See the Full Issue
February 2023
Veterinary practices tend to focus their educational and promotional efforts on puppy, kitten, and middle-life adult pet wellness, but often fall short when communicating with and marketing to owners of senior pets. Let’s fix that!
See the Full Issue
Read the Guidelines!Mary Gardner, DVM, was on the task force that developed the 2023 AAHA Senior Care Guidelines for Dogs and Cats. Read the full guidelines for lots of useful information at aaha.org/senior-care. |
As a species, our maximum lifespan probably hasn’t changed much over millennia. Yet scientific progress, especially in the last 150 years, has boosted our life expectancy and thus the chance we’ll reach peak lifespan—all while living healthier throughout our years.
Over the last several decades, pets, too, have gained life expectancy rewards related to better medicine, nutrition, and health education that mirror those in human medicine. Plus, stronger family-pet bonds have bolstered owners’ enthusiasm for enhancing their pets’ lifelong quality of life. So veterinarians should be seeing many more patients in their advanced-age life stage than ever before.
Look for gray muzzles and tottering tabbies! Flag senior pets in your practice management software and run a new report every six months. Here’s why: I did a study with VetSuccess, and data from thousands of US veterinary clinics comprising over 14 million dogs and cats showed:
Mary Gardner, DVM, and Bodhi during an annual exam
You don’t want to lose touch with the 44% of your patients who are seniors.
The study also evaluated data from over 800,000 pets who were euthanized, and uncovered sad statistics:
This data indicates that too many clients who have advanced-age pets don’t visit their veterinarian for guidance on their ailing pets’ issues during the last several months of their pets’ lives.
That’s too much missed opportunity for vets to better help elderly pets. We can do so much to manage these pets’ ailments and support a good quality of life (for pet owners, too!) during a pet’s late-life stage, but pet owners need to be aware of the help we can provide.
Understandably, veterinary practices tend to focus their educational and promotional efforts on puppy, kitten, and middle-life adult pet wellness but often fall short when communicating with and marketing to owners of senior pets. I’ve looked at hundreds of veterinary practice websites, and the vast majority feature images of young pets and focus on puppy, kitten, and adult dog and cat issues and diseases. Their senior pet content typically amounts to a suggestion that pet owners visit with their senior pet more often and get more diagnostics done to uncover hidden problems. In many ways, it’s a scare tactic. Some even list “senior pet and end-of-life care” as a combined category, which may inadvertently send a message to pet owners that you can’t do much for their senior pets, (so please separate these subjects!) Rarely do I see resources offered for the ailments that older pets face or support related to caregiver challenges. Too little information translates into lost opportunities for connection.
Who could resist this face?
Similarly, next time you go to a veterinary conference, look at the various companies’ marketing images. Most also tend to focus on younger pets. Senior pets are seldom the poster children, yet I think images of sweet, gray-face, bony-head dogs and dear, scrappy, skinny old cats would capture many hearts.
As pets reach advanced ages, pet owners are often faced with a lot of new physical challenges and emotional concerns that affect their pets and themselves. Clinical signs and diseases often change quickly in senior pets, so they need more frequent veterinary care, and their families can learn much during these visits to improve the later stages of their pet’s life. Here are five tips to connect with them:
Encourage owners to consistently seek veterinary guidance for their senior pets by:
Maple gets Toe Grips placed with Fear Free techniques.
When clients complete pet health history forms in advance, you’ll gain 40% efficiency (shorter appointment time), 80% higher client satisfaction (better appointment experience), and a 23% bump in revenue related to those appointments. |
Share plenty of senior pet healthcare information and the idea of visiting your practice will more readily pop into the minds of families with senior pets. Provide the content—or point pet owners to reliable resources elsewhere—and bring these subjects and tools into the limelight:
14-year-old Serissa waiting for her bloodwork results and showing off her harness
Many owners are in the dark about veterinary care options at the ready for their pets. Tip off pet owners about the behaviors and physical clues to watch for in their senior pets, and let them know you understand the challenges that they as caregivers may face. You’ll gain their confidence, and they’ll be more likely to reach out to your practice for aged-pet assistance. Marketing is a must to stay in touch with clients and to reach pet owners who aren’t already visiting your practice! Use these tools:
Everyone who visits and works at your practice should readily recognize that you also cater to senior pets. I suggest that veterinary clinics:
A lucky senior patient at Kingsbrook Animal Hospital getting special care.
For some, it’s hard to fathom the difficulties pet owners have when they’re caring for an ailing senior pet. The results of a survey I conducted with owners of senior pets showed that, on average, they spent 3.5 hours a day caring for their pets.
Furthermore, a 2017 study of pet owner caregivers used mental health measures that have been studied in human caregiving relationships. The results showed that compared with caregivers of healthy pets, caregivers of terminally or chronically ill pets had more stress, more symptoms of depression and anxiety, reduced psychosocial function, and poorer quality of life. Another study in 2020 evaluated owners whose pets had cancer or suspected cancer. Similarly, the results showed that pet owners with greater caregiver burden had more stress, more symptoms of depression, and reduced quality of life.
Pet owners may suffer from caregiver burden but not recognize it. Educate them about the signs of caregiver burden, and provide resources to help them before and after their pet passes, such as:
Veterinary practices get off to a fabulous start with healthcare education and communications centered on puppies, kittens, and middle-life adult pets. Maintain your momentum! Find opportunities to continue to showcase your strengths as a senior pet caregiving team that partners with owners in supporting their senior pets and easing their later-life caregiving concerns.
ReferencesMorrell V. Here’s a better way to convert dog years to human years, scientists say. Science. Nov. 15, 2019. doi:10.1126/science.aba2340 Accessed October 1, 2020. Raj, K., Szladovits, B., Haghani, A. et al. Epigenetic clock and methylation studies in cats. GeroScience 43, 2363–2378 (2021). doi.org/10.1007/s11357-021-00445-8 Shaevitz MH, Tullius JA, Callahan RT, Fulkerson CM, Spitznagel MB. Early caregiver burden in owners of pets with suspected cancer: Owner psychosocial outcomes, communication behavior, and treatment factors. J Vet Intern Med. 2020 Sep 24. doi: 10.1111/jvim.15905. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 32969546. Spitznagel MB, Jacobson DM, Cox MD, Carlson MD. Caregiver burden in owners of a sick companion animal: a cross-sectional observational study. Vet Rec. 2017;181(12):321. doi: 10.1136/vr.104295. Epub 2017 Sep 4. PMID: 28870976. Wang T, Ma J, Hogan AN, Fong S, Licon K, Tsui B, Kreisberg JF, Adams PD, Carvunis AR, Bannasch DL, Ostrander EA, Ideker T. Quantitative translation of dog-to-human aging by conserved remodeling of the DNA methylome. Cell Syst. 2020;11(2):176-185.e6. doi:10.1016/j.cels.2020.06.006 |
Photo credits: nunezimage/EnvatoElements, Photos courtesy of Mary Gardner, DVM