A dog's last day

[Catherine]

We are coming to recognize that our pets are more that just animals. They are family and we need to grieve their loss.

We are also recognizing that animals of all kinds are more than we thought and that changes how we deal with their deaths.

The other issue is grieving itself. Some of how we grieve is cultural. Some of it is the product of our personalities. One thing I have learned from my work(I work with frail seniors so I have seen a lot of losses over the years) is that there is no right way to grieve. Also you can't judge how deeply people feel a loss by how they express their grief.

We have lots of cultural norms for dealing with the loss of the people in our lives, but we have not yet worked through how to express the loss of a pet. I have attended lots of mini funerals for pets in my neighbourhood. I bury my pets, but I have never wanted anyone else to be there.  I need it to be a private moment.

I don't think I would want to be photographed in my grief, particularly when holding a dying/dead pet. I do spend time holding them like that. I am not so different from that woman, but I can't share those moments publicly. It made me feel better that she was able to share. I think what she did could help other pet owners to know that it is okay to feel the way they do.  In a lot of ways that is why we have a Rainbow Bridge section, it was on of the first sections Bock and I created and it was one of my first posts on ALWF.