- Hours:
- Mon-Fri: 9A - 9P
- Sat: 9A - 2P
- Sun: Closed
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Flea and Tick Prevention
February is Pet Dental Health Month!
Test Your Holiday Hazards Knowledge!
Why Do Cats Stop Using the Litter Box?
Human Medications And Your Pet
Our goal at the Animal Hospital of Streamwood is to help your pet stay healthy, help heal your pet when it is sick or injured, and to ease your pet's pain when it is hurting.
We will do this with quality care, compassion and tenderness.
In this section, we offer you the opportunity to post a memorial of your pet. You can send a photograph and a few words to go along with it. You don't have to identify yourself, and we won't post your contact information, so you can say as much or as little as you like.
Just send us an e-mail to obituaries-at-animalHospitalOfStreamwood.com including your name, your pet's name and photo, and whatever brief words you'd like to say. We won't include your name unless you ask us to.
When a human family member dies, your grief is intuitively understood. People you encounter are likely to be sympathetic, and to allow you to come to grips with your new reality over time. Everyone can imagine the pain of losing someone close. Most adults have gone through it themselves.
When a human family member dies, there is usually some built-in support structure. Formal ceremonies like wakes and funerals allow those left behind to be together and remember the life of the one who has died. They serve, in part, as a marker - an acknowledgment of the death, a rememberance of the life just ended, and a time to gather and begin the long and difficult process of adjusting to a new reality without that person around.
But when you lose a pet, few if any of those things are available to help you through your grief. Other pet owners, close friends and family may be understanding and willing to lend an ear and give you the space you need to grieve. But people who don't own pets often find it difficult to understand just how significant pets can be to their owners, and how painful it is to lose one. In most people's experience, there is nothing built-in to help them handle the loss. No ceremonies, no extended family in attendance, nobody who knew your pet the way you did to exchange stories with.
We talk about them "as if" they're members of the family, but they really are! Your pets are always there, and can be a more consistent part of your daily routine than the other people in your life. You wake up to the mixed signals of a soothing purr and a nose full of cat hair. Maybe at your house, it's the shaking bed and scratching sounds of the dog wriggling out from under it as the sun begins to penetrate the curtains. Your watchful dog never fails to alert you to visitors, and accompanies you on daily walks. Often the dog is the reason you even take daily walks. You end your day with a bedtime routine that includes your animals - it's their bedtime routine too, and they remind you when you leave something out.
So when they go, they leave a hole. Those little daily activities and interactions suddenly stop. And it's often hard to find someone who understands that you can talk to.
The University of Illinois College of Veterinary Medicine offers a telephone line to help. It is staffed three evenings a week by student veterinarians with special training from professional grief counselors and under the supervision of a licensed clinical social worker.
Their phone number is (877) 394-CARE (2273), and their website is at http://www.cvm.uiuc.edu/CARE/
