Sora’s Story: I Was Better Prepared Than Most. I Still Got It Wrong

Sora’s Story: I Was Better Prepared Than Most. I Still Got It Wrong

By Michelle Nichols, MS, HonCAHP, CGRS | Animal Hospice Coach, Educator, Mentor, and Certified Grief Recovery Specialist,  AHELP Founder

There's the kind of knowledge you go looking for. There's the kind you work hard to earn. And then there's the kind that finds you anyway — usually in the middle of something you were sure you were ready for.

For me, that third kind of knowledge came through a European Boxer named Sora.

I had the network. The specialists. The tools I'd built myself because nothing quite right existed yet. By every measure our field uses to judge "prepared," I was as ready as a pet parent could be.

And I still got it wrong.

Not in the way that breaks you. In the quieter way that teaches you — the kind of wrong that changes how you show up for every animal, and every family, that comes after.

That's what Sora gave me. It's what I want to give you today.

In my "tail," I'll walk you through:

• How a hard diagnosis and genuinely excellent vet care still left our family without the answers we needed most
• The tools we had to build ourselves, because nothing adequate existed yet
• What I got wrong, even with every resource money and connections could buy
• The research that, years later, finally put a name to what I'd lived through
• What all of it might mean for you, if you're walking a version of this road right now

A Calling I Couldn’t Name Yet

I've walked this path alongside families for fifteen years. I've also walked it as a family member myself. And even though I felt informed, connected, and about as prepared as anyone could be, I didn't always get it right.

In 2009, my Boxer Brodie's death lit something in me — the first spark of what would become the AHELP Project. I couldn't have named it back then. I just knew, somewhere underneath the grief, that helping other families navigate their pet's end of life was what I was supposed to do with my life. It was my girl Sora, though, who turned that spark into a direction I couldn't walk away from.

I rescued Sora at one year old from a kennel in Hungary, where she'd been passed over for their show and breeding program. Getting to know her from across an ocean, through her Ukrainian owners, felt like an early, awkward form of online dating. They told me Sora had barely known human affection — half her life in a crate, half of it on an acre of lawn with her kennelmates for company. They'd cared for her, and they'd miss her, but they said — with real tenderness — that they knew rehoming her was the right thing. If I said yes, they'd get her on a low-cost Lufthansa flight so she could come be with me.

My heart went out to this girl who, by any measure, had never known what it was to simply be loved inside a family's home. I was captivated by the idea of giving a hardworking, under-loved European Boxer a second life. Sora was smart, athletic, and easy to fall for — a dog I could do agility with, who'd fit right in alongside our older Boxer, Brodie. She settled into home life more easily than I'd hoped, and in time, she became one of ours in every sense.

Photo caption: Sora at her memorial photo shoot on the beach, with her favorite squeaky toy.

The Diagnosis No One Could Prepare Us For

Eight years later, everything changed at once.

Sora started having unexplained seizures. I called my veterinarian mentor and friend, Dr. Tina Ellenbogen, half-expecting to hear she'd need anti-seizure medication and that would be that. Instead, we learned our nine-year-old girl had insulinoma — a rare, aggressive tumor of the pancreas that can flood the body with insulin and send blood sugar crashing. Without surgery to remove all of the cancerous cells, the outlook was poor.

Because we'd planned ahead, pet insurance made surgery possible — it genuinely bought us more time. Our surgeon, Dr. Michael Mison, then a partner at Seattle Veterinary Specialists (now owned by BluePearl), was skilled, kind, and patient with every question I threw at him. I walked into that surgery feeling ready.

What I wasn't ready for came after. The surgical team hadn't been able to remove every trace of the tumor, which meant the insulinoma would eventually take Sora's life.

So I asked the obvious next question: what could I expect? And I learned, to my genuine surprise, that no one on the specialty team could really answer me. Not because they didn't care — because they told me, honestly, they'd never worked with a family who could manage this level of care and keep the seizures controlled at home.

I was devoted to giving Sora every good day I could, for as long as her life still felt like hers. But I remember being stunned that such a simple, human question —what should I expect? — had nowhere to land inside that specialty hospital.

💡 Something I want you to know: If you've ever asked your vet "what can I expect" and felt met with a kind but empty silence, please hear this — it isn't because no one cares. It's because that question lives outside of clinical training. It's not really a medical question at all. It's a question about what your days at home together are going to look and feel like, and how to make them peaceful. That gap is exactly where animal hospice support exists to meet you.

Photo caption: Michelle Nichols holding up Sora iwth a towel technique so that Sora could get around in the backyard. Caring for Sora was a job with very few breaks — and I felt, my duty to her as a Human DOING.

We Built What Didn’t Exist Yet

My mother — a human hospice nurse — came to help me care for Sora. Together, we built our own way to track her symptoms and quality of life, because nothing built for families like ours existed yet. The quality-of-life scales available at the time, like the well-known HHHMMMM scale, were a good start, but something about them still didn't fit what we were living.

A year earlier, I'd met Dr. Lisa Reising at the Spirits in Transition End-of-Life Weekend Seminar — a three-day event that connected me with a community of new colleagues who inspired me on the road toward founding the AHELP Project. Dr. Lisa understood exactly what I wanted for Sora's care — holistic, gentle, aligned with who Sora was. She helped us put together a comfort kit with strong pain relief and anti-anxiety medication for the hard moments, and we had a specialty hospital and a growing circle of other end-of-life supporters standing by, just in case.

Above all, I had a team of holistic and conventional veterinary professionals who shared my vision for Sora's care. Looking back, that instinct — surrounding her with a team that saw her the way I did — was the beginning of what I'd later come to call True North: the practice of checking my own wishes for her against what she was actually telling me she wanted. I didn't have the language for it yet. I just knew it mattered.

When I asked what to expect for Sora's final chapter, I turned to Dr. Alice Villalobos — the renowned veterinary oncologist who founded "Pawspice" and created the HHHMMMM quality-of-life scale. She told me, gently, that Sora would likely succumb to seizures brought on by low blood sugar, but just as with human experience, there was no evidence that pain results with seizures that come with low blood sugar. So I did what any devoted pet parent does: I studied everything I could about nursing care and took steps such as inventing "Sora's Goo" — a mix of peanut butter, honey, and hemp seed protein — that she'd lap up eagerly on the days her blood sugar dipped and she felt unwell.

By any reasonable measure, with planning, expert help, and no small amount of ingenuity, we were more prepared than most families ever get the chance to be.

Graphic caption: Graphic of the statement: I was a human DOING — the caregiving, the managing, the monitoring, the deciding —when what she needed most from me wasa human BEING.

And I Still Got It Wrong

Not wrong in the way that keeps you up at night with guilt. I loved Sora completely, and I know I gave her everything I had. Wrong in a quieter, more painful way.

I had become a human DOING — the caregiving, the managing, the monitoring, the deciding — when what Sora needed most from me was a human BEING.

I knew the hospice caregiver's mantra: BE PRESENT. I just didn't live it until it was almost too late, and by then I'd run myself down to nothing. I came closer than I'd like to admit to pushing my own family past their limits. And somewhere in all that doing, I lost track of moments with Sora that never came back.

💡 Something I want you to know: If you're the pet parent tracking every symptom, preparing every meal, waking at 2 a.m. to check on your animal — please don't mistake exhaustion for a personal failing. Pet Caregiver Burden can look, from the outside, exactly like devotion.

Often, the families who are doing the very most are the ones quietly running themselves out before the end even comes. Some will recommend "self-care," and without a clear idea of what that means for you, you dismiss it because you feel you don't have time for it. But if someone gently asks you to put the clipboard down, or to step away for just a few minutes to simply sit with your animal — that isn't a suggestion to care less. It's an invitation to care in the deepest way there is.

It took empath, intuitive, and energy worker Atsuko Arai — a kindred spirit I'd met at that same Spirits in Transition Seminar — to finally help me see that I was doing too much, and that it was time to let some of it go. I took steps to help ensure Sora was comfortable as she declined, and she eventually passed to the Rainbow Bridge on a cool January night, surrounded by candles and with Mom there to support us.

The quiet that followed Sora's passing taught me something I couldn't have learned any other way. I had lived through something that needed its own name — an exhaustion that went far beyond grief, a weight I'd carried for months with no one to help me set it down. Years later, when I came across Dr. Mary Beth Spitznagel's research on pet caregiver burden, I recognized myself immediately. It wasn't new information. It was the science finally giving language to something I'd already lived through and survived.

💡 Something I want you to know: You don't have to be the one who gives yourself permission to stop or to let go. Sometimes that permission shows up in unexpected places — a friend, a small ritual, a moment of stillness. If you're still fighting the ending, it can help to gently ask yourself: What am I afraid I'll feel if I stop fighting the process? Would I have regrets if I decided their time had come?

When it was over, I knew two things with complete clarity.

The first was that what I'd lived through was far too common and far too unspoken.

The second was that I wanted to do better — for myself — and for every family who would walk this road after me.

Photo caption: Sora and Michelle Nichols sitting by the fireplace on Sora's dog bed. We were so grateful for the chance to say a peaceful goodbye to Sora after she woke from her natural dying process for one “last bloom" with us.

Three Things Sora Gave Me

1. Preparation is not the same as protection. I had the specialists, the tracking tools, and the network of trusted practitioners. And I still lost myself in the doing. If it happened to me, it can happen to you — no matter how prepared you feel, or how prepared others tell you that you are. Being ready for your pet's needs and being ready for your own are two different jobs, and it's okay to need help with both.
2. What I felt was real, and it has a name. When Dr. Spitznagel's research surfaced years later, it didn't tell me anything I hadn't already lived. It confirmed that other caregivers, before and after me, feel exactly what I felt. If you're in the middle of caring for a sick or aging pet and you feel stretched thinner than you knew was possible, that feeling has a name — Pet Caregiver Burden — and naming it is often the first real act of caring for yourself.
3. Presence matters more than performance. What Sora needed at the end wasn't a better plan. She needed me — simply there, simply with her — because in the end, I was all she had. That conviction became the foundation of everything the AHELP Project has taught pet parents over the past twelve years.

What I Hope You Take From This

If you're walking along a road like this right now, here's what I most want you to carry with you:

1. If you've asked your vet "what can I expect" and been met with kind but incomplete answers, that's not a sign anyone failed you. It's simply outside the scope of many veterinarians’ clinical training. That's exactly the space hospice support exists to fill — someone who can sit with you and talk honestly about what the coming days might look and feel like, for both you and your animal.
2. You can do everything right — build every system, consult every specialist, pack every comfort kit — and still end up running on empty. That doesn't mean you did something wrong. It means you've been doing everything, alone, for too long without a break. Preparing well protects your pet. It doesn't automatically protect you, and it's okay to ask for that kind of support too.
3. If you notice yourself managing every variable — medications, meals, monitoring — but finding it hard to simply sit still with your animal, that's worth noticing gently, even just to yourself. Moving from doing to being is one of the hardest, most important shifts in this whole journey, and it rarely happens without someone naming it out loud. Consider this your gentle nudge.
4. And permission to let your pet go can come from anywhere — a friend, a quiet moment, even your animal themselves. It doesn't have to come from you, and it doesn't have to come all at once. You don't have to control when it arrives. You just have to stay close enough to recognize it when it does, and brave enough to trust it.

If Sora's story resonated with you today, I'd be grateful if you'd forward it to another pet parent who might need to read it — someone who's doing everything right and still feels like it isn't enough. They deserve to know they're not alone, and that what they're carrying has a name.

With you on this journey, Michelle 🐾❤️👣🌈

( Blog post banner: Michelle Nichols blog post, Sora’s Story: I Was Better Prepared Than Most. I Still Got It Wrong, photo of Michelle Nichols and her dog, Sora, on a good day in 2013 at the local beach lake. )