Grief and acceptance of loss

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We bring our dogs into our lives and homes, and cherish and love them. We spend hours talking to them, making them the non-judgmental repository of all our secret hopes and fears. We trust them implicitly and they never let us down. What more could we possibly want?

More time with them is the first thing that springs to mind. Our dogs have much shorter life spans than we do, so almost everyone has had to say goodbye to a beloved dog at some point in their lives. While it's not easy to say goodbye, knowing what to expect, and realizing that support is available should you need it will help you during your time of grief.

The Five Stages of Grief

Most people pass through five stages of mourning, but each person experiences them at varying levels of intensity, for varying lengths of time, and sometimes in a different order. Some of the stages converge and overlap each other. However you experience the mourning, it's important to remember that your feelings are completely normal.

Denial

People enter the denial stage in an attempt to escape the painful reality of their dog's death. Sometimes you're certain that you heard your dog's tags jingle on his collar or you feel him next to you. Some people swear that their dog is wandering outside, especially people who do not see their dog's body after they've passed.

This denial is normal, a way to try and have everything remain the same, but if allowed to linger too long, you run a real chance of being overwhelmed by painful feelings of loss when you're not prepared for them.

Anger

Anger is, like denial, a way to focus the hurt and pain on something. Human nature compels us to find someone or something to blame when we are hurt or sad. It's difficult to accept that suffering is a part of life, so we look for a scapegoat to blame.

Our dogs can end up as the scapegoats because we're angry with them for leaving us. Anger can be directed at ourselves or toward a loved one, especially when we feel that the death could have been avoided. Your veterinarian is another convenient target for anger, because he euthanized your dog. Although anger is a normal step in the grief process, we have to get over it and remind ourselves that no one is at fault. Death is simply an unavoidable, and unhappy, fact of life.

Guilt

People often blame themselves for their dog's death, obsessively wondering if something could have been done to save their dog. Could  [Continued]

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