Pet Grief Is Real
- 5 min reading time
Pet Grief Is Real.
I often think of myself as someone who is pretty good with death.
I worked at a cemetery and crematory for a couple of years in my twenties. I've experienced tragic losses in my own family. I've been present when someone took their last breath. I've been around death in ways most people haven't, and when someone grieves the loss of a loved one, I know how to show up for them.
Pet grief, though? That was a mystery to me.
I understood it existed. I knew people who had been through it and said it was heartbreaking, but I assumed it was something you got over relatively quickly. Certainly nothing that compared to losing a person.
Last December, I found out how wrong I was.
Meet Max
Max was my 12-year-old Mastador- a Lab and Mastiff mix- rehomed to me by a friend four and a half years earlier. I want to be clear: I am a cat person. I have two cats I've had for over ten years. Dogs were never really my thing.
But Max was different.
He was sweet and cuddly, a couch potato at heart who put himself to bed every night around 9 o'clock. He didn't bark. He didn't have accidents. He was 125 pounds and fully believed he was a lap dog. He was derpy in the absolute best way, and somewhere along the line I thought, “maybe I could be a dog person. For Max.”
The Decision no Pet Parent wants to make
Around Thanksgiving 2025, my husband and I noticed one side of Max's face had started to sink in above his eye. Some worried googling confirmed what I feared- the condition was most likely terminal. He began losing control of his leg muscles. His appetite disappeared. By the time we got an appointment with a veterinary neurologist, he had lost 20 pounds.
It was excruciating to watch my sweet big boy falling and looking so confused about what was happening to his own body. Eventually, we had to make the decision to end his life.
I kept telling myself, “it'll be over soon. He'll be out of pain. He'll cross the rainbow bridge and we'll feel better too.” I knew I would be sad. I had no idea that five months later I would still be grieving my Max-a-million.
The Aftermath
In the first few days, I cried basically all day. I didn't want to leave the house or face the neighbors or the mailman. I cried several times a day for the next few weeks, then roughly once a week for the next couple of months. Even now, a wave of pet loss grief will wash over me about once a month and trigger a good cry.
I share this not as a point of comparison, I'm a crier, maybe you aren't. Maybe you grieve differently. But for me, this was far more grief than I expected, and I felt deeply ashamed of it. It felt wrong somehow to be this upset over a pet. Like I was weak. Like I should just buck up and get over it. We know they can’t live forever, so why was this so hard?
Why was I sobbing about a dog?
Here's why: because our society tells us that grief is only acceptable in certain situations, for certain people, and for a certain period of time. Sure we can be “sad” about losing a pet, but enough to miss a day of work? Absolutely not. It shouldn't slow us down or interrupt our productivity. We've got places to be and things to go. Capitalism waits for no one.
What a hard way to live.
Pet Grief is Valid. Full stop.
What we're talking about here has a name: disenfranchised grief. It's the grief that society decides doesn't count, the losses that don't get bereavement days or casseroles or sympathy cards. Pet bereavement falls squarely into that category, and it absolutely shouldn't.
Unless you've been through it, it can be genuinely hard to understand how powerful pet loss can be. This is a being you shared your life with, your house, and most likely your personal space. You are allowed to be grief stricken. Like any grief, grief over a pet comes in waves, and sometimes it really hangs on. Just like with people, some losses are felt more deeply than others, and some can be really heartbreaking.
So if you've lost a pet and you're grieving harder than you expected, you are not weak. You are not dramatic. You loved something real, and now it's gone. That deserves to be honored fully, without apology and without a deadline.
(And to be perfectly honest, your pet might have been better company than some people out there...)
What You Can Do
If you're the one grieving: let yourself feel it. Cry, be still, talk about them, look at pictures, watch videos, write a song or poem about them. Don't shrink your grief because someone else might not understand it. Reclaim it. It belongs to you.
If someone you know is grieving a pet: check in on them. Especially the ones staying stoic on the outside. Let them know it's okay to be completely wrecked over this. Send them a pet sympathy card, not because you have the perfect words, but because showing up matters. It always matters.
The Last Thing I'll Say About Max
The last time I cried about him, my husband and I were talking about how sweet and soulful he was. I asked, "Do you think Max was like, the Dalai Lama in a past life?"
We thought about it for a minute.
"Nah," I said. "But maybe Chris Farley?" 😄
RIP, sweet boy. RIP.
