Who Really Handles Your Pet? Understanding the Chain of Custody

When a beloved pet dies, there is a quiet, invisible journey that begins: the journey from the veterinary clinic to the aftercare provider. It is a journey that, for families, often happens out of sight. And because it is hidden, it can feel mysterious—or worse, careless—when clarity is absent.

Here is how it usually works. After a family has said their goodbyes at a veterinary clinic/hospital, the veterinary team carefully prepares the pet for transfer. Depending on the arrangement, a dedicated aftercare provider—someone like our team at Eternal Tides—comes to the clinic, collects the pet, confirms identification, and records the details that ensure each animal is handled individually and with respect. That record follows them through aquamation, cremation, or burial.

But when that process is rushed or left unexplained, trust can erode quickly. Transparency matters. Research on trust and operations repeatedly shows that when systems are invisible, customers assume the worst, even when the work is excellent (Cao et al., 2021). In times of grief, that assumption deepens.

A high-quality transfer process is slow where it needs to be slow. It is intentional about identification. It uses redundancies to protect against human error. And most of all, it sees the animal not as a “case” but as a story—someone’s family.

By contrast, a careless process looks fast and transactional. It can leave families feeling as though the love they carried for years is being hurried into a van, filed as a task on a clipboard.

The difference between the two is not just logistics; it is dignity. And dignity, in the end, is what aftercare is for. By pulling back the curtain on these handoffs, we hope families feel reassured: there are people, real people, holding that space with care.

References

• Cao, M., Jiang, Z., & Thompson, R. (2021). Transparency and trust in service operations: Lessons from customer experience research. MIT Sloan Management Review, 62(4), 45–53.

• Lencioni, P. (2020). The motive: Why so many leaders abdicate their most important responsibilities. Jossey-Bass.

• Sutton, R. I. (2022). The friction project: How smart leaders make the right things easier and the wrong things harder. St. Martin’s Press.