Lap of Love Veterinary Hospice - Melbourne

Lap of Love assists families and their pets in Melbourne and surrounding neighborhoods with end-of-life care in the comfort of their home. Our experienced veterinarians provide compassionate care for your dog or cat, including in-home euthanasia and hospice. Veterinary hospice specifically addresses comfort care and pain management for pets. Our telehospice service allows you to speak with a doctor to discuss your pet's quality of life. We can also assist with some exotic pets too. Lap of Love Veterinary Care Coordinators are here to answer your questions 24/7, every day of the year, including weekends and holidays. Appointments with our veterinarians are scheduled throughout the week, please call for availability. Sometimes pets take a turn for the worse overnight or in a short amount of time, so we do our best to accommodate same day appointments with a few hours notice, but cannot guarantee that

Dr. Dani McVety started Lap of Love Veterinary Hospice in 2009 shortly after graduating from veterinary school while practicing emergency medicine in her hometown of Tampa, FL. After helping countless families through the loss of their pets, she felt an immense inspiration to combine her previous experience as a human hospice volunteer with her love of people and a desire to make the experience of losing a pet as peaceful as it can possibly be. In 2010 Lap of Love grew quickly as word spread about a new way for pet parents to say goodbye; Dr. McVety contacted her good friend and veterinary school classmate, Dr. Mary Gardner, to help expand Lap of Love nationwide, and Dr. Gardner joined as co-founder, applying her decade of software design experience to lead the development of the company's proprietary practice management software. Lap of Love welcomed their first veterinarian outside Florida, in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 2011. By 2013 it expanded to serve 20 states, and Drs. McVety and Gardner taught multiple hours at the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine's first End of Life course offered to senior veterinary students. In 2015 Lap of Love established its dedicated Support Center with a team of compassionate professionals to assist families over the phone. In 2017 Lap of Love's team grew to over 100 doctors nationwide and has been honored to sit at the bedside of more than 100,000 pets and their families since the company was founded in 2009. In 2020, as COVID descended upon the world, Lap of Love quickly rolled out a Telehospice service, providing telemedical advice to families nationwide via an in-depth Quality of Life conversation with our hospice veterinarians, and its team grew to over 200 doctors. In 2021 Lap of Love launched dedicated Pet Loss Support services and a Senior Pet Care blog. In 2022 Lap of Love was featured in the award-winning documentary "The Hardest Day." In 2023 Lap of Love's team grew to over 300 doctors nationwide and launched an internal Certified Veterinary Hospice and Euthanasia Practitioner course

Mission — We believe all pets deserve peaceful end-of-life experiences. Lap of Love is a network of veterinarians around the country with the goal of empowering every owner to care for their geriatric pets. Our philosophy centers around the human-animal bond and the need for that bond to be as undisturbed as possible during this most difficult time. The desire to bring this important service to families across the United States is slowly being realized as additional veterinarians begin working under the same philosophy. Lap of Love is honored to have some of the most compassionate and empathetic vets working with us. At Lap of Love, we firmly believe in the inherent value of diversity and inclusivity and are committed to providing our services with respect, compassion, dignity, and equality for all families that reach out to us! Because pets are family. That's why we do this