Why I Chose To Focus On Pet Grief

It is better to have loved and lost, then never to have loved at all. Lord Tennyson penned that sentiment in the 1850, but I find it still holds true for me, and for many others today. It’s hard to love. It’s even more difficult to lose the ones we love, and this has never been clearer than with our pets who live such short lives compared to us. The kitty in the featured image is still with us, though we don’t know her age, and it’s at least twelve. She has brought such richness (not to mention her two litters of kittens before we could catch her and get her spayed) into our lives, that I couldn’t imagine life without her.

Animals have always been an important part of my life. I had few friends at school, and the turtles and guinea pigs, gerbils, and hamsters that I had as pets, though not all at the same time, were the best friends I had. I still remember how they passed, how my mom’s voice shook when she told me that Butterscotch, one of the guinea pigs, succumbed to pneumonia while I was on holiday break with my father. I remember the gerbil with the bend in his tail (it’d been broken) who had only a few short years with me that was rescued by the humane society after ill treatment at the hands of college students, and although he never tamed down, he was loved all the same.

My grandmother who grew up on a farm didn’t see my pets the way I did. “It was just a (insert animal here)” was all too common a refrain, and though she meant well, I also knew the truth, that it wasn’t “just a” anything. They were my friends, my companions, and I cared for them. I grieved their passing.

Fast forward a lot more years than I’d like to contemplate and animals still play a major role in my life. Since we live in the Ozarks several cats (some possibly dumped; we’ll never know) have come into our lives. There are chickens who are just as varied in their abilities as any other creature, and the horses. The wildlife too, plays a role, and I find that the sight of an armadillo scampering across the yard or the deer grazing in the pasture bring a smile to my face.

What is loved remains.

By this time in my life I’ve lost more pets than I’d like to think about, and honestly, I’ll have a few more big losses before this year is over. I’ll talk about those in a future blog, because anticipatory grief is grief too. But even though they’re no longer with us, their memories are. We even have some photographs. And although they’re not with us in physical presence, their spirit is, their memories are, and so they are not gone. Not completely.

I choose to focus on grief because pet grief is real, it’s powerful, and it deserves the same attention as any other grief. We should not diminish or make small how we feel about the loss of anyone in our lives, especially if that is an animal for whom we cared for. There are many reasons, including the fact that our relationships with our pets can be less complicated than the ones we have with humans, but not necessarily, why their loss might cause us substantial grief that we might need help working through.

I chose to do this work because no one did it for me. It is my calling to walk with people during difficult moments in their lives, to support them where possible, and to help them because in the end we’re all walking each other home.

Animals mean so much to us. We grieve what we love. It makes sense that we would grieve the loss of an animal companion. It’s a very human thing to do. And you deserve someone who will support you during the time of loss and beyond. You deserve the same compassion and care that you gave your beloved pet.