What happens when a client declines your veterinary recommendations? For many of us, their “no” sparks frustration, judgment, and even resentment. But what if that “no” isn’t actually a problem? In this episode, Dr. Cari Wise explores the deeper meaning behind client decisions, why we take them personally, and how shifting our mindset can reduce stress, build trust, and create a more positive veterinary experience.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
1️⃣ Why Client “No’s” Feel So Personal – Understand how external validation impacts your emotional response to client decisions.
2️⃣ The Role of Judgment in Veterinary Interactions – Learn how unconscious judgment—toward clients and yourself—creates unnecessary stress.
3️⃣ How to Communicate Without Pressure or Manipulation – Discover how small language changes can build trust and encourage client collaboration.
4️⃣ The True Role of a Veterinarian in the Care Cycle – Gain clarity on what is (and isn’t) your responsibility when offering medical recommendations.
5️⃣ How Letting Go of Control Reduces Burnout – Find out how detaching from client choices leads to a more sustainable and fulfilling veterinary career.
Key Takeaways:
✅ A client’s “no” is neutral—it’s only a problem if we attach judgment to it.
✅ Veterinary professionals often rely on external validation, making client decisions feel more personal than they actually are.
✅ The best way to advocate for pets is to present all options neutrally, allowing owners to make informed choices without pressure.
✅ Changing the way we communicate—avoiding phrases like “have to,” “need to,” and “should”—improves client trust and decision-making.
✅ When we stop taking responsibility for client decisions, we free ourselves from unnecessary guilt, frustration, and burnout.
Resources & Links:
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- Facebook: www.facebook.com/JoyfulDVM/
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
This transcript is auto-generated and may contain typos.
Hi there. I’m Dr. Cari Wise, veterinarian, certified life coach, and certified quantum human design specialist. If you’re a veterinary professional looking to up level your life and your career, or maybe looking to go in an entirely new direction, then what I talk about here on the Joyful DVM podcast is absolutely for you. Let’s get started. Hello, my friends. Welcome back to the Joyful DVM podcast. This week we are going to continue our conversation about money.
And specifically we’re going to take a look at what happens when a client says no to the recommendations that we have for their pet. We make that no be a problem, and we hang on to that no as something to feel kind of resentful toward or frustrated about. But the truth of it is the no is only a problem because of what we make it mean about the client and what we make that no mean about ourselves.
Once we start to really understand the underlying stories that we’re carrying around the no, then we can decide whether or not to hang on to those beliefs and to continue to let the no create a really negative emotional experience. Or we can choose something different and let the no just be neutral, which is what it actually is. So when a client says no to something that we recommend, we jump into all kinds of judgment.
We have judgment about them and we have judgment about us. When it comes to the judgment about the pet owners themselves, when clients decline our services or decline our recommendations, we judge them as bad pet owners because we’re believing that if they really cared about their pet, that they would do the things that we recommended. Many of us kind of hang on to this belief that if you can’t afford veterinary care, then you shouldn’t own a pet in the first place.
And we also make these no’s mean that they don’t value the services that we provide. We feel very sure that they should listen to us because we are the experts. We are the ones who went to school to learn how to appropriately care for our companion animals and otherwise. And if people come to us for help, that they should then listen to what we say and that they should do what we recommend.
And when they don’t, we get really frustrated because we believe that they’re wasting our time or that they failed their pet. And all of that together creates a really negative experience around the no. It creates a really negative experience for, for us as veterinary professionals when they as pet owners decline services. But it goes further than that. It goes further than just being frustrated with them and judging them as bad pet owners, wasting our time Failing their pets, not valuing what we do.
The other side of this is self judgment, because even though we are judging them for their choices, we are also judging ourselves underneath all of that. A lot of us are believing that we didn’t try hard enough, we didn’t advocate well enough for that pet. We’re believing that we didn’t explain it good enough. If we take that further, we start to conclude that we are bad. And if we were better, then they would have said yes.
We’ll compare ourselves to each other and believe that if somebody else had made the recommendation, then the client would have said yes to them. But because we’re worse than the other veterinary professionals, that’s why they said no to us. And ultimately a lot of us foster a belief that, that when a client says no, that we as veterinary professionals failed our patients. And my friends, that’s just not true.
What we have to see is that within all of this, it’s just judgment. It’s all external toward them or internal toward us, but it’s all judgment nonetheless. So why, why do we jump right into judgment when a client says no? Well, it really boils down to two main reasons. Number one, a habit of external validation, and number two, a total misunderstanding of our role and responsibility in the veterinary care cycle.
So let’s look at this habit of external validation. You may have heard me talk about this before, but it’s so important that it must be repeated again because it is so integrated into our life experiences that we don’t even realize that it is there. And we must start to recognize it in all the different ways that it shows up or it will continue to kind of force our hand in our actions and it will absolutely have a negative impact on our well being.
External validation is something that we have been taught to seek from the time we are very little. It starts before we ever even get into school. And it’s not like a nefarious type of teaching, at least not initially. It’s never meant to be. But basically, when you’re younger, when you’re a child and you’re learning how to live in the world, you look to the people around you for validation that you’re doing things right.
So things as simple as learning how to tie your shoes, you’re looking for a validation that you have actually done the tying the right way. We look for this external validation. External praise is another way you can look at it for achieving all kinds of things. And we set up a system of reward for doing things the right way. So it could be Something as what seems as benign as earning an allowance as a child.
So you do your chores, you earn your allowance. That’s still an external validator point. We have to see that. And as we go on through, as we get into school, then we just reinforce that same thing. You work hard, you earn grades, and when those grades are at the high level, then that validates that you have done a very good job as a student. And if you think about veterinary professionals who have done a lot of school, we have become very dependent on the external validation.
It is what we have used to offset the negative emotion that many of us experience. So when we’re feeling frustrated or stressed, and especially when we’re going through school, if we had any insecurities and doubts about our ability to be in this profession, we had these grades on assignments and tests and classes and eventually degrees that gave us the proof that we were good enough to be here.
So even if we were stressed out and anxious and internally not believing that we knew enough, we had this external grade that told us otherwise. And so we became dependent on that as our coping mechanism. It really became the thing that allowed us to keep going, even though we felt really bad on the inside all along the way. Because the prize was going to be worth it, right?
That external validation of your achievement, it has become a habit. And when you get into the real world where there are no longer any grades to give you that little boost, to tell you that you are doing well enough, then what happens in veterinary medicine is we start to use patient outcomes and client behaviors as our external points of validation. The problem is that we don’t control either one of those things.
But because we don’t know that when it comes to a client saying no to something that we recommend, we’ve now just believed that we’ve done something wrong. That point of validation doesn’t exist when a client says no. When a client says no, it’s quite the opposite. It’s like failing a test. At least that’s the way that we are interpreting it, even though that’s not actually what’s happening. But when you’ve lived in a habit of external validation, as soon as somebody tells you no or disagrees with what you say or questions you, then all of a sudden you interpret that as failure.
And that’s one of the reasons why these no’s from clients feel so personal. The other reason is because we have a total misunderstanding of what our role actually is in veterinary medicine. The truth is, it was never our job to get them to say yes. To anything at all. The veterinary care cycle is as such that a client makes an appointment for their pet, they bring it in, and then you, as a veterinary professional, you ask questions to get a history, you do a physical exam, and then you make recommendations.
Those recommendations, because of the work that we do, are going to have a price tag attached to them. The decision then on how to proceed with those recommendations is the responsibility of the client alone, not you. Once a client makes a choice on how they want to proceed, then as veterinary professionals, we step back in, we implement their wishes. Once we have implemented the care or the treatment or the diagnostics, then we all have to kind of step back and wait to see how the patient responds.
None of us can control individual physiology of our patients, so therefore, we cannot control the outcomes. And none of us can force a client to make any kind of decision. So therefore, we are not responsible for the decisions that they make. But if you are trapped in this cycle of external validation and misunderstanding of your role, then when a client says no, you will take it very personally.
You will feel offended, you will feel frustrated, you will feel shame, you will feel guilt, you will feel a combination of all of those things. As soon as we start to learn that the client decision truly is the client decision and is not a reflection of our effort, then we don’t have to be personally offended or frustrated by what they decide. We are still able to 100% do our jobs, no matter what it is that the client decides.
Now, I know many of you are going to hear me say that, and you’re going to say, but aren’t you supposed to advocate for the pet? Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do? We’re supposed to advocate for them, right? If we’re not advocating for the pet, aren’t we failing in our jobs? And what I want you to know is that, yes, part of your job is to advocate for the pet, but you don’t need to manipulate or shame the pet owner in order to do that.
We successfully advocate for the pet when we give the pet owner all of the options for their pet’s care, and we do so without our opinion or judgment about what they decide. That’s what advocacy looks like. You give them their choices. You let them pick what’s right for them. You make sure that they are aware of their options. But trying to force their hand one way or another is not advocacy.
Notice as I describe that, I did not say that we give them options that we think that they can afford. This is a really important point. My friend. So listen up. When we give options to our clients, our job is not to give them options that we think they can afford. And I also did not say that we should tell them what we think that they should do, because neither of those things is our job.
Our job is to give them options and to let them decide when we do either of those things. So we kind of pare down their options because of our assumptions about their financial situation, or we pare down their options because we believe strongly that they should do one thing, and so we don’t even tell them anything else. When we do those things, then we are no longer advocating for the pet.
Instead, we are actually trying to control our personal experience of the situation at hand. We are ultimately trying to avoid the no. And by doing that, we think that we are avoiding all of the unmanaged emotion that we bring to the situation internally, within ourselves. That’s not advocacy, my friends. People are much more receptive to our medical recommendations when we present them without judgment and pressure. This is the key to all of this.
Advocacy means that you provide the owner of that pet with all of their options, and then you let them decide. And when we provide them with their options without judgment and without pressure to decide a certain thing, then they’re much more receptive to what we have to say. There are four very common language patterns that reflect the judgment that we carry in our client interactions. Most of us have no idea the level of judgment or pressure that we’re actually putting on clients.
And as I go through some of these language patterns, I want you to listen, to start to listen for these language patterns and the way that you describe things to your clients, because you might not even realize that you’re creating a situation that makes it very difficult for a client to make a choice that’s right for them. So these four common language patterns include have to’s, got tos, shoulds, and needs.
So let me give you some examples. So any statement that we say to a client when it comes to our recommendations for their pet, if we’re using phrases that start with words like we have to or I have to or you have to, those are going to be very pressurized kinds of statements. So let me give you some full sentences here. We have to take X rays, I have to do surgery, you have to stop feeding your pet table food, any of those kinds of sentences.
Take away a client’s choice. We’ve decided in advance for them what they must do. That’s not our role. Let’s look at the got Tos, we’ve got to. I’ve got to. You’ve got to. Showing up like, we’ve got to admit him to the hospital, got to run some blood work. You’ve got to get him groomed regularly. Those kind of statements probably feel very true for us. But in saying those things in that way and making our recommendations in that way, again, we are taking away the client’s choice.
We are forcing our opinion on them, which is automatically going to make them less receptive to what we have to say. And if they are feeling confronted, then they’re less likely to hear most of what we have to share. The shoulds show up the same way we should. I should. You should. So, like, we should run a heartworm test, or I should check him for heartworms, or you should put him on heartworm prevention.
I know those sound like really benign statements, but if you’re the one hearing it, then just recognize there’s no choice in there for the person who’s paying for the heartworm test or the. Or the prevention themselves. We don’t even realize that through our language patterns, we’re taking away their choices. And finally, the needs. The we need to. I need to. You need to. We need to clean out his ears.
I need to run a cytology. You need to watch his ears more carefully in the future. All of those kinds of sentences put a client on edge. And when you put all these together, as we’re talking about a potential treatment of the patient and there’s no actual conversation yet about money, what we don’t understand that’s happening is that a client is starting to feel defensive, starting to feel judged, and then also starting to feel afraid because they don’t know what kind of finances this is going to require.
And so they don’t even know whether or not it’s within their budget to do so. But they’re already feeling the pressure of our judgment. If they say no, when they do say no, then we just basically validate all their fears. A lot of times we get resentful. We become shorter in our conversations with them. We drop our level of compassion. We stop helping and caring. And the only reason that we would do any of that is if we have tied some of our experience to their decisions.
If we get so caught up in what they’re going to decide and are using that as a validator of how well we do our job, then if they decide differently than what we would have decided for our own pets or differently than what we recommended for them, then we can’t Help but be offended. And that doesn’t help any pet or any client in any way. So what can we do instead?
Well, we’ve got to remember that our job is to educate and to give options. Not to convince or manipulate anyone into any decision. Our language must reflect that. So here’s some things that we could say instead. I recommend X rays to determine if Fluffy’s leg is fractured. Once we have those results, then I’ll be able to make a recommendation for treatment. Give me just a minute to put together a treatment plan, and we’ll be back in to go over the pricing and to get your authorization before we move forward.
That kind of conversation around a recommendation, as opposed to saying we need to take some X rays and then we’re gonna have to either bandage or take Fluffy to surgery and saying all of that with, like, an urgency behind it, without giving the client a moment just to kind of digest what we’ve said or to consider the financial impact for them. It turns out with two completely different experiences for the client, we’re saying the same thing, right?
But when we say it in a way that keeps the whole situation neutral, doesn’t make it about them or about us, just about the recommendations that we as professionals have for their pet and the choice for them to decide how to proceed. Because that’s what the authorization is, right? They get to decide. That diffuses the entire situation so that they can consider everything that we’ve recommended and look at the money and decide for themselves.
Here’s another example. Fluffy’s radiographs show a foreign object in his stomach that is large enough to unlikely pass on its own and is likely the cause of his vomiting. I recommend taking Fluffy to surgery to remove the foreign body. I’m going to create a full treatment plan with pricing so we can do that surgery today if you wish to move forward. Again, we have conveyed the information that we have.
We have made a really strong recommendation and explained why. But we have not used any of that really scary language, right? We haven’t done the have to’s or the shoulds or the needs to’s or the got to’s. Right? We haven’t pressurized the situation with our opinion. We’re simply giving the owner the information that we have gained and giving them our recommendations for how to move forward. And then we’re seeking their authorization.
They can still say no, right? The client always has the opportunity to say no. But we are going to probably get more no’s. Not even probably. We will get more no’s if we make our recommendations from a point of judgment to begin with. And remember, the only reason that we make recommendations from judgment is if we’re personally tied to the decisions that they make. Here’s a final example for you.
Fluffy appears to have a sensitive stomach. Or maybe it’s a situation where we say fluffy’s recurrent ear infections make me suspect that he may have food allergies. I’m sure you’ve all been in this kind of situation, right? So you probably know what’s going to come next. I recommend discontinuing any table food that he might be getting and changing to strictly dog food moving forward so we can determine if the table food is contributing to his problems.
Now, that’s a very gentle way to make a very strong recommendation. What I didn’t say is you have to stop feeding table food to your dog because you are contributing to his ear infections and his upset stomach. There’s no reason to say it in that way. If we say it in that way, the client is automatically going to feel offended and defensive. They’re not going to hear any of your reasons why.
All they will get out of that situation and that conversation is that you are blaming them for what’s happening with their pet. And as soon as pet owners feel blamed, then we don’t have any opportunity to help the pet or the client. Our ability to advocate goes right out the window. Now, to bring this all back, the reason why we tend to use that other kind of language isn’t about the client and it isn’t about the pet.
It’s about us trying to avoid hearing the client say no. It’s about us believing that they should follow our advice all the time. It’s about us hanging on to a story that a good pet owner will do what the veterinarian says. And in all of that, we forget that the client always has choice and that in the veterinary care cycle, it is not our responsibility to convince or manipulate anybody into doing anything.
Now, I want to be sure to point out here that I don’t think that we are doing any of this from a malicious intent at all. I think we really do care about pets. I think we really do care about their well being and we want them to be well taken care of. But I think in our caring, when we tie that and have that linked to our own insecurities about what clients decide for their own individual pets, that we overstep when it comes to our recommendations.
It’s not our job to convince them to do anything, but whether or not they do that if you’re using that as a point to measure how well you did your own job, then you will feel pressured to get them to say yes and you will resent them when they say no. As those no’s and that resentment from those nos starts to stack up, then you will start believing that people don’t care about their pets.
You will really reinforce that belief that if you can’t afford veterinary care that you shouldn’t own an animal at all. And that puts you in a place of superiority and high judgment over everybody that has animals, a place that we actually don’t belong. As much as we may not want to believe this, animals are property and we can care about them greatly. And also understand that the extent to which we can control the level of care they get is only through the choices that the clients make.
If we hang on to responsibility for client decisions, a concept that I call hyper responsibility, whereby we really believe that it is our fault if they don’t say yes, that it’s our responsibility to make them agree to our recommendations, if we bring that into what we understand our job to be as veterinary professionals, then we have added on an entire level of pressure, stress that was never intended to be there in the first place.
Think about it this way, not to minimize, but I want to just give you something else to compare our profession to. Let’s think about an auto mechanic. An auto mechanic is essentially a doctor for automobiles. And so the owner of those automobiles brings in their car to the mechanic and it describes what the owner describes what is going on with the car. And so the mechanic is going to recommend some tests to figure out what’s going on with the car.
And you got to sign off and agree to that before that happens. And then they do the test, and then you as the owner, look at those results with the mechanic. And the mechanic makes a recommendation for what needs to happen next to help your car to get it functioning the way that it was intended to function. And once again, there are prices there. And then you get to decide what you want to do.
Now, when you are the owner of the car, you might feel uneasy as you’re waiting for those test results to find out what you’re going to need to do next to get your car right. And when they come to you with the list of fixes so all the things that they’ve identified that are wrong, and then all the things that need to happen to get your car right again, and you see all those prices, you’re going to have an experience of your own.
Maybe you’re going to look at all that and you’re going to be like, wow, that’s pretty inexpensive. No problem. Do it all. Maybe you’re going to look at it and you’re going to be like, whoa, that’s more than I intended to spend today. I need to break this up a little bit. And so you want to ask the question, like, what’s the most important thing to address first?
What is the most critical thing for my car and what is it that I can maybe come back and in a few weeks to work on then? Those are the kinds of questions that we want to ask. But think about your experience with your mechanic. If you feel like you have agency, like you have the ability to choose, then you’re likely going to ask your questions. But if you feel pressured, one of two things is going to happen.
You’re either going to say yes to everything, or more than likely, you’re going to say no. Because if the communication of what your car needs isn’t given to you in a way that is respectful, that highlights that you have a choice on what happens next and isn’t conveyed in a way that helps you to build trust with that mechanic, you’re just going to shut down. Your internal money story is going to take off and it’s going to start to tell you that the mechanics are only in it for the money, that this is highway robbery.
There’s no way it should cost this much. There’s no way that you can afford it. Nobody can afford these things. How on earth are you supposed to have a car if you can’t even afford to get it fixed? And you’re probably going to leave those exact same things happen to our veterinary clients when we come swooping in with a long list of all the things that are wrong with their pet and all the things that we need to do or that they should do or that we have to do to get it right?
And in our conviction, we forget that we’re dealing with a human that is concerned about their pet, that has a budget, and we don’t have any idea what their money story is and what their finances are, and we don’t need to. But if we give them that information from this conviction that they must do all the things that we say and they must address all of these things right now without giving a lot of of awareness to their choice in the process, then they will shut us down.
You will get way more no’s. You will destroy trust, and ultimately the pet doesn’t get the care that it needs. Whether or not a client says yes to anything, I will come back to the truth. Whether or not they say yes is not something that you can control. But whether or not they feel that you trust them is going to be something that you do have the ability to influence.
We are building trust and destroying trust with people around us every minute of every day, in every kind of situation. Check yourself. When you are in a client interaction, are you feeling frantic? Are you feeling urgency? Are you feeling stressed out? Are you feeling scared? Because any of that emotion that you’re feeling is going to come through in the way that you deal with your clients. If you’re feeling entitled, it’s another one.
Many of us don’t even realize that we carry entitlement into our client exams. Entitlement for them to listen to what we say, for them to believe us, for them to decide yes for the things that we recommend. We feel entitled to that because we are the veterinary professionals and we know what’s best for their pet. My friends, yes, you do know what is best for their pet and the choice is still never yours to make.
Notice how those two things together, you can know what’s best and yet you don’t have the power to decide how. That can be a recipe for disaster for your own sense of self value. If you have tied your self value to the decisions that the client makes, if you so heavily depend on the external validation of clients agreeing to what you recommend, then every time they disagree with your choice with like your recommendation, I should say every time they disagree with your recommendation, then your self value and your self confidence and your self esteem take a blow.
That’s not necessary. It’s just an example of how we have misconstrued our role. Again, your role in the veterinary care cycle is to ask questions, to gain a history, to do a physical exam and to make a recommendation. It is the client’s role to make a decision on how to proceed and then it is our role to implement their wishes. That’s it. The sooner you can learn how to slide back into the parts of the veterinary care cycle that are only your role to fulfill, the sooner you can start releasing resentment and frustration and guilt over what a client decides.
A client’s decision is never a reflection of how much you care or how much you know. Hear me when I say that. A client’s decision is never a reflection of how much you care or how much you know. A client’s decision is independent of all of that. Your job is simply to show up, to do the exam, to Give them options. And when we can give them options in a way that, that does not carry judgment or pressure or manipulation or opinion with it, then that makes it much easier for a client to say yes.
And even if they don’t say yes today, they will still retain more of what you’ve told them than if they are in a nervous system fight or flight situation over feeling pressured and judged and scared about money. I try to leave every single client interaction when it comes to the time where we’re going to talk about the money. Every time I try to leave it with a sentence, something like, I’m going to sneak out, I’m going to put together a treatment plan with all the things we discussed with pricing, and then we’re going to come back in and you can decide how we proceed from here.
I see them visibly relax over and over and over again. And sometimes I’ll be in the middle of my conversation before I even get to that line. And I can see them starting to get tensed up. I can see them by the time I say, it would be a great idea for us to consider running some blood work and maybe taking some X rays. And here’s what we’re going to be looking for.
And I can see them, like start to tense up and panic a little bit. And when I notice that, that stress in their body language, I’ll pause and I’ll say, I’m just going to talk through the things that I recommend right now, but we’re going to come back in and go over all the prices and then you get to decide how you want to proceed today. I just want to tell you a little bit about what’s going to be on my recommendations before we bring the prices in.
And they visibly relax, like, oh, good. And then, you know, like if they, if they say something like that, I say, yeah, this is a judgment free zone. You always get to decide what we do with your pet. I’m just going to give you all the options. And they’re so appreciative of that. Even when they say no, they leave with a much better customer experience. And they know that we do care and that it’s not something I’m going to carry around to our next interaction.
Whether or not they declined everything that I recommended for them today, I’m never going to walk out of there and be like, this is a big waste of my time to see these people who say no to everything. Because my friends, it’s only a waste of my time if I believe they should have said yes. If I Know that my job was to do an exam and to make a recommendation.
I didn’t waste any time at all. But if I’m really relying on those external validators of the yes and the dollars to prove that my time has been well spent and that I’ve done a good job, then I’m gonna lose every single time. At the end of the day, I believe that when we practice good medicine, the money takes care of itself. That when we let people decide for themselves, that we build more trusting relationships.
And those trusting relationships over time actually create a lot of revenue for us in that veterinary client relationship. If we pressure all of them right up front, if we jump in with judgment, if we hold resentment, those client relationships deteriorate quickly. And not only does our revenue suffer for it, but more importantly, patient care suffers. Because once a client feels like they are no longer welcome or that they are judged for what they decide, they’re not going to be coming back to see us.
And if that happens enough times, they’ll stop seeking veterinary care altogether. And it’s one of the most egotistical things that we can say when we share out loud that if you can’t afford a pet that you shouldn’t have one. Who are we to decide that? That’s not our job. We are here to help the willing. And what I find is that oftentimes the greatest barriers to being able to help are the veterinary professionals themselves.
So, my friends, I want you to pay attention to how you feel in your body the next time you hear a client say no and then just get curious. Am I using that no? Am I taking that no personally? Am I judging them for their no? Why does the no even matter? What am I making it mean? Because as you get curious about your reaction to their no, you open up the door to start to understand the stories that you carry about that.
And the sooner you can identify those stories, the sooner you can shift that around to change your entire experience. It’s a huge part of creating sustainable well being in veterinary medicine, letting go of what a client decides because it was never yours to force in the first place. And once you let go of that responsibility, the rest of your job gets so much easier. Alright, my friends, I hope this has been helpful.
If this episode has really resonated with you, please consider sharing it with a friend. Have a beautiful week and I’ll see you soon. Bye for now.