by Kate LaSala | Mar 3, 2025 | Dog Training, Dogs and Babies and Kids, Fear, Aggression and Reactivity, Pet Loss & Grieving, Rescue Dogs, Resource Guarding, Separation Anxiety
Behavioral euthanasia is touchy topic and one that tends to bring out keyboard warriors. Euthanasia for any reason is a difficult decision but behavioral euthanasia is often not given the same understanding as a euthanasia for physical reasons like cancer or...
by Kate LaSala | Feb 24, 2025 | Dog Training, Fear, Aggression and Reactivity, Pet Loss & Grieving, Rescue Dogs, Resource Guarding
We recently adopted a new dog, Gertie, aka Gertrude Wigglebottom, a little over ten months after we said goodbye to our precious BooBoo. Surprisingly, adopting a new dog dredged up lots of grief feelings about Boo, which I’ll talk about another time. I wanted to...
by Kate LaSala | Feb 3, 2025 | Pet Loss & Grieving, Rescue Dogs
Doulas can provide a broad scope of services but my focus for death doula work is companioning through anticipatory grief (that period before your beloved animal dies but when you know it’s coming), proactive planning and helping clients navigate stigmatized...
by Kate LaSala | Jan 20, 2025 | Dogs and Babies and Kids, Fear, Aggression and Reactivity, Pet Loss & Grieving, Rescue Dogs, Separation Anxiety
What is a death doula, or an end-of-life doula for pets? What do you do? These are common questions I get. Let’s start at the beginning. Most people don’t know what doulas are, or if they do, it’s in relation to birth doulas. The Greek word doula...
by Kate LaSala | Nov 4, 2024 | Dog Training, Dogs and Babies and Kids, Pet Loss & Grieving, Rescue Dogs
Navigating the loss of a beloved animal is never easy but it can be even harder when there are children in the family. Often the death of a pet is the first loss a child will experience and as an end-of-life death doula for animals, my strong belief is that the...
by Kate LaSala | Sep 16, 2024 | Dog Training, Dog Training Regulation, Dogs and Babies and Kids, Fear, Aggression and Reactivity, Pet Loss & Grieving, Rescue Dogs, Separation Anxiety
While this may not be a happy, joyful post, it’s a necessary one. Please, bookmark this post for when you need it. I hope you don’t need it any time soon, but when you do, come back here. And, be sure to share this post with friends who need it now. I am a...
by Kate LaSala | May 6, 2024 | Dog Training, Fear, Aggression and Reactivity, Pet Loss & Grieving, Rescue Dogs, Resource Guarding
It’s been almost a month since we said goodbye to our precious BooBoo. I’m still navigating grief and her loss daily. But I wanted to make this post as my first one back to help others. As an end of life pet doula, and general advocate for planning, both...
by Kate LaSala | Apr 17, 2024 | Dog Training, Pet Loss & Grieving, Rescue Dogs
Last week, as many marveled as daylight plunged into darkness during the eclipse, our world plunged into darkness just two days later, as we said goodbye to our sweet BooBoo, one day after her 15-1/2th birthday. We had a beautiful 4661 days together on this...
by Kate LaSala | Oct 9, 2023 | Dog Training, Pet Loss & Grieving
Many of my friends with human kids love to say “don’t blink” meaning that if you blink you will miss your kids growing up and they will be gone, off on their own. This sentiment resonated with me even more for our dogs, who are with us for...
by Kate LaSala | Sep 18, 2023 | Dog Training, Dogs and Babies and Kids, Fear, Aggression and Reactivity, Pet Loss & Grieving, Rescue Dogs, Resource Guarding, Separation Anxiety
There’s often posts and memes that circulate on social media that get under my skin. Videos that people think are cute or funny when I see a stressed dog. Videos of dogs and kids that anyone educated in dog body language would see as incredibly unsafe and...
