Surviving the Loss of Your Pet

Some people may be surprised to read that losing a pet such as a dog or a cat or even a bird or a hamster can put someone into a state of severe grief, just as devastating if not more so than loosing a person. This is because the bond with an animal and the unconditional love and joy they show you and the dependence upon you when in your company is a greater loss in many way compared to our partners, friends or family, who we don’t always agree with, there may be possible unresolved issues, people are more complicated, animals are not, they show us the most unflawed form of unconditional love and joy that lights our souls and hearts up.

Fortunately, animal sentience is becoming a part of animal rights laws as human consciousness is recognizing that sentience and consciousness is not limited to the human being, science is showing us that all living creatures and even plants share sentience and consciousness, we are beginning to acknowledge that animals have just as much right as we do to be identified as persons in the court of law, a recent record breaking animal neglect case was won in the US state of Oregon, for a dog who was abused, dogs are sentient beings and should be classes as persons. The same with Dolphins, six years ago I interviewed Dr. Thomas White about his groundbreaking research and book ''In Defense of Dolphins, the new moral frontier'', Dr. White and other scientists and animal activists are making the case to recognize dolphins and other cetaceans as sentient creatures who deserve the same rights as people and after over 2500 scientific studies on this subject, more is being done to improve how we treat, class and recognize all animals as sentient beings and persons in their own right.

Yet, some people are still embarrassed by the overwhelming grief they feel for the loss of their pet, especially if others don’t react or treat their feelings as important which leads to disenfranchised grief, one of the best articles I read about loosing a dog was by Joe Yonan in The Washington Post-
´´ The fact that our pets are so dependent on us makes it all too easy to second-guess our decisions and descend into a pit of guilt. Shouldn’t I have known? Did I do everything I could? If I had just . . . what? Taken him to the vet sooner? Insisted he be hospitalized? What if I had been home? I might not have been able to save him, but at least in his last moments he would have known I was with him, and maybe that would have made it a little easier for him if not for me. Simply stated, many people (including pet owners) feel that grief over the death of a pet is not worthy of as much acknowledgment as the death of a person,”

Researchers wrote in a 2003 article in the journal Professional Psychology: Research and Practice. “Unfortunately, this tends to inhibit people from grieving fully when a pet dies.”

I am presently going through this after loosing my ten year old dog Poppy who died due to heart failure, I have been very surprised by the very open expressive sympathy friends have shown me. Unlike my other dogs, Poppy and I had a deeply profound bond. Many of my friends have said how devastated they were after loosing their furry family members and how long it took them to get over the loss. I have friends that went into the pits of despair and to the edge of a breakdown just as one would with loosing a dearly loved person and you could tell they were struggling to move forward. It's nothing to be ashamed of, feeling this way about the loss of a dog or a cat or your closest best friend that spent more time sharing moments of unconditional love and joy with you than any human friend or family member has.

A dog or a cat or any animal you deeply bond with, whatever it may be, is there for you and loves you unconditionally, you have a daily routine with that animal, you do everything together and they end up being more of a part of your life than some people could ever be and you get a sense they know exactly how you feel most of the time too. It is especially hard for a person living alone to loose such a valuable companion.

When you love something or someone deeply, you have an equal amount of fear in losing the object of your love. My biggest fear in the world was loosing my dog Poppy, she brought me so much happiness and joy over the last ten years, more than any amount of fortune or relationship could have given me, we had so many treasured adventures and moments together and our connection was so profound we could read one another's thoughts, I'd just think 'walkies' and she would appear ready for me to put her harness on. My only real deep fear was her dying and loosing her, this I was afraid of for a few years before she actually passed over the rainbow bridge, on the positive side it made me cherish our moments together and live completely in the moment with her. Poppy to me, was the closest I have ever been to having a true soulmate in the body of an animal, she was a person and stood greater in her energy, spirit and wisdom than any person I have met in my life. She gave me the best reason to be alive every day. Losing her has been the worst and most tragic experience of my entire life, I'd give anything to just feel her body in my arms and her big beating heart.

Though, since having lived the reality of my greatest fear and going through this deep emotional loss, something surprisingly strange has happened after loosing Poppy, she has somehow helped return a fragment of myself I lost after my early youth, an old emotional part of myself that was always able to laugh in the face of adversity, but after sometime I lost that part of me, and got worn down, maybe her presence in the other realms allows her to bring gifts of healing for me, she is a very powerful being for me, somehow a lost part of my prior self when I was very young has returned only after her passing and she has also been a reason for us to discover some information that could help other street dogs. After the initial stages of processing grief and loss it helps a little to change ones perspective, I know this as someone that has lived with severe depression, you learn how to manage it via different perspectives if possible. Despite being isolated physically I am drawing towards a feeling of something intangible, not easy to put into words.

There are moments where I feel that everything for my spirit will be okay because Poppy's soul is quite powerful and she has shown me that our deepest fears when lived out, end up providing us with gifts afterwards as they dissolve after surviving them somehow on different levels. I just cannot put into words how in awe I am of the incredible number of insights my Poppy is teaching me each day from across the realms beyond life and death. I grieve for the loss of her abundant love, joyful spirit and physical presence while her soul is just so strong and bright. it permeates by illuminating my life in so many subtle ways with the ultimate gift of true unconditional love, she is still with me in spirit.

The best thing we can do while we are grieving the loss of our furry or feathered friends is to realize they found us and taught us unconditional love and to be grateful for the time we had with them. There is a proverb about a boy who lost his dog and apparently after his dog died he said that the reason dogs have shorter lives than people is because they already know how to love unconditionally and be joyful all the time, so they don’t need to spend much time here, whereas people are still learning that so we live a while longer.

by Carlita Shaw
Ecologist, Activist, Author