Lap of Love Veterinary Hospice - Knoxville

Lap of Love assists families and their pets in the greater Knoxville area with end-of-life care in a comfortable setting. Our services include veterinary in-home euthanasia and hospice, a type of care focused on providing comfort and pain management. Schedule a telehospice session to speak with a hospice veterinarian about your dog or cat's quality of life from your home or workplace. We can also assist with some of your exotic pets. 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. Our veterinarians proudly service the greater Knoxville area. Due to the expansive area covered, there may be an extended travel fee of $50-$75 based on your location

2009: Dr. Dani McVety started Lap of Love Veterinary Hospice 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. 2010: Lap of Love grew quickly as word spread about a new way for pet parents to say goodbye. Dr. McVety began receiving calls and emails from families and veterinarians nationwide looking for similar services in their area. 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. 2011: Lap of Love welcomes their first veterinarian outside Florida, in Charlotte, North Carolina. 2013: Lap of Love expands to serve 20 states across the country. Drs McVety and Gardner teach 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. 2015: We established our dedicated Support Center with a team of compassionate professionals to assist families over the phone. 2017: Lap of Love's team grows 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. 2018: Lap of Love expands to serve 30 states across the country; receives the first-ever Innovative Practice of the Year award from the Veterinary Innovation Council. 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; team grows to over 200 doctors nationwide and has sat at the bedside of more than 250,000 pets. 2021: Lap of Love launches dedicated Pet Loss Support services and a Senior Pet Care blog; more than 400,000 pets served. 2022: Lap of Love is featured in the award-winning documentary "The Hardest Day." 2023: Lap of Love's team grows to over 300 doctors nationwide and launches 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. Because pets are family. That's why we do this