Veterinarians can help ease the pain of losing a pet, says researcher

Anyone who has had to put down a pet knows it can be a gut-wrenching experience.

Many veterinarian officers offer a support system to their clients they work to give the grieving pet owner as much help as needed.

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But what exactly that support looks like varies from clinic to clinic, which is why Alisha Matte wants to survey veterinarians about how they help.

"Having vets, who would equally own animals, I think they can really step in the shoes of most pet owners today and really just understand how important these animals are to them and how attached they are and take it from that standpoint," Matte said.

Vets 'doing the best they can'

The master's student in the department of popular medicine at the Ontario Veterinary College (OVC), located at the University of Guelph, has surveyed local veterinarians to get a sense of what they are doing in their own clinics.

"The biggest thing that we've learned is they really are doing the best they can to perform a euthanasia as well as support the client's grief throughout that. And it's not even just the veterinarians every staff that worksthere, they're really taking the time to personalize the whole procedure to what the comfort level is of the client as well as the needs of the clients, their expectations," she said.

This includes asking a client about their previous experiences with pets, how much time they might need to be with their ill pet, or changing how they phrase things, such as using the term "cooling device" instead of "freezer" when discussing what will happen to the animal's body after it is euthanized.

They're really taking the time to personalize the whole procedure to what the comfort level is of the client.- Ontario Veterinary College researcher AlishaMatte

Matte will use the information she's gathered from those local interviews to formulate a survey that will be sent out to veterinarians across the province, and perhaps later even to other provinces, so they can better understand how veterinarians cope with grieving patients.

While veterinarians at OVC do learn how to communicate and do client simulations, what they do in their own work environment is still largely underreported.

Her research may help formulate guidelines veterinarians can use in order to best help pet owners.

Pets like family for many

Matte said it's important veterinarians use compassion when helping clients through the heartbreak of losing a pet.

"These owners are losing a pet, a family member," she said.

And while there are those who will argue it's "just a pet," Matte said it would be nice for society to change the way it thinks about the grief people can feel at the loss of a companion animal.

"That's too big of a thing to ask, so the best thing the vets can do at this point is take on that role as much as they can and just really, really understand what clients want," she said.