Emotional Moment Hospice Patient Gets Her Final Wish With Favorite Animal

Animals have both calming and invigorating effects in senior people living with chronic illness or disabilities.

As a result, care homes, hospices, and hospitals are more and more inviting therapy animals to visit their residents, promoting health, healing and peace.

For Jackie Stalter, 78, the opportunity to see horses again during her time at the Porter Hospice Residence in Colorado was a wonderful moment during a difficult time.

Sadly, Jackie Stalter passed away on the morning of Thanksgiving 2023, but her daughter Jaime Stalter will be forever grateful she was able to give her mother that experience as her final wish.

"My mother was diagnosed with multiple myeloma and kidney failure in October last year," Jaime Stalter, 45, told Newsweek, "and I had been trying to organize a trip to see horses for her since that time.

"When she was well enough to go, the weather was bad and by the time spring came around, she was in and out of hospitals and I could not take her. It played heavy on my mind. I knew how important it was to my mom to be with horses, and I really didn't think she would have the opportunity to again."

Jackie Stalter's father owned horses and she was raised with them, eventually growing up to work at a facility for adjudicated youth doing horse therapy.

"When that center shut down my mother kept three of the horses, PJ, Native, and Midnight," said Jaime Stalter. "She instilled a love a respect of horses in everyone she met, including my children. For my mom, being around horses was the best way to soothe the soul, they were her calmness when life was stormy and her refuge when she needed it."

Studies show that just 15 minutes spent bonding with animals promotes hormonal changes within the brain, according to American Senior Communities.

"Stress levels drop as the brain produces serotonin (the "feel-good" hormone), along with prolactin and oxytocin. This is why therapy animals are good companions for seniors, because they offer so many amazing health benefits," they report on their website.

"I think animals have a way of calming us because they love unconditionally. They don't care if our makeup is perfect or if we have had a bad day, they just accept us for who we are," said Jaime Stalter.

"If you look into a horse's eyes, you can see their emotion. They are very human-like in that way. Horses have a calmness that is quite different from other animals."

After hearing about Jackie Stalter's love of horses, hospice chaplain Paul Roper reached out to Praying Hands Ranch to organize a visit.

"My mom was very excited that morning," said Jaime Stalter. "When the horse was led up the sidewalk towards my mom, her entire face lit up. I had not seen her smile like that in a very long time.

"It is a memory I will carry with me forever. When the horse put her head down and my mom touched her, the calmness in that moment for my mom was a true gift. In that moment, she was no longer sick. She had no fear and no worries, and it took away all the pain from the last year."

"We will be forever grateful for the special moment and memory of this day," she said, "This great act of kindness will be in our hearts forever. For my mom, it brought her peace. For me and my girls, it gave us one more time to be in the same space with my mom and a horse. Something that had been a source of bonding for the four of us.

"I am really happy that this story will reach others and that my mom can continue to share the magic of healing horses even after she is gone."

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