I recently re-watched the first episode of the Sopranos. I loved that show, and not just for the wonderful acting and writing. Despite being (partly) Italian, it greatly expanded my knowledge of Italian comfort foods (I think I asked my husband what Gabagool was during every episode). As you might remember, in that very first episode the late, great James Gandolfini’s character Tony is fixated on some ducks who hang out in his swimming pool. He loves these ducks. Tony, of course, is a violent mobster who has a lot of blood on his hands. He doesn’t seem to place too high a value on human life. But he has a soft spot for animals: the ducks, his racehorse, his nephew’s dog–those losses touch him in a way that the human carnage left in his wake rarely does.
I’m not exactly Tony Soprano, but I admit that animals can sometimes get under my skin more easily than people can, especially in film or books. The scene where Tony’s nephew Christopher kills his girlfriend’s dog by obviously sitting on it hit me harder than all of those other grisly deaths. I never finished watching Benji in the theatre as a kid because I cried so hard when he got lost that my mom agreed to take me home. When the guy who boarded our dog lost his mom, I offered condolences. He accepted them, but then said that he was actually more upset about the death of his dog, which had happened shortly after his mom had died. His mom was a difficult person to love. His dog was not.
Loving a pet is generally a very safe thing to do. You are usually not worried about getting screwed over by your dog. (Cats, as we all know, are a little sneaker. Kidding! (Mostly) just kidding!) I think our grief about losing a beloved pet is so easy to access because it is so uncomplicated and so close to the surface. In contrast, relationships with our fellow humans are often quite complicated. We have to work hard to get them right, and we aren’t always able to do that. Our feelings about our human loved ones may be buried deep; they can be difficult to access as they are often infused with all sorts of challenging emotions. But for a beloved pet, all we generally feel is love. We might get frustrated at times (trust me, I know), but in the end we generally feel that our animals are innocent, incapable of ulterior motives, and so our love for them remains pure. When we lose a friend or a family member, we may have to grapple with lots of unresolved issues, complicating our grief and opening a floodgate of complicated emotions.
When a pet dies, we usually just feel sad. So very sad.
Or guilty. Sometimes we feel really guilty.
We are responsible for our animals–they are actually considered our property, and by their very definition domesticated animals cannot take care of themselves. Froma Walsh, who is an expert on dying and grief–and a huge dog lover–has written about the loss of a pet (Walsh, F., Family Processes 48:481-99, 2009). She talks about the difficulties involved in the accidental loss of a pet, such as running one over, leaving a dog in the car on a hot day, etc. The blame and guilt associated with such losses can be overwhelmingly debilitating. It’s often made worse when the responsible party fails to understand, or at least acknowledge, how big the loss really was: to some people, it’s “just an animal.”
The statement “it’s just an animal” gets at what Walsh describes “disenfranchised grief,”: when the loss of a pet is “unacknowledged, trivialized, or pathologized,” (p. 487). It’s hard to know how to react to the death of your best four-legged friend if the people around you can’t understand what all the fuss is about. As I mentioned last week, we really don’t have a good way of handling the loss of a pet in our culture. Other pet lovers might understand, but in general we just try to move on quickly, which can often further complicate our grief. We need to be able to find a healthy way to grieve.
Last week I mentioned that the day after one of our kitties died, we went out and adopted a younger version. That’s true, but I’m not proud of it. Actually, if I were the type of person to keep score, I might add that I strongly advised against it, but was overruled. Obviously, I’m not that type of person 😉 As someone fairly well versed on death and grief, I really felt that we should take some time to mourn poor Spencer, who had been part of our family since before we had ever been a family. Pets are not just objects that can be replaced with a swipe of a credit card, and I didn’t want our children to think that they could be.
But, Petco was next door to the grocery store, and they just happened to be having an adoption event. And we just happened to go in there. And there just happened to be an adorable little kitty that looked just like Spencer, just 17 years younger. And my older daughter, who had sat with me while the vet put Spencer down, and who had been very much in touch with her grief both before and after his death, begged me. And then my other daughter begged me. And my husband begged me. And against my better judgement, I caved.
And you know, aside from the fact that he had a highly contagious case of ringworm that he spread to our other cat, our dog, and the anonymous person writing this post, it actually turned out pretty well. (Ringworm isn’t quite as gross as it sounds–it’s basically just athlete’s foot.) The kids didn’t ignore their feelings for Spencer–they still mourned him, but in the mean time they had a lot of fun playing with the new kitty (at least until we discovered his ringworm–a little late, obviously–and had to isolate him for a while).
But still, though, as a professional I would not suggest rushing out to get another pet right away. Instead, find some way to memorialize your pet, perhaps with some sort of ceremony or tribute. I would also suggest that you find people to talk to who are sympathetic to you loss. Many places offer pet loss support groups, or there are also pet-loss hotlines. The Humane Society offers these tips and suggestions on dealing with the loss of your pet.
Whatever you end up doing, I think the key is to find an honest way to express your grief. You need to feel like your pain is legitimate. Disenfranchised grief is bad news. If you bury your sorrow, it will eventually manifest itself in other ways, and none of them are good (Tony Soprano, for example, tended to bash people’s heads in). Of course, that goes for all grief. But even if we as a society don’t do a good job of acknowledging how much is lost when a pet dies, it doesn’t mean that the loss is not a profound one. Find a shoulder to cry on. You deserve it.
Next week: pets and euthanasia
Spencer will forever live on in all of our hearts ❤️
Absolutely. He was such a good boy.
A couple of years ago we had a dog who was clearly failing. But my husband, who lived in another city at that time, only saw the dog when he would come for a visit. I knew it was time to help the dog’s ending be a blessing, but my husband couldn’t agree because he did not daily live with the results. In the end, the dog died a painful death on a day I was by myself. Heart-broken at the dog’ ending, I was also angry with my husband for not believing me that the dog needed to be put down months before her demise.
Our pets are part of our family, and it’s so hard when different family members have different experiences, and then have to try to come to accept eachother’s reactions. That whole situation sounds so hard and sad. Thanks for sharing this–hopefully your experience will help others.