Coping with the Loss of Your Best Fur Friend
When one adds a pet to the household, in the vast majority of cases you have added a family member that you will outlive and outlast. It’s a sad and somber fact that most pet owners know this in the back of their minds, but at the time of bringing that new puppy or kitten into their home, it’s something that seems a million miles away from the present. Humans tend to live in the moment, especially when it’s beautiful, fun, new, and perfect… like adding a pet to your life normally is. We watch as puppy or kitten turns to a toddler, then to a full fledged adult animal, before our eyes. With their maturity we see the childlike playfulness slowly vanish and be replaced by a steadfast and loyal adult companion. It’s not a sad thing, its the circle of life and the next step in an animals maturity.
The adult pet is a joy, as they have worked to carve their place out in the home and heart of their human caretakers. Then, seemingly overnight, their accelerated march to old age sneaks up on all of us, the pet included. The animals awareness of aging simply is null, as their brain’s logic and reasoning centers are not as developed as a humans. They are frozen in time in their minds, always your baby… craving to be with you, and please you. They don’t have the capacity to understand aging in themselves any more than they can recognize the changes the passage of time has made in their human parents.
You wake up one morning and eight or ten years have flow past without you realizing the full impact on the pet. Suddenly you can see time wearing on your beloved buddy, it’s something you recognize in their now cloudy eyes, or their inability to jump up on the couch or bed. It’s obvious in their slower gait or graying muzzle, and hair loss. Their eyesight and hearing capabilities diminish, but you may never notice how much… as they don’t understand it and even if they did, they wouldn’t have a way to communicate it to you. More of their day becomes about sleeping and eating, the want to run and play is much less, and even though they still wander from room to room just to be with you… the spirit of the youngster you once tossed a ball, or rolled on the floor to play with, is replaced by a pet that simply wants hugs/scratches behind the ear/and a slower and more gentle pace in life with you as the focal point. Somewhere in the back of your mind, you start to see how the march to the inevitable is nearing the end. As much as you want to avoid the subject, cherish the good times you still have, and pamper your “good old friend”, you know you can’t stop what is coming. All you can do is ride the ride until the end, making sure your fur kids are treated with respect, don’t suffer, and are loved right up till the end, like the special part of your life they have been. For them, it’s simply another day, they just don’t feel the same or have the same energy. For you, it’s switching to caretaker and the one who has to watch as their life marches forward to the end.
After They are Gone
When they are gone the hole their absence has left in your heart, the volumes of time suddenly open in your life, the unwanted change in your daily routine, the sadness that hangs in the air because they are no longer there, is immeasurable. Much like mourning the loss of a human child, the pain is real and the sadness is so wide and deep it can become physically impacting to some pet parents. Most families go through the stages of loss that you would feel for a human who has died. It may materialize differently but you’ll likely feel most, if not all, of the 7 stages of grief;
The Accelerated Aging Curve
Since the early 1950’s, we have lived with the idea that one human year is equivalent to seven dog years. A puppy quickly becomes a teenager by the end of the second year of their life, a young adult by the end of year 3, and a full fledged senior by age nine. Dogs living to 12 years old would be equivalent to a human of 84 years.
The scale for cats is a bit different, as they mature faster, gain adulthood earlier, and then the aging process slows. At the end of a cats first year, they have lived a life equivalent to 15 human years (almost ready to borrow the car!). At the end of second year, they add an additional nine years of wear, tear, and maturity. After that, each year in a cats life is the equivalent of 4 human years. This means a five year old cat is considered to be 36 years old in human aging. A 12 year old cat would be around 55 human years old.
With all this said, these numbers are only an average. A dogs size, weight, activity level, DNA, breed, and diet all weight into the aging process. A small dog breed with good health, a moderate activity level, good genes, and a balanced diet would age more in line with the kitten’s progression.
(Dogaspet.com has a “Dog Year Calculator” that you can play with at this link; Dog Years To Human Years (Calculator) (dogaspet.com) )
How Can I Remember my Beloved Pets After They are Gone?
Call it what you may, “Pet Heaven”, the next place, the place pets go after they die and are waiting for their humans… the hope and dreams of all pet owners is that there is a location that we will all visit after we pass away where pets gather to watch over the loved ones they have left behind. The story is told that after we humans die, we cross over the bridge and into the fields beyond. Once there, we are greeted by all of our pets who are patiently waiting for us to join them. The reunion would be so wonderful that time and the pain of the long separation and absence will melt away, and there will never be a moment that you are separated again. Does the place exist??? Whose to say it doesn’t… none of us have ever NOT been there. It may be nothing more than a coping tool for the grief we all feel. But what if its not? There are endless stories of pet owners seeing glimpses or shadows of the departed pets in familiar places, vivid dreams of pets who have passed away visiting owners, sounds of paws on hardwood floors or meows/barks during quiet times in the home. Could it be that when one loves so much, so true, and so deeply that a spirit feels an unbreakable bond with their humans? We’ll all find out truth one day. We can only hope that, regardless what you might believe, the answers are glorious and wonderful.
Part of recovering from the loss of a favorite furry friend is to allow yourself to heal, and part of that healing process is remembering the good, letting go of the trauma and final days, and celebrating their lives. Here are a few ways you can memorialize the one who left a hole in your heart…
Sites like Ebay, Etzy, Amazon have unlimited options for your to consider. Use your search engine to find something that is unique, special, and just for you.
The most important thing to remember is that you need to allow yourself the time to grieve and recover. You may never cry, you may cry uncontrollably. You might skip steps in the grieving process, not have any or have them all. Death impacts all of us in some way, and the loss of a beloved innocent soul like a special pet is bound to knock your life crooked for a while. It’s okay to feel lost and devastated… why wouldn’t you? You’ve just lost a big part of your support network, someone who loved you differently than anyone else in your life, your confidante, your best and most loyal friend, and someone who depended on you for everything in their life. The faster you allow yourself to release the pain, anger and sadness… the faster you will start to find that new normal and begin to move forward. Let’ be honest, your pet would not have wanted you to be sad. They never want us to be sad, its one of the things that makes them human.
Please join us in celebrating the lives of pets who have left us and are waiting for the day we can join them. This blog and our social media sites are living memorials for Freddie and his departed brothers and sisters, for all our our friends who have loved and lost special pets, and for the millions of pets and animals who passed away without a family to love them, for they are truly forgotten souls.
Do us a big favor… if you do cross over a Rainbow Bridge shortly after you die and all your pets are waiting for you, take the time to find a couple of new fur friends who don’t have anyone special to wait for and take them with you, where it is that you go next. Doesn’t every animal deserve a chance at forever, even in the great beyond?!
That’s it for this weeks Dog Blog, and we hope you learned a thing or two… maybe even had a great memory, or let go of a few bad ones. We’ll be back next week with another pet related blog topic that will hopefully entertain and educate our friends a bit. It’s a new month, new ambitions and the coming of a new Autumn season. Don’t forget to treat your special canine pal to a longer walk, a special day on the town, a little more dinner, an unexpected snack or two, and all the love you possibly can bestow upon them. As we were reminded with the pages of today’s blog, if life isn’t any one thing… it’s finite and fleeting. Don’t make the mistake of leaving anything in reserve, live it all while you can.
Till next week, please remember… love those you cherish, cherish those you love, treat each moment as if its the last one, close your eyes and feel the sun on your face, pet a dog till you both smile, hug someone just a bit longer and just a tad harder… and never forget to always be Pet Friendly, #Freddiesez!
Blog Research from
Leave A Comment