There are moments for which we cannot prepare.
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When an animal we love becomes seriously ill, approaches the end of life, or dies unexpectedly, we can find ourselves confronting questions without simple answers.
There may be diagnoses, test results, treatment options, and the counsel of veterinarians and people we trust. We may also have our own sense of what the animal needs. And still, we may not know what to do.
Is there more we should try? Are they suffering? Are we giving up too soon? Are we asking them to stay because we are not ready to let them go? Is it time?
Discernment does not promise a certain answer. It asks us to attend carefully to what is present—to the medical realities, to the animal before us, and to what may be shaping our own perception as we consider what to do next.
How I accompany you and your animal
Growing up as an only child, my dog was often my closest companion and favorite friend. In 2016, one of my Labradors played an unexpected role in my decision to leave a decade-long career practicing law and, ultimately, in changing the course of my life's work.
Since then, I have accompanied animals and the people who love them through serious illness, difficult decisions, dying, death, and grief.
My role is not to tell you what decision to make or to offer certainty where there is none. I attend to what is known medically, what you are observing and experiencing, the relationship between you and your animal, and what I may perceive beyond what is immediately apparent.
That perception can offer information that is useful to the discernment process, but I do not treat it as infallible. It does not replace veterinary care, nor does it remove the responsibility of making decisions when decisions must be made.
I accompany you in looking carefully at what is present so that you can meet your animal, and the circumstances you are facing, as truthfully and carefully as possible.
Grief rarely comes with resolution
The death of an animal can leave us with questions long after there are no more decisions to make.
We may replay what happened. We may wonder whether we missed something, waited too long, acted too soon, or could have done more. When a death was sudden or traumatic, there may have been no opportunity to prepare or say goodbye.
Grief can also be complicated by how deeply the relationship mattered and how little that loss may be understood by others. The absence is real, even when the world around us expects life to continue as usual.
I do not believe every death has an explanation we are meant to find, or that grief must lead us to meaning. Sometimes there are questions we cannot answer and circumstances we cannot change. The work is not to make those realities disappear, but to make room for what is true and tend carefully to what remains.
From those I've accompanied
"You saw straight into the situation with my sweet dog Maggie and straight into my own heart and challenges. The insights you offered, the shifts that have happened—I will be forever grateful.
Thank you for sharing your grace and caring with Maggie, my family, and me.”
—Lisa Kahn-Allen, Naples, FL
"Keveney helped me through a tough time in relation to my cat, but also in relation to me.
Of course there were tears when Beli finally passed away, but there was also a deeper understanding of her role in our lives and our role in hers. It was an invaluable experience for us and I would not change a thing.”
—Leigh McGilvray, Los Angeles, CA
Working Together
If your animal is aging, living with illness, approaching the end of life, or has died, you can begin with a private 60-minute session. You may be trying to understand changes you are noticing, considering treatment or end-of-life decisions, facing an immediate crisis, or grieving a death that has already occurred.
There is no preliminary call required. When you schedule, you will have an opportunity to tell me briefly what is happening and, if you would like, to share a photograph of your animal. We will use our time together to look carefully at the circumstances you are facing and the questions that matter most now.
Private Session
60 minutes · $350 · Live on Zoom
 If it becomes clear that additional support would be helpful, we can discuss that together during your session.
An Earlier Chapter
In 2016, one of my Labradors suffered five massive seizures in a single night. She had not been sick. There had been no warning. By the following morning, both the emergency veterinarian and her veterinarian were unequivocal that she should be euthanized.
In the midst of that crisis, I had a mystical experience that carried an immediate demand: if I wanted to save her, I had to change my own life and return to something I had known as a child—feeling and moving energy.
I did. She survived. The veterinarians never had an explanation for what caused the seizures or how she recovered, and I could no longer return to the life I had been living.
I left a decade-long career practicing law and began a very different chapter of my life and work. That experience—and everything it set in motion—became the subject of my first book, Lawyers, Lies and Labradors: One Woman’s Search for Truth.
