic environment itself for older patients. That means senior-pet care is not just the veterinarian’s responsibility; it touches reception, technician workflows, exam-room setup, discharge instructions, and follow-up communication. For practices trying to differentiate their clinical services, senior-care support may be one of the clearest ways to deliver tangible value to pet parents. (aaha.org)
What to watch: The next step is likely more formal integration of caregiver-burden screening, telehealth follow-up, and hospice-informed quality-of-life discussions into routine senior care, especially as practices look for scalable ways to support aging pets between visits and closer to end of life. (aaha.org)