Providing end-of-life care and bereavement care with distinction
Serving Middlesex, Monmouth and the surrounding counties in Central Jersey
About Journeys to Peace
Mission Statement
Providing home euthanasia services which adhere to the veterinary profession’s highest standards and elevating the client experience by attending to the family’s grief journey with equal skill, care and compassion.
Journeys to Peace was founded with two intentions
1. To create a home euthanasia experience centered on the physical and emotional comfort of the patient AND
2. To support the family on their grief journey
The best way to achieve both those goals is to have personalized attention from one person – licensed as a Veterinarian and certified as a Pet Loss Counselor – to guide you each step of the way. With Journeys to Peace, Dr Smith partners with your family to honor the life you shared with your pet. Together you’ll experience your pet’s final appointment in the privacy of your home, where your pet finds the greatest comfort. By customizing this meaningful moment in time, your family will be comforted too. Fulfilling the second purpose of Journeys to Peace begins where many veterinary relationships end: where the absence of your pet is felt so strongly. There is a need for a guide who understands the bond we share with our pets, who understands how we change with the pet’s absence; Journeys to Peace provides that guidance, supporting you on your journey toward healing.
The path which led Dr Smith here…
Dr Smith has been a practicing veterinarian for close to twenty years. Beginning in 2015, she started working in the House Call Department for Red Bank Veterinary Hospital, a premier specialty hospital in the Compassion-First family of pet hospitals. It was personally rewarding to provide a solution to the barriers certain families faced: for an anxious pet who needed wellness care, for families with multiple pets or those families who had transportation challenges. But Dr Smith soon realized that the families and patients who needed her the most were those facing end-of-life care, where being at home isn’t just practical, it’s the kindest choice. It is meaningful to the family and the pet to be in a private and familiar place for that special good-bye.
Following a call to serve the end-of-life needs of pets to her greatest ability, Dr Smith sought out and earned numerous certifications in the areas of hospice and euthanasia. Utilizing the most sophisticated medical techniques provided well for the patients in her care, but she wanted to do more for their families. Dr Smith completed the rigorous Pet Loss Counselor certification through the Association for Pet Loss and Bereavement so that she could tend to the families with equal care.
Now through Journeys to Peace and her HEAL Method, Dr Smith is available to share her expertise, devoting care and compassion to her patients and their families in equal measure.
Personal History
Dr Smith grew up in Mercer County and graduated from Cook College, Rutgers University in 2000. She then moved to Raleigh, NC to attend North Carolina State University College of Veterinary Medicine, graduating in 2004.
From 2004-2007 Dr Smith worked in rural areas of Pennsylvania as a mixed animal practitioner, serving both farm animals and pets. In the seven years following, she focused on pets and their families at practices in Delaware and New Jersey. For nine years, beginning in 2015, Dr Smith worked for Red Bank Veterinary Hospital in their House Call Department. Working with pets and families in their homes was a wonderful new challenge and planted the seeds which took root as Journeys to Peace, starting in 2020.
Dr Smith and her husband are raising their family in Metuchen, NJ.
