Pet Loss

I have a dog. He is so much more than a dog.

He is a best friend. He is a child. He is a companion. He is a therapist. He is a teacher. He is a soulmate.

I think daily about how precious the time we have together is. I live through losing him every single day (and hope I won’t have to go through it any time soon).

Recently I had my hair cut, and the stylist told me very quietly (after looking around to see nobody was in earshot) that she’d had to take two weeks off sick when her dog died. She couldn’t get out of bed. She felt like SHE was going to die from the pain of it.

But she didn’t dare tell anyone that’s why she was off work. She knew nobody would think that was acceptable.

There are many instances of disenfranchised grief, but the grief we live through when we lose a beloved pet is one of the nastiest examples of that. People might not be as sympathetic when you lose a sibling to a drug overdose as they try to be when you lose a parent to cancer, but at least they GET it. They can comprehend grief over losing a human.

Sadly, many people cannot comprehend that you can feel as much – or more – grief when you lose a beloved animal.

And yet, for many of us, our pets are the only secure attachment we have ever known. They may be our first experience of unconditional love. They may be our world.

I know he’s my world. And it will crumble to dust when I lose him.

If we are opening up the conversation about grief, and trying to build a more compassionate society, this needs to be part of that. We need to stop thinking, it’s just a pet. All the vets (why do you think they have such a high suicide rate?) know it’s not just a pet. It’s family. Sometimes it’s the only family you have, or want.

Grief is grief. It doesn’t have to meet criteria in order to hurt. Loss is loss. We shouldn’t have to intellectually understand why someone is grieving the way they are in order to show them empathy and support.