Grief | Animals

4 Things You Feel When Grieving The Loss Of A Pet

Louisa Skye

Published in

Creatures

9 min readApr 30, 2021

“Dogs’ lives are too short. Their only fault, really.” — Agnes Sligh Turnbull

It’s hard to make sense of things when you lose your best friend. When I lost my fourteen-year-old golden retriever, I spent hours (days, really) scouring the internet for answers, understanding, and support.

For weeks it was all that was on my mind, and I suffered needlessly silent as I was convinced that no one could understand the depth of my grief.

Although it’s true that everyone processes grief and the death of a pet differently, it is not true that I was alone or misunderstood. In fact, many people experience the same feelings of guilt, grief, and depression that I did.

Here I would like to share some of my experiences and advice for anyone who has gone through or is going through something similar.

You May Blame Yourself for Things Beyond Your Control

This might begin even before your pet passes, when they start showing signs of aging or when they’re first diagnosed with a terminal illness.

Your mind will probably start running through a timeline of their entire life, scanning for all the reasons why this be may happening, what you may have missed, and what you could have done better.

If your dog or cat is older, watching their graceful aging process suddenly accelerate is both heart-wrenching and frightening. Time seems to move slower as things progress and you forget what a short while ago things weren’t that bad. You may even convince yourself that things still aren’t that bad. But this thinking is dangerous.

During my dog’s final year of life, he developed severe mobility issues and incontinence. We had to help him up and down the steps from the yard, put yoga mats down all around the house so he could get up and down, and sometimes pick him up or turn him around when he wanted to move. Watching him lose his freedom and independence was heartbreaking, and watching senility creep in taking the form of confused little barks and howls was just scary.

But the worst part of all was that when he was put down, he was otherwise healthy. Following the bloodwork at his last vet appointment, the vet left a voice message with the results on our answering machine that haunts me even now. “All his organs are healthy and everything else looks good.”

Every dog owner’s worst fear is that they could have done more for their beloved pet. Being the decision-maker for the end of their life is a terrifying job. Of course, you just want your dog to be happy and comfortable. To have a good quality of life. To feel loved. To be pain-free. So when their quality of life has severely decreased, they are depressed, dependent, and in nearly constant pain, what is it that holds us back from making the call to end their pain? Which criterion is missing?

Love. Even amongst all their suffering, they still feel loved. They are loved. By you. And that is why the decision is so hard. They have one last, powerful component left in life. And it’s up to you (or your family) to determine whether that’s enough.

After that call from our vet, my brain got stuck on interpreting the message as “Your dog is healthy” rather than “Your dog is otherwise healthy.” Basically, I was more or less forgetting about his other issues and convincing myself they were much more minor than they actually were.

I’m not alone in this thinking. In fact, a study published in 2014 found that a significant number of pet owners felt intense guilt over the fear that they euthanized their pets either too early or too late. Unfortunately, many of these people also felt that they lacked social support and understanding, and thus many had to make the decision to euthanize on their own.

Luckily today, there are many resources for pet loss including support groups and counselors, and a growing awareness of the disenfranchised grief of pet owners in the field of psychology.

You May Misjudge The Response of Others

While I was away at college, an old friend of mine lost her sixteen-year-old childhood dog. My own childhood dog was still with us at the time and I couldn’t even imagine the loss my friend was feeling. I immediately told a mutual friend of ours so that she could send her condolences, with genuine shock and sympathy clearly etched on my face.

To my complete dismay, she responded with, “Okay. I mean…it’s just a dog.”

I was speechless.

Little over a year later, when my own dog passed at fourteen years, I was beyond devastated. I cried for weeks. I couldn’t even tell anyone for fear of completely breaking down. And whenever I considered it, all I could hear was “I mean…it’s just a dog.”

So I stayed silent and tried to pass it off as a minor event. I felt uncomfortable explaining my absence at social events and days off from my internship when I just couldn’t stop crying. I was afraid people would scorn my grief.

After taking some time off to spend with my family and my other dog, my internship advisor asked how things had gone with the dog.

“Oh. Uh, he didn’t make it.”

I’m not sure what I expected, but the empathy and almost sadness in his eyes were unmistakable. He understood.

“I also lost my childhood dog in college. It sucks.” He looked up at the ceiling for a moment and shook his head. “It’s just the worse. God, I’m so sorry.”

Most people will show kindness and compassion, but there will always be a few who fail to understand what you’ve lost. Find yourself a good support system, even if it’s just a few people immediately around you, and give them some insight into how you’re feeling. You don’t need to pour your heart out, but you also don’t need to put on a brave face when you’re hurting. It’s okay to grieve.

You May Yearn for A Physical Reminder of Them

After my dog passed, I realized we didn’t have many specific reminders of him besides pictures. We never had his paws imprinted in cement or his nose in clay, nor had we saved a lock of his hair and had it preserved in resin. And coming to this realization, along with the fact that it was too late to ever do these, was depressing.

All I wanted was to reach out and pet my dog or grab his paw as he laid under my feet on his side, lips hanging down to the carpet, a silly expression on his face. And I felt that the next best thing would have been to hold an imprint of his paw, or stroke a lock of his hair. But I couldn’t do those things either.

So I became obsessed with finding something that I could keep with me forever that I could remember him by. I found artists on Etsy and in local shops that could make beautiful resin jewelry out of hair or fur. Since I didn’t have any actual locks of fur, I thought, Maybe I can scrape together enough dog hair for a jewelry piece…

But of course, that just seemed desperate, so I moved on to the next idea. Personalized pawprint and noseprint jewelry. You just send in the paw or nose print and the artist uses that to miniaturize it and print or etch it onto the jewelry. But again, I didn’t actually have those prints. I thought maybe they could use a photo. So I searched through literally thousands of pictures of my dog, thinking I must have one with the pads of his feet showing. But I didn’t. Not one. So I was again reminded of another thing I didn’t do, another thing is was too late to do.

Why was this so hard? Why was I so picky?

I asked myself these questions repeatedly as I agonized and obsessed over finding something to remind me of my dog. It had to be perfect because he was perfect. It had to be special because he was special. A generic pawprint charm or dog bone or golden retriever face was just not good enough.

I never did find the perfect thing. But I obsessed over it for months and still do from time to time. When I’m really missing him, I’ll spend hours looking for this reminder. Something that will speak to me, something that will give me a sign. I’m not generally much of a believer in signs, but for whatever reason, this is what I look for. And frankly, I still hope to find it.

Although this seems an almost superficial sort of obsession, sort of like being upset that you didn’t get your grandmother’s coveted diamond necklace when she passed. Yes, it was your grandmother’s, and that makes it special, but do you really want it for the sentiment, or do you want it because it’s a diamond necklace? Perhaps both.

I am convinced that the drive behind this obsession comes from this combination of factors: a desire for something tangible, something that can be touched and felt, along with a realization that it is, in fact, too late to do anything about it.

Time does not heal all wounds, but it does mitigate the pain

My dog died almost three years ago and I still cry. Not every time I think about him, but sometimes.

More often than not, I tear up when I think of a good memory. Or a bad memory. Or when I see an older golden retriever out walking that reminds me of him.

But not always. I’m okay. Two years and ten months ago, I was not okay. I didn’t even believe I could be okay. I knew it would be tough, but the loss of my dog hit me harder than I could’ve ever imagined. But the intense grief that hit immediately afterward has mitigated to a manageable level of sadness. It gets better.