The Pet Professional’s Guide to Pet Loss was written as a comprehensive guide for all pet care professionals. It is your resource to gain a basic knowledge of—grief and loss, self-care, how to support your clients within your scope of practice, and the business of grief.
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The Pet Professional’s Guide to Pet Loss: Preventing Burnout, Supporting Your Clients, and Managing the Business of Grief
As a pet care professional—how many times have you had a client that just received the news their pet is terminally ill, has died tragically, or is dealing with pet hospice? And how many times have you had to deliver the news yourself? You are not sure what to say, but you want to be compassionate and helpful. You are literally either lost for words, feel like you said the wrong thing, or would like to be more effective when delivering the news.
As a pet care professional, it is critical to know how to help your clients when they are faced with pet loss grief. With the increasing growth in your industry there will be more demands on you and your business. It will be essential to make it a daily practice to take care of yourself. Compassion fatigue and burnout are real, and they both have a way of sneaking up on you.
This book is comprehensive guide for all pet care professionals. It is your resource to gain a basic knowledge of—grief and loss, self-care, how to support your clients within your scope of practice, and the business of grief.
An excellent book for pet business owners, animal care specialists, veternarians, technicians, dog trainers, or anyone associated with a people that love their animals. As a head dog trainer, I find it difficult to find the right words to comfort someone dealing with the grief of losing a beloved pet. As Wendy pointed out in her book, there are common myths about what to say versus what we should say to an owner. Wendy has outlined some simple, easy statements that give me the words to be more supportive. Too many times, people do say, “you can always get another.” This statement itself dismisses the life and death of the pet as well as the feelings of the person who is experiencing grief. Wendy has given business owners such as myself a thorough guide for the recognition of “Compassion fatigue” and so much more.
A wonderful book for everyone in the pet care industry. Wendy provides a comprehensive and easy to understand explanation of the grief process supported by case studies. Each chapter is nicely summarized in the “Quick Reference Tips” to help reinforce the major points. As a practicing veterinarian of 20 years, I am confronted daily with pet loss and client grief. The emotional stress does take a toll…Wendy’s book will help prevent compassion fatigue for, not only myself, but also, many dedicated pet caregivers.
Our business interacts every day with pet professionals across several states. One of the things I notice often amongst the pet professionals we serve is a sense of “weariness” surrounding the loss of yet another client’s pet. Coming from a background as a human funeral director I have come to realize the grief that pet professionals deal with on a regular basis and often far more frequently than human death care professionals.
Wendy’s book provides practical and actionable suggestions to avoid or lessen the impact on pet professionals who deal with the death of pets on a regular basis. Through understanding the importance of recognizing the signs of compassion fatigue and burnout pet professionals are better able to help themselves and in turn their clients.
I highly recommend “The Pet Professional’s Guide to Pet Loss” for anyone who wishes to consistently care for client families in a professional and empathetic manner, while understanding this is not possible unless they take care of themselves first.
Wendy Van de Poll is a pioneering leader in the field of pet loss grief support. She is dedicated to providing a safe place for her clients to express their grief over the loss of their pets. Wendy’s courses are RACE certified and she travels the globe helping pet care professionals with being end-of-life-safe.
What makes Wendy successful with her clients is that she get’s grief! “Over the years I’ve dealt with my own grief and helping many families communicate and connect with their pets long after their loss. It’s what I’ve done since I was just 5 yrs old!”
She is compassionate and supportive to all who know her.