Faith Sage:
Grief is such an overpowering emotion, especially after losing someone so close to you. It can take months, years, even decades to get back to normal, if that's even possible after experiencing a significant loss. This podcast was created to help you move through and release the emotions, allowing you to heal the hurt and begin living again.
Listen in as I chat with medical professionals, grief workers, and people who have first hand experience in losing a loved one. What their experience has been and what they did to help heal themselves and those around them. Life isn't always sunshine and rainbows, but I believe there is always a silver lining if you're willing to look.
Welcome to the Release Podcast.
Welcome to another episode of Release Grief Podcast today. I'm here with Kathryn Holeton. And go ahead, like, subscribe, and share this podcast, it's how we get more subscribers in, it's how we get more guests on the show, and how we get people to actually sponsor the show.
But today I'm talking with Miss Kathryn, and we're going to be talking a little bit about pet grief, and how important animals are in our world.
They're like our children if you will. Well, let me let her explain it to you because she's the one who wants to talk all about the pet stuff. And I have my own thoughts and interesting analogies on it. Welcome, Kathryn. Thank you so much for stepping on to my grief podcast.
Kathryn Holeton:
Thank you for having me.
Faith Sage:
Yeah, absolutely. So I know I mentioned pet grief. Um, talk to me about the animals that you're specifically referring to. Tell me about them.
Kathryn Holeton:
So I had two puppies when I was growing up. I say I had two, but one was my grandmother's puppy, but she, story on that one later, but she basically claimed me as hers.
One was my first puppy was Shadow and she was a mutt, an Airedale mix. And we had her for 20 years. She passed away two years ago. And the other one passed away at the age of 14, but she also passed away two years ago. They both passed within months of each other.
Faith Sage:
Oh, wow. So, so you grew up with these dogs, like almost pretty much your entire life. Because you don't look like you're much older than my daughter who is 21.
Kathryn Holeton:
I am 25; I'll be 26 in October.
Faith Sage:
So yeah, so you're not much older than my daughter, she had a really hard time when we had a dog that had grown up with her. It was very hard for her when the dog passed, it was like her best friend.
And so you can look, go ahead. Dogs are more than a best friend. They're even more than family. Yeah, explain that. Tell me. What were these hugs to you?
Kathryn Holeton:
Well, to me, they were more akin to what I imagine the definition of a soulmate to be, not in the romantic sense.
Faith Sage:
Right. They cared for you unconditionally, and they always had the best hugs, and the sloppiest kisses, and the sassiest barks and looks. Right. No, I agree with that.
My daughter took it extremely hard because she had grown up with them like from birth. I'd gotten the one dog when she was born, the same year she was born, and we lost her when she was around 15 years old. So, my daughter took it extremely hard because she'd grown up with it. It was like a sibling to her.
It was a little Chihuahua with one eye. I think it came from a puppy mill, but I didn't know what puppy mills were back then. I got this dog for about $50 bucks. Her missing eye was a birth defect, but she was the best dog I ever had. Best dog.
So tell me more about these dogs, like your grandma's dog. Tell me more about them. Like, I want to get to know them more.
Kathryn Holeton:
So my dog, Shadow, when mom and I got her, she came from a shelter. She had been abandoned by her previous family for an amount of time.
They left her in a basement and when we got her, she didn't have her bark. She didn't have a voice at all because, she had barked herself hoarse. She was also a flight risk pretty much for her entire life. Even after we earned her trust and won her over, she was still a flight risk. But she liked cats.
Faith Sage:
Yeah, yeah. Did she like to just chase them?
Kathryn Holeton:
Yeah, she would corner them, but not know what to do with them.
Faith Sage:
Oh my gosh, that's funny.
Kathryn Holeton:
She would just stand there and stare at them, like, I got you. What do I do now? Literally. Tazz, she came into my grandparents life on one of my cousin's birthday parties, actually.
Mom and I were following grandma and grandpa on our way to another relative's house for a birthday party and this thing ran out of a ditch and underneath grandma's car. And of course, they stopped and got out and it was an itty bitty puppy. Just an itty bitty fluffball and it had so many ticks on her.
Grandma and grandpa ended up taking the puppy and they were originally going to turn it in to an animal shelter. And they got all the ticks off and they cleaned her up. My grandpa at the time was dead set against having another dog because they'd had dogs that had passed away and they just didn't, he didn't want a dog.
And this dog kept nicking, nipping at his ankles. He shouted at one point, "Stop it Tazz!" And that's how her name became, Tazz. And from that puppy, she grew up to be a Belgian Malinois, a big puppy.
Faith Sage:
So she must've been pretty young.
Kathryn Holeton:
She was very young when we got her and she really liked how our mornings went in the morning.
My mom had to go to work extra early, and it was during the school year, so I'd be dropped off at my grandma's house, like, bright and early. Well, the daily morning routine was I'd sit down on the floor, and Tazz would walk over and curl up in my lap and go back to sleep.
Just snoring. It was adorable. It sounds adorable. It kind of got funnier, though, as she got older, because she still thought that she could curl up in my lap, but she did that. And almost broke my hips; she was a big girl.
Faith Sage:
Kathryn Holeton:
No, there came a point where she realized how big she was.
Faith Sage:
Oh really?
Kathryn Holeton:
That's when she got sassy. There was this one time I was playing tag out in the yard because I had three other cousins and we were playing in my grandma's yard. She has a huge yard. Tazz was out running around with us, just chilling, and someone was coming after me to make me "it." Tazz was on the other side of the tree I was hiding behind, looking at me. I was cornered by the person who was "it." I was like, "Get them, Tazz, get them, so I can get away!"
You know what this little brat did? She ran up, grabbed my arm with her teeth, and knocked me to the ground, and I became "it." And the last thing I saw of her before she ran away was this, this shit eating grin. Like, "Haha, I got you." I was like, you're my friend, how dare you betray me? Everyone in the family was dying of laughter.
This dog just bounded off like a deer through the yard. She was like, it's play time. I was like, what the heck? What did I do to you?
Another time, it was another school morning and we, the family, had been taking her outside to say hi to her because she was being potty trained and whenever she got excited, she'd go pee.
So, I was out there and you know what, this dog did, she pounced on my shoulders, pinned me to the door, and gave me a lick bath in the face; it was early in the morning. I was like, oh my goodness, get off of me, help, someone, help.
Faith Sage:
How old were you? Oh, middle school. I was going to say, if you had that eyeliner on and that mascara on, it just went right up your forehead.
Kathryn Holeton:
Well, luckily I didn't have to worry about that. To this day, I hate and despise makeup. I don't wear it.
Faith Sage:
Yes. I was going to say like, if you wore it, like I can remember them, my dogs licking me and having my eyes look all crazy and wild on one side only. Cause they didn't ever match at the other side. I mean, for real.
Did these puppies get sick or was it just old age?
Kathryn Holeton:
Well, for Shadow, it was a really fast thing. It was like she was doing good and aging gracefully. And then she got kidney failure within like nine months or so, and then we had to put her down because her body was starting to run her nonstop. She didn't sleep for a night and mom and I didn't want to see her suffer anymore.
For Tazz, to this day, we're not altogether sure what happened with her, but she had an incident where she fell down the stairs at my grandma's house and it was 13 stairs on the inside. She had like some sort of seizure. And my grandparents had taken her to the vet and they were trying to see what was wrong with her.
She has also developed after that incident, an unhealthy attraction to water. Like she would drink it nonstop. She would make herself sick from drinking so much water. So we had to limit the amount of water she would get at any one time. And keep the bathroom doors closed and stuff.
And then there was this one time, the last time she did a lap around grandma's yard. I wasn't there for her final moments, but, grandma said that Tazz walked back up onto the porch, gave the most wolf sounding howl that anyone had ever heard. And then she went into a seizure and then that was it.
Faith Sage:
Did you hold any memorials or ceremonies or anything for them?
Kathryn Holeton:
No... well, sort of, I guess. For Shadow, we had her cremated. And then Mom and I brought her back home. Mom had always wanted a red maple in the backyard. So, Mom found a red maple and we buried her under it.
Faith Sage:
Aw, that's beautiful. We've had numerous dogs and we would always hold like a small service when we put them in the ground. For the little ones, we would get them a little box, and put them in the ground and hold a small ceremony for them, invite the family over.
And, it was usually just us and the kids, we have five kids. So, that right there as a whole fricking congregation, you know, between us and the kids and, you know, my mom and whoever else wanted to join us.
And so I was just curious. Our pets mean so much to us and I'm not sure that a lot of people realize that until they have to deal with the passing of one.
And then it's like, it hits. It's like, holy shit, like this is hard. And then the silence afterward. It's one of the hardest, it's one of the most deafening sounds ever, is the silence.
So, how have you worked through like the grief of losing the animals and stuff? Was it just to never get another animal? Was it therapy? What was it?
Kathryn Holeton:
I wrote poetry. I'm originally a poetry writer before they passed away, so I just journaled. I have yet to write a poem about Shadow passing, per se, in the literal sense. I did write a poem for both of them when they passed, and it actually got published by a literary magazine.
Faith Sage:
Yay! That's beautiful. Did you find that the writing the words and writing the poems, did it help with the grief? Did it help kind of express that grief and get it out?
Kathryn Holeton:
It did because it was better than being stuck in my head.
Faith Sage:
Are there a lot of grief groups for animals out there to be able to connect with other people or did you look for any like in that, in that sense, I should say?
Kathryn Holeton:
I never looked for any, and I don't know if there's any that exist. I'm sure they do, because everything exists, really.
Faith Sage:
True that. True that. But your main source of getting the grief out was the writing, the poetry, and just remembering them? Yeah. That's a beautiful. So I know that you are not like a big figure in the grief world at all.
Where do you like hang your hat? Tell me about what you do.
Kathryn Holeton:
I'm a brand designer for musicians and writers. I help them create their message. I help them find their message, gear it towards their target audience, and I also help them identify their values. I normally have a whole spiel lol.
Faith Sage:
Right? Well, we probably entered into it in an odd note with the grief and stuff. Because I'm pretty sure you don't talk about the grief ahead of time. And it kind of throws people off their game.
Kathryn Holeton:
A little bit, a little bit. Anyway, I help them build the foundations of what they want for their music or writing.
What they want it to do and then I help them build their online setting as well. So, I can do the logo, website, brand collateral like business cards, electronic press kits. Insert relevant term here for brand collateral.
Faith Sage:
Right. Oh, that's awesome. It's very much needed. I know when I wrote my books, I did not have a media kit. I did not have anything in place for it. I just literally wrote the book, and then I self published.
It was the reason I was asking about the grief coming out more so with the writing. I know when I wrote my first book and my second book it was, I just remember tears washing over me and then laughter coming in hot and then, you know, melancholy and then like going through the whole roller coaster of emotions.
Just with writing one chapter, my mother thought that I was literally going insane because she'd walk into the room and I'd be bawling. And then the next moment she'd walk in and I'd be laughing hysterically. And the next moment I'd be complete silence. And she was like, I don't, I don't, I just, I'm going to leave you alone because I don't know what the hell to do.
I'm like, it's okay. I'm okay.
Kathryn Holeton:
Yes, it definitely is. It definitely can be like that.
Faith Sage:
So where can people find you if they need to, um, uh, assist in your services for music writing and, uh, writers. music writing for, uh, promoting musicians and writers. Let me get it right here.
Kathryn Holeton:
If you're a musician or writer in need, you can find me pretty much on almost all of the socials. I'm on Facebook. I'm on Instagram. I'm on LinkedIn. My original TikTok account got put in TikTok jail because I didn't use it because I was between social media schedulers at the time. So TikTok finally deleted that first account and now I'm back on TikTok.
So you can find me on TikTok, threads. I'm sort of on YouTube, but that's more to, uh, showcase my previous work as a musician or lyricist songwriter.
Faith Sage:
I love it. And what name is it under? Is it under Kathryn Holeton?
Kathryn Holeton:
Yep. My Instagram is branddesignerkathrynholeton. Uh, I just changed it. My TikTok is BrandDesignerKH. My Facebook is Kathryn Holeton. My LinkedIn is Kathryn Holeton. The best way to find me is by looking up my website, kathrynholeton.com
Faith Sage:
That's alright. If they're wanting to find you, they'll find you. So, any last words you'd like to talk to about or tell people about like the grief that you went through or like give them any encouraging words like if they're going through pet loss?
Kathryn Holeton:
Losing a pet is just like losing a family member or a piece of your soul. It will hurt. You'll have good days. You'll have bad days. You'll have really, really bad days. But the one thing you need to keep in mind is this : Your pets would have wanted you to keep living because they've lived in the moment and you should also continue to live in the moment because that is the best best way to honor them.
Faith Sage:
I love that. It's beautiful. Thank you so much, Kathryn, for being on the Release Grief Podcast and for everyone listening and watching Go ahead and hit the like and subscribe and share this podcast out and I will see you in the next episode. Thank you so much for listening to this special episode of Release.
And as always, keep going, keep being, keep doing. You are amazing.
You can watch this episode here.
If you're a musician that needs help crafting your message, I have a free PDF guide that you can use to find your message. Click here to learn more.
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