Gratitude

I did a home visit euthanasia earlier in the week, the owner rang to ask where I was working this afternoon and came to our branch practice with a gift and cake.

Euthanasia consults are often the ones that we dread, mainly due to time management in my case, but when Reception are able to book home visits or book them in at the end of the day they can be the most rewarding; it’s the clients lasting impression of us as a practice and likely decides if they will use us for their next pet.

When I used to see practice as a student I got used to injecting off the needle to induce anaesthesia and euthanasia’s but now I prefer to take the animal out the back and place an IV catheter as it makes it much smoother for the owners as we have patent IV access and we don’t often need a nurse restraining the animal. We can then give them a few minutes with their pet before giving the injection and afterwards.

I rarely get sad because while it’s sad for the owner, it’s usually in the animals best interest and we are doing it to stop their suffering; if we took each one home to dwell on we’d never sleep.

This week I euthanised two animals I’ve been seeing for a few months and one dog, who I diagnosed with neoplasia on one of my weekends, was really sad and I nearly shed a tear for him with the owners 💙