Grieving Over Pets: How to Move On

We bring pets into our lives and we love them like any other member of our family. We treat our pets like great friends and tell them about everything we do through out the day. Our pets never get mad at us or yell at us. They are the best friends that we could ever ask for. We feel bad when we yell at our pets for doing something wrong and it destroys us daily if we treat them bad and we feel even more horribly when we lose them. Unfortunately, pets do not have long lifespans such as 100 years like we do as humans. Dogs for example might only live to be eleven years old. We see our pets age from year to year and it reminds us of how precious life really is.

The first thing that we go through is shock. We hope to wake up and see our pet there again with us. When your pet comes up missing we hope and pray that they will return. Your pet has been there everyday through thick and thin and then suddenly, they are gone. Sometimes you will think that you hear your pets running through your home still. You might think that you hear your dog running up the stairs through out the night. Right now you are in shock or denial. It's normal to feel this way and most people will go through this stage in the mourning process.

After you go through the feeling of being shocked you will start to become angry. You will blame everybody else for the reason that your pet is no longer around. You may blame a friend for letting your pet outside or the vet for putting your dog or cat to sleep. You will look back through your pets life and see everything that they and you did wrong. You will begin to feel as if your pet didn't have a good enough life. This is also normal. It's just another step in the whole mourning process. It's hard not to blame people because you think that something could have possibly been avoided but usually death is just a normal process with every living animal. We might also even feel guilty, for example, we might think that if we would have fed our pet differently or treated them differently the pet would still be alive. We start blaming ourselves and then we feel depressed and more upset. You will feel a lot better once you can accept that this is only a natural part of life and as much as you don't want to let your pet go, he or she is already gone. They are waiting for you and then are in a lovely place being taken care of by god until you can watch over your pet for you.