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Great Endings

Sieske Valk

Updated: Feb 9

How to communicate with pet guardians who are going through grief in a compassionate, non-harmful way


Half a year ago, I was asked whether I wanted to be a speaker during the 2025 Mobile Vet Conference, hosted by the House Call Vet, Dr. Eve Harrison. Having thoroughly enjoyed last year’s conference, as a last-minute speaker when another speaker had to pull out due to personal circumstances, I immediately grabbed the opportunity. However, being in limbo, as I didn’t know what the future held of Autumn Animals, I decided to keep the subject of the talk - which I had to choose then as well - to something dear to my heart.


How to communicate with people who are grieving, without it draining you. 


The main teachings of the talk, given on February 1st 2025, are presented in a series of articles of which this is the first one. It is mainly directed towards veterinary professionals wanting to set up a compassionate home euthanasia service, but everyone looking to support grieving people can take something from it.

Moving towards a sunset together, with love and compassion. Photo by Leio McLaren on Unsplash.
Moving towards a sunset together, with love and compassion. Photo by Leio McLaren on Unsplash.

A bit of context

I have always had an interest in talking about difficult topics, such as relationship dynamics and death. With my background as a veterinary nurse, turned social scientist, turned End-of-Life Doula for pet guardians, I have built up my experience in talking about loss, but more importantly, being comfortable in witnessing a variety of emotions and deep grief.It takes practice to be able to sit with someone and hold the space, without judgement, without trying to solve their problem and without blurting out unhelpful platitudes.


I recently moved away from London, where I ran Autumn Animals, an independent mobile veterinary clinic that specialised in home palliative and hospice care.


In my years of working in pet and veterinary care, I found that lots of families who care for elderly or ill pets, feel like they are on their own, and like they need to find their own way through a maze of services. I have served so many geriatric patients that didn’t even receive pain relief for their osteoarthritis! Especially in London, it’s a challenge to find a vet you are with long-term, who really knows your animal since they were very young.


My aim for Autumn Animals was to set up a holistic and empowering service that would guide pets and their families through the End-of-Life phase, from needing palliative or geriatric support all the way to the end. I wanted to offer a wide range of services that aided to improving Quality of Life for the pets and their human guardians. This meant I had nurses, physios and an acupuncturist on board, veterinarians, and a bereavement therapist. We’d go to the family’s house and give them guidance on how to adjust the environment and routine so that the animal would be more comfortable and communicate closely with their primary vet to make sure medication was tweaked where necessary. The service was very personalised in a way that the client would have one person to liaise between the specialists and who would keep a close eye on the Quality of Life of the animal and how the family was doing as a unit. Eventually, when death came close, a trainer bereavement supporter, like myself, would guide the family to come to a decision together with their or our vet and create a peaceful and dignified euthanasia in the comfort of their home. Afterwards, the family would receive personalised aftercare to make sure they would look back on this journey, feeling it was beautiful and that they made the most of their time with their beloved friend.


I closed the clinic last August, one of my colleagues took over our great reputation and set up her own mobile clinic, using the Autumn Animals values and partners. I will continue to write about geriatric and End-of-Life veterinary care, offer online pet bereavement support and consult on clinics who want to set up a similar service.


Even though this mobile clinic did not work out for me personally, I fully believe it is one of the most beautiful things I have ever set up: filled with integrity, care and compassion. I hope some of the things I will be talking to you about today are inspirational and you will incorporate them into your own practice.


My husband, Jamie, and I now live in Devon, where we share the care for our super senior cat Lewis who is 18 years old.


I currently work for The Decelerator, an organisation that supports people through organisational endings. Mostly within the civil society sector. Sometimes it feels like another kind of hospice, but for charities.


What I want you to take away

I am going to talk you through the various phases of being with a client who is requesting you to euthanise their pet. I am inspired by a variety of resources, such as Francesca Lynn Arnoldy’s book ‘Cultivating the Doula Heart’, Lou Downe’s ‘Good Services’ and The Decelerator’s ‘Towards Better Organisational Endings’.


My goal here is for you to:

  • Understand the different archetypes of clients and how to best communicate with them.

  • Gather new tools and prompts for communicating with clients who are going through grief.

  • Be able to feel comfortable dealing with grieving clients in the most compassionate and empowering way, without feeling their grief is draining you.

  • And to be able to provide a service that people will remember for the rest of their lives.


I will be using the various phases we go through with a client to guide you through the process of communicating with a grieving client: from the prep work to the moment they receive the ashes of their beloved pet back - and even a bit after that. This is all based on how we at Autumn Animals used to communicate with clients and is obviously just one example in a sea of options.


We all know the saying that a person will not remember what you did, but they will remember how you made them feel. I just want to reiterate that how you make them feel, starts before you pick up the phone, all up to the very end. So, if you are working in a practice where multiple people are responsible for parts of this process, it is paramount you are all aligned about how to interact with clients and their companion animals, the kind of language you use and the values behind your services.


Understanding what compassion means

First, I want to talk about understanding the difference between sympathy, empathy and compassion. This is what Francesca Lynn Arnoldy writes in Cultivating the Doula Heart (pages 9-11; words stressed in bold are mine).

Sympathy: I feel bad/sad for you Sympathizing means feeling sorry for someone.It means conjuring up an emotional state of pity in response to someone else’s difficult experience. We take on a feeling that wasn't organically ours when we sympathise. We might even feel guilty for remaining neutral or positive in our own hearts while someone else is suffering. By sharing in sorrow, we believe we are bonding. We commiserate: yet by doing so, we compound challenging situations by adding in our own emotions.

Empathy: I feel how this feels for you Empathising means taking one step back from sympathy by attempting to envision how we would feel if in the other person’s shoes.Or, we remember how we have felt in a similar circumstance. We think we are meeting someone where they’re at by overlaying our imagined experience onto their reality or our past onto their present. This responsive feeling can’t exactly match another person’s, as this is not possible. Emotions are fluid and personal and unique.Sympathy and empathy, while well-intentioned approaches to offering solace, can be draining. Instead of being fully available to support another, we are expending energy as we feel sad for someone or attempt to feel what they’re enduring. Trying to match our emotional landscape to that of another can be exhausting.

Compassion: I honour how this feels for you Compassion moves beyond empathy [...] learning how someone feels by becoming a neutral ally and witness. We make no assumptions. We do not guess. We “allow” others their emotions by conveying our acceptance, and we give them adequate space to explore these feelings for themselves.”We always want to communicate with our clients from a compassionate stand point. We acknowledge their pain, we support them and give them space to express their sadness, but under no circumstances, will we ever understand exactly how they feel or know what they need. All we can do is guide them in the most compassionate way, communicate clearly what you are doing, talk about what they can expect and give them space and time for sense-making. 

It is very normal for us to sympathise and empathise with people, yet what they actually need, is compassion. Knowing the difference between the three is paramount if you want to provide a compassionate service, not only for the receiver, but also for yourself. When we communicate compassionately, we leave the unique experience with the other person. Rather than adopting their feelings or projecting yours onto them you are supporting them as they are going on their rollercoaster ride.


If you want to learn more about how you can cultivate a doula presence, I can certainly recommend reading Francesca’s very short but punchy book.


Compassionate communication starts before you pick up the phone to a caller. One of the ways I created space for people to explore their emotions was through making an online family Quality of Life survey available. This didn’t only ask questions about the pet’s mental and physical wellbeing, but also about the family dynamics and feelings about the pet’s demise and how in control they felt about the situation. I would later on refer to this during a phone call, if the survey taker would call me.


It’s all in the preparation

So, let’s take a step back and see what we can do practically to set ourselves up for success. This is very basic Service Design 101 but nowadays, we just can’t get away with old-school websites that have no useful information on it. I would personally even argue for putting your prices on the website for transparency's sake, and a clear breakdown of what is included in the costs of a home visit, whether that’s a hospice consultation or a home euthanasia.


Make sure there are a variety of ways people can get in touch with you, whether that’s via email, telephone or even WhatsApp. I have found a lot of people like communicating via WhatsApp as they tend to have questions later at night and it feels good for them to be able to send that question somewhere and know it will be dealt with shortly. Having said that, the availability of WhatsApp does not take away the need for that important, informative first phone call.


You should also have dedicated pages on which you explain the full process of booking, all steps involved during the euthanasia consultation, the options for aftercare, and a page for resources around pet grief.


When we are thinking about our prep comms, and doing that in an accessible and inclusive way we want to have:

  • An up-to-date, accessible and mobile friendly website with clear calls to action.

  • A variety of ways a client can contact you. Not everyone likes the directness of a phone call.

  • Webpages with a mix of written and video recorded guidance on the whole End-of-Life process to enhance understanding and to refer to during the call.

  • A modest social media presence (so people can triangulate you are trustworthy)

  • Verifiable, recent testimonials, e.g. via Google Maps or Trustpilot.


You can always refer back to these pages and resources at later stages of your service. Your clients are usually in no state to absorb all the information you are giving them during a phone call and everybody has different preferences with regards to how they learn about the euthanasia process.


One of the most important things I did before I set up Autumn Animals was build a solid relationship with the third parties I used, such as referral specialists, pet bereavement counsellors, support services and the crematorium I sent patients to. This is so important for clients calling about End-of-Life care for their precious companion animals, because they come to trust your opinion and assume you have done your research. Most crematoria are happy for you to plan a visit and show you their ways of working; if they’re not, they are probably not worth setting up a partnership with. I knew exactly how the crematorium I partnered up with, handled our patients, where and how they were kept, how they were cremated and how their cremains were handled. I could tell my clients, hand to heart, that I was certain they would receive their own pet’s ashes back, after the animal had been stored cool in their own individual bed, and that the drivers of the crematorium would never throw the dead body around like an inanimate object.


We’re almost getting to the next phase, the call. If you are flying solo and you don’t have someone else answering your phone, make sure you have a clear voicemail programmed which states the reason you are not picking up, such as being with patients or being on the road. This will ensure people that you will also not pick up the phone when you’re with their pet.


Give clients the option to leave a voicemail - which they almost never do - an email address to send a message to or the option to message or WhatsApp you.


As I was on the road a lot of the time, I would be able to listen to the message and send people a message acknowledging that I had listened to their request and would get back to them at a predetermined time. This is part of expectation management. They know they have been heard and will be contacted at a time where you can give them your full attention. People are usually happy to wait until that time, and slightly relieved they have a little bit of extra time before having the dreaded talk.


Obviously, another option is to have someone else take your calls. I would be wary of just hiring a standard outsider Virtual Assistant or telephone operator, as these calls are often very emotionally charged. I personally think it’s better if you can have someone from the team take these calls, who has a photo on your website and a brand specific approach in line with your company’s values.


These are just some examples of things to consider when setting up a communication plan for a home euthanasia service as a veterinary professional. It’s by no means an exhaustive list. On top of having the clinical skills, soft skills and the right service framework should not be marginalised if you want to create a compassionate End-of-Life service that people will remember for the rest of their lives.


The next article, ‘The Call’ will be out on 3 March 2025. Stay tuned!

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