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Best in Show: Nursing Student
Explores Senior Living and Pets
FROM: Kathleen Dannenhold
206-221-2456
kathyd@u.washington.edu
DATE: August 7, 2002

When UW undergraduate nursing student Kate Malkin was doing her first round of clinical training at the Veteran's Administration in Seattle, she was surprised to learn that their extended care facility allowed residents to bring in pets. Malkin went for a visit, and sure enough met a friendly dog sauntering across the hallway.

"My grandmother always had a dog," she explains. "And when my grandfather died, that dog became her closest friend. I cannot imagine her living without it."

With an undergraduate research scholarship from the de Tornyay Center on Healthy Aging at the School of Nursing, Malkin began investigating the feasibility of taking pets along when seniors move into retirement communities. Her mentor, Assistant Professor of Nursing Brenda Zierler, herself a dog lover, helped Malkin do background research and then develop a strategy for finding out what communities in the Seattle area take pets, and what potential residents should look for before they sign up.

"It was not as prevalent as I had hoped," Malkin says. "The assisted living facilities that accept pets tend to be more expensive, $2200 - $2400/month, and that doesn't include a pet deposit fee of about $500. And many of these only take small pets."

Malkin also discovered that many facilities that say they take pets offer little protection for the consumer once they have moved in. "It would be very difficult for an older person to make the move into assisted living with their pet and then find out the policy has changed," she says. "It's important to read the fine print on their pet policy."

To see a list of retirement homes and assisted living communities in the greater Seattle area that accept pets, visit the website Malkin developed at http://students.washington.edu/atiya/.

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