Customer Reviews

Facing Farewell - A Guide for Making End of Life Decisions for Your Pet

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Dr. Julie Reck, DVM has written a compassionate, informative and well thought out book dealing with one of the biggest and most agonizing decisions all pet owners face, the assisted end of life (euthanasia) for their pet.

Dr. Reck has dedicated her mobile veterinary practice, "Home Farewell", to compassionate in-home euthanasia and brings into this book her great insight and honest detail on the methods of determining life quality and pain assessment for the pet owner. The book describes the symptoms domestic pets often display in pain and includes useful worksheets for the pet owner to utilize in assessing their pet companion's discomfort on an interval basis to assist with their decision making process.

Dr. Reck also provides very valuable insight on our pets' perception of pain, life and death and how humans have compassionately yet inaccurately carried our own anxieties and fear of end of life into our feelings about this process for our companion animals.

As a person who has helped many pet owners as they move through their journey of pain and grief over their loss of a pet, I very highly recommend this book as a primer to help them a) understand the steps toward making their decision and b) come to terms with the guilt and anguish often associated with having to compassionately assist their pet at the end of their journey with comfort and dignity thanks to their new found knowledge. Patricia Moore/Soft-Hearted [...]

Dr.Reck takes on a very difficult subject with great compassion and professionalism.
Her insight in explaining the difference between the human perception of pain and death and our pets is very helpful.We animals lovers can often times project our feelings on to our beloved pet without realizing they cannot reason the way we do and the end result is often times needless suffering. Her book puts the decision making process into the proper perspective and helps us to make the right choices on their behalf. Her charts and explanation of the process are very informative.This book will be one that I personally intend to share with all my fellow petloving friends. Thank You Dr. Reck. L.Martin

This book is essentially about the need to know the criteria in deciding when the time is right to let your sick, injured, ailing, or older pet to have relief through euthanasia. There are several worksheets with questions to ask in the decision making. There are extra copies of these worksheets so you can check your pet over a period of time. These can be helpful while working along with the veterinarian to ease your pet toward its final rest.

Dr Julie Reck has established her "Home Farewell" as a service to do home euthanasia so both the beloved pet and its owner(s) can have a graceful and loving togetherness at this heartbreaking time.

I have been in contact with Dr Reck and she has advised me that her book was put together in order to get this information out to interested and caring owners and veterinarians. She is truly sincere in helping to keep pain and anguish at a minimum for all involved.

I believe that this book can be a comfort in the trying time of the loss of one's beloved friend and companion.