When you’re the one in the room
Support for the families you care for, and for the team that carries it.
The appointment families remember
Most of what happens in a veterinary practice fades. This doesn’t.
Families recall the euthanasia appointment in detail years later - whether they had a private space, was it quiet, who was in the room, what was said, whether they felt rushed, whether anyone acknowledged what was happening. It’s the single most consequential moment in the veterinary-client-patient relationship, and it is quietly the main determinant on whether a family returns with their next animal or goes somewhere else without ever telling you why.
It’s also the appointment that follows your team home. “30% to 40% of veterinarians experience high levels of burnout. For support teams and veterinary technicians, that number climbs sharply, with 60% to 70% reporting active burnout symptoms” (CoVet, June 2026).
You can’t make the appointment longer - there’s another one in an hour and another after that. But the support around it doesn’t have to end when the room is turned over.
Where doula support fits
I work in the space your appointment can’t reach - the weeks before a decision, and the months after a loss.
Before the appointment
Quality of life conversations that give families language for what they’re already sensing. Decision support when a family is stuck between guilt and love. Preparation for children, so parents aren’t improvising. Planning what the goodbye will look like, so families arrive knowing what they want rather than deciding under pressure in your exam room.
At the appointment
Presence alongside a family who needs support, or with their animal when a family can’t be there. This is companionship, not clinical involvement - your team leads the medicine and the room.
After the loss
Grief companionship for adults, children, and families. Follow-up in the weeks when the world expects them to be fine. Support for the clients whose grief is bigger than the appointment could hold.
Three ways clinics work with me
Referral partnership
A place to send families who need more than an appointment can hold. Published rates and a free discovery conversation mean you can refer confidently - without vetting each time, or worrying about what it’ll cost them. Referral cards and a short team briefing so everyone at the front desk knows what they’re offering.
Co-brandable client resources
Aftercare handouts, preparation guides, and children’s materials your clinic can put its name on - something to put in a family’s hands as they leave, designed to reflect your practice, not mine.
Team support and workshops
Psychoeducational sessions built for veterinary teams: post-euthanasia debriefs, compassion fatigue, difficult conversations, and the cumulative weight of this work. Not adapted from human healthcare, and not a wellness poster in the break room.
Try a sample module - free, and short
Two modules your team can work through between appointments. They run in a browser on a phone, there’s no login and nothing to install, and nothing is recorded about who completed what.
Both are samples, built to show how I approach a training problem. Free to work through, free to send to your whole team, and neither is a certified course - they carry no continuing education credit.
“I can’t decide. What would you do?” - about 7 minutes
One of the questions your reception team gets asked most often, and one of the hardest to answer well. Say the professionally correct thing and it lands as a door closing. Say the kind thing and the decision quietly becomes the clinic’s. A branching scenario about the space in between: you choose what to say three times, and every choice shows you what it would realistically cause.
Start the module How it was designed
“Nothing’s wrong.” Is that the same as alright? - about 13 minutes
From the Five Freedoms to the Five Domains. You assess a fourteen-year-old dog against the Five Freedoms and she passes all five - then you find out what the checklist had nowhere to record. Where the Freedoms came from, why welfare science moved past them, and how to use the Five Domains with a family who is deciding. No scores, no thresholds, and no rule for when it is time.
Start the module How it was designed
Commissioning training for your practice - these subjects or another - is work I do. The design notes for each module - one, two - explain what that thinking looks like.
A note on what this service is - and isn’t
This work is psychoeducational and doula-based. It’s not clinical counselling, therapy, or veterinary medical advice, and it doesn’t intersect with your medical decision-making or your relationship with the client. My role is companionship, preparation, and grief education - everything that sits around the care your team provides, never inside it.
Start with a conversation
A free 15-20 minute meeting - no pressure, nothing to prepare. Just a chance to say where you are and work out together whether this kind of support would help.
Book a conversation