Pet Owners Can Evaluate Their Ailing Pet's Quality of Life With New Online Tool

TAMPA, Fla., Feb. 12, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Lap of Love Veterinary Hospice™ has unveiled their new online interactive tool, the Pet Hospice Journal, which helps pet parents assess the quality of life for their geriatric or terminal ill companion animal. Mary Gardner, DVM, Lap of Love's co-founder and Chief Technology Innovator spearheaded development after seeing a real need for a more consistent way to help pet owners make these very hard decisions. "Every day we are asked by pet parents 'How will I know when it is time to put my pet to sleep?"; Gardner says. "This is a very difficult question to answer and having multiple quality of life data points about the pet, in addition to the pet's current health condition, can significantly help both the doctor and the pet owner make the right choices." 

In addition to creating a pet profile including the symptoms and sickness the pet suffers from, the Pet Hospice Journal allows owners to upload and maintain other important quality of life points that track the progression (improvement or regression) of their pet's health and wellbeing.  Owners can upload information such as their pet's favorite activities, weight, pictures, recent behaviors, etc. They can also make entries daily, weekly or at their own intervals to track progress by uploading new pictures, weight changes, notes and answers to questionnaires that ultimately create a quality of life score for their pet.  This numerical score is based on their specific condition and additional quality of life criteria the owner choses.  Based on this score, the owner is provided with actions they should consider as their pet's quality of the life declines.

"As the largest network of in home hospice veterinarians in the country," Dani McVety, DVM and CEO of Lap of Love says, "We appreciate how important this decision is to our clients. The purpose of the journal is to give them some type of objective data to base their judgment on. There is no one-size-fits-all answer to this tough question and families should still be working closely with their regular veterinarian to help interpret the progression of clinical signs based on the disease process the pet is suffering from. Each disease will progress differently and at different rates."

Gardner and McVety's goal is to provide the best end-of-life experience possible for all pet parents.  They have made The Pet Hospice Journal free for public use.

For more information on the Pet Hospice Journal, visit www.pethospicejournal.com or email Dr. Mary Gardner at [email protected]

For more information on Lap of Love, visit www.lapoflove.com or email Dr. McVety at [email protected]

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SOURCE Lap of Love