Lessons from Eli: A veterinarian's perspective on pet love and loss

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On this week's episode of The Vet Blast Podcast presented by dvm360, our host Adam Christman, DVM, MBA, and special guest Tyler Primavera, DVM, discuss his new book Eli the Flying God. The book was inspired by his own dog as a way to talk about all the good and bad days of owning a pet with children, giving them a place to learn about caregiving, grief, and the human-animal bond.

Throughout the episode, Primavera and Christman discuss grief in the veterinary space, the importance of addressing grief with children, and what his journey to become a children's book author looked like.

Below is a partial transcript:

Adam Christman, DVM, MBA: You know, at our fetch conferences this year, our theme is storytellers, because we're all storytellers in what we do and what we say, whether we're in the exam room or not. This is one chapter I would say in your life journey that you're talking about of doing something that's really remarkable, and part of your legacy is telling the story, and now everyone gets to share the love of Eli in this book that you've done. So which is, that's got to make you feel amazing, right? What a nice tribute.

Tyler Primavera, DVM: Yeah and the funny thing is, you know, when writing this book, I couldn't really decide what age group this was for. And a lot of kids, they'll read it and they say, I love this one silly part, and completely miss the point of the book or they just see it from a different perspective, and their point of the book is not what I intended.

Christman: One of your points of the book, which is something that can be very challenging for children specifically to understand, is grief. And you know, what are some of the tips out there to help clients handle grief?

Primavera: I think everyone handles it differently. You know, it, it may take different forms of connection with your inner circle, your family, your friends, also taking care of your physical body, I think is an important part of that. But really there's all the stages of grief, and I think being patient is a big part of it. Like being patient with yourself, I think you and I, Adam, are both type A people. We want things done yesterday, and we can be very hard on ourselves, but just giving us that, that grace to say, hey, it might take me longer than I would like to get over this, and I'm not okay right now, but that's okay because it's not forever.