ABSTRACT
Many children dream of one day of working professionally with animals. The path into the veterinary medical profession, as a doctor, technician, or assistant, is paved with hard work and dedication, and seeded in a deep love for animals. Grief is an individual journey, unique to a person’s life experiences, personal coping skills, as well as situational to a specific loss. Although grief is a natural, unavoidable reaction to loss that requires acknowledgment and expression, sometimes veterinary professionals have to suppress those emotions in order to perform the work they do with pets and pet owners. The personality of an individual in the veterinary profession tends to be a combination of perfectionist or high-achiever, with those of caregiver and doer – resulting in a driven person with high self-expectations, whose self-perception is enmeshed within their work.
