Lap of Love Veterinary Hospice - Berks & Lehigh Counties

Lap of Love offers veterinary end-of-life care services in Berks County. Under the care of our experienced, compassionate veterinarians, we exclusively provide 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 veterinarian to discuss your pet's quality of life. Some of our doctors are experienced with certain exotic species as well. 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. If this is a medical emergency, please contact your local veterinarian or one of the emergency clinics listed in the Local Resources section. Service area: Our veterinarians proudly service Berks, Lehigh, Schuylkill and parts of Northampton counties. Due to the expansive area covered, there may be an extended travel fee

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, and Dr. McVety contacted her good friend and veterinary school classmate, Dr. Mary Gardner, to help expand Lap of Love nationwide; 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. In 2011, Lap of Love welcomed their first veterinarian outside Florida, in Charlotte, North Carolina. In 2013, Lap of Love expanded to serve 20 states across the country; 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, focused specifically on hospice and euthanasia of all animal species, and have helped teach the course every year since. 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 had been honored to sit at the bedside of more than 100,000 pets and their families since the company was founded in 2009. In 2018, Lap of Love expanded to serve 30 states, received the first-ever Innovative Practice of the Year award from the Veterinary Innovation Council, and ranked 1956 on the 2018 Inc. 5000 list of the fastest-growing private companies in America. 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 hospice veterinarians, and the team grew to over 200 doctors nationwide. 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 Lap of Love launched an internal Certified Veterinary Hospice and Euthanasia Practitioner course, described as the most rigorous certification process solely focused on end-of-life veterinary care at this time

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. This is why we help them leave this earthly existence the way they want to—in the comfort of their homes, in the warm embrace of their favorite people. Because pets are family. That's why we do this