Inviting heartbreak: Group aids pets in their final days – Alton Telegraph

Clementine is a hospice foster dog being fostered by Patty Barney. Clementine, who was found of the side of a road in Edwardsville, had damage to her mouth and the side of her face and also has cancer.
ST. JACOB — Finding homes for all of the dogs and cats living in shelters and animal rescues is a challenge.
Finding homes for terminally ill, abandoned pets is an even bigger one.
That’s why Patty Barney wants to spread the word about hospice foster dogs. A longtime volunteer with Partners for Pets, a local animal rescue, she currently is tending to a hospice foster dog named Clementine.
“She had been found on the side of the road in Edwardsville and her mouth was injured, and when they the pathology for the surgery for her mouth, they found she has cancer,” Barney said. “It’s very aggressive and it’s made the injury to her mouth worse than it should have been. She is only 3 years old, but she looks like she’s 12.
“In the atmosphere today with animal rescue, there’s a crisis across the country and there is a crisis here as well,” she said. “Our local animal control has started to euthanize again due to space issues, and that’s something we have not seen in several years.”
Barney said she understands the reluctance some people have about fostering a terminally ill animal, aware its lifespan is short. For her, providing end-of-life care for such animals is a reward in itself.
“A lot of people say. ‘I could never do that,’ or, ‘That would break my heart.’ But for me and other people that foster hospice dogs, those are the kind of animals that really need a home,” said Barney, who also fosters healthy dogs and cats.
“It’s not so much knowing that this dog or cat has a limited number of days; that’s not where I put the value,” she said. “It’s for the days they have left, letting them know that someone loves them. My dog knows she is going to receive care and attention; she will have a good quality of life to whatever life she has left.”
Clementine’s condition only increases Barney’s commitment to providing care.
“She was in pretty bad shape when they found her,” Barney said. “They did a stray hold, and nobody claimed her. At that point we started to address her medical issues with her mouth. She received some sort of blunt force trauma to the side of her face. Whether somebody hit her or something else happened, we don’t know.
“But she’s a very sweet girl, and she does not cause me any extra work,” Barney said. “She’s on pain medication and takes antibiotics for the infection in her face. It’s so sad to me that someone would either hurt her or let her roam around without knowing what happened to her.”
Clementine is Barney’s second hospice foster dog, following Lorretta, a yellow labrador that she fostered earlier this year.
“She had developed a mammary tumor, which is pretty easy to have taken out. But whoever owned her let it get huge to the point where it was the size of a bowling ball hanging from her abdomen,” Barney said. “It was in Clinton County and it was February, and it was really cold. And they just tied her to the front door and left.
“We took her and had the tumor removed. But it had grown to such a size that we could never get clean margins off of it and it was just consuming her,” she said. “She didn’t have quality of life anymore, and it was a painful thing for her. We had six weeks together and I did a bucket list for her. So she went to kids’ events and schools and she was such a sweet dog.”
Erika Pratte is the executive director of Partners for Pets at 9136 Lower Marine Road in St. Jacob. She deals with sick or injured animals on a daily basis and is grateful to people such as Barney who make the animals a part of their lives.
“We see a lot of individuals who will surrender their pets when they reach older age or have health issues,” Pratte said. “We want to make sure that the quality of life is there for the final days of any pet, and they deserve to know that someone fought for them.
“We have a base of willing hospice fosters that spoil them and love them and make them a part of their family, whether it be for a day, three weeks or seven months,” she said. “It’s really heartwarming and such a selfless act because those families know that they’re walking into something where they’re going to give their heart just to have it broken.”
Pratte said the temporary nature of fostering a pet through hospice care can create a lifetime’s worth of memories.
“It’s great to know that there are people out there who welcome these animals with open arms,” Pratte said. “It takes a special individual to accept a senior pet or a hospice-deemed pet because of that looming heartbreak around the corner.
“It’s such an amazing thing to do for an animal down on its luck that has found itself in animal control,” she said. “You bring them home and give them a cheeseburger and give them their own bed. It shows those animals that their life matters, no matter how they got here.”
Barney’s Facebook friend, Donna Crraag, volunteers with Stray Rescue in St. Louis and she has hospice foster dogs.
“Somebody had shared her post and she has a hospice dog named Roger who has Stage 4 terminal cancer,” Barney said. “I’ve been talking with Donna on Messenger and seeing if there is anything she needs. A lot of people have come forth and donated food, treats and toys to her to for him.
“Clementine has to eat soft food because of her mouth, and the canned food she likes is almost $4 a can twice a day and that got expensive,” Barney said. “A lot of my friends donated money or cases of her favorite dog food and brought it to my house. That was really sweet of them, and Clementine has been loving that food, and she takes her medication with that food.”
Barney also does medical fosters, taking care of animals that have been injured or have medical issues. That includes dogs that have been hit by cars or cats that are really sick.
“That’s what Partners for Pets is known for: their willingness to take an animal that nobody else would take,” she said.
Finding homes for stray kittens is a priority for Partners for Pets, especially this time of year.
“We’re in the middle of kitten season right now and Sunday night I got a call from a lady in East Alton who had a stray kitten stuck in a water pipe on her property,” Barney said. “The city was able to get the kitten out and I took him, and he seems fine.”
She said Partners for Pets also has a kitten named Smooshy found on construction equipment in Alton with its sibling.
“In the morning when the crew came on the site, they turned on the bulldozer or whatever it was, and it crushed and killed her sibling immediately,” she said. “It crushed Smooshy’s leg and punctured her lung, but she survived and had her leg amputated on Thursday. She’s an animal I wouldn’t hesitate to foster either.”
For more information about Partners for Pets, call 618-540-7387, visit https://www.partnersforpetsil.org/ or go to Partners 4 Pets on Facebook. Partners for Pets is open from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday.
“We’re always looking for hospice fosters or just fosters in general,” Pratte said. “We adopt senior pets or hospice-deemed pets, with no fee, to someone who can continue the quality of life for those animals.
“There are special people out there and we’ve just got to reach them.”
Scott Marion is a feature reporter for the Intelligencer. A longtime sportswriter, he has worked for the Intelligencer since December 2013. He is a graduate of Brentwood High School and the University of Missouri School of Journalism. 

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