Has ‘work-from-home’ influenced how we view and tend pet loss and grief?

A commonly-asked question is, how does one respond to people who say, Grieving over a pet? I mean, it’s just a dog… you can get another one?

I won’t go too far into the weeds with how comments like these lack sensitivity. I can say from my years in companioning families through their pet’s journey through hospice and end-of-life that most of the time, it’s hard for other people to be sensitive to situations they’re not familiar with, or find too emotionally-grueling to navigate. And so, the comments that land like a lead weight during an already brittle time erode what emotional and physical resources those grieving have left. 

 

We know that when people have space held for them to move through their grief, they can fare well. It’s when that disfranchised grief is minimized, ignored or is used to shame is when problems begin. And those responses—stressors in themselves—from others add to the trauma and emotional toil that is experienced. 

 

We find this is especially prevalent in one’s work life, a space that many of us occupy more than our home lives. And so it’s easy to see how impactful walking that tightrope can be both for the one that’s suffered a loss as well as their workmates. 

 

In my years of companioning those who’ve lost a pet and need extra support, I’ve advised that avoiding people who aren’t behaving as supportively as they’d like to be is a good option. The problem with that is it’s more of an ‘ugly coping’ tool, as George Bonanno calls it. Coping ugly can take shape in various ways, and consist of strategies/behaviors that we might otherwise deem unhealthy to help us cope with grief or trauma. In this case, it’s having to suck it up and sit with the offhanded comments or the platitudes that come out of another person’s mouth. It’s fine, now and then, and it's also an emotionally draining front line strategy. 

 

The additional advice I offer is that it’s perfectly fine to respond clearly and thoughtfully, with one’s boundaries fully intact: 

 

This is a very difficult time for me to navigate. I’m not sure you’re aware of it because maybe this uncharted territory for you. But your comments are unhelpful, so I’d appreciate your saying instead ‘I don’t understand any of this though I can see it’s affecting you tremendously’, and leave it at that, or at the least not remark on what’s happening at all.”

 

I have to say, though, I’ve had a thought getting traction in my head: I’ve been wondering if the increased opportunity of work-from-home in the past couple of years helped us be more aware and empathetic to others when it comes to grief? Seeing our co-workers’ pets on Zoom meetings over and over, does it make us more aware of how profoundly their deaths affect their guardians? 

 

I think so.

 

And though it’s fair to say that we’ve all gotten more savvy with Zoom in the way of being able to navigate the platform and others like it and tweaking our backgrounds and such, seeing those we interact with during our work time in their home environment albeit on the screen probably caused a lot more of us to ‘see people close up’, so to speak. More human, more who they are. Having some of that curtain pulled back, the one that normally obscures our home lives also means seeing family pets on the screen. 

 

More than one pet guardian has relayed how comical their colleagues thought it was that their dog barked upon hearing another Zoom participant’s dog bark in the background. Or, during a virtual meeting with a co-worker who they find frustrating, a client noted that upon seeing an adorable feline mug suddenly pop up on the screen, they were reminded that while challenging for them to deal with, they “are still that cat’s dad! It helped me remember that he might find me frustrating, too and he really seems to love his cat.”

 

I’ve also heard echoes of sentiments like, “…after Sammy died, all of my co-workers seemed to be genuinely clued in to how hard it was for me in those first days” or “one of my team members had been off for a few days, and they hadn’t known Eddie died…they piped up just before their last meeting of the day ended asking ‘…where’s your cat? He’s camera-shy, today!’ They’d no idea about Eddie, and understandably, were taken aback. They were so affected by the news.”

 

It’s clear that to some degree, those emotional barriers that were the norm previously are giving way. Plenty of us noted during the beginning of the pandemic that virtual meetings of every type made things feel artificial, less-connected. And as time went on, that eased into realizing that using Zoom and other platforms, for some at least, fostered a different environment. One where, because people had to pay closer attention to the other parties on their screen, they’ve also been able to view them with a new lens. What seems to have unfolded is an environment that’s more human, accepting, and naturally creates more space for others, especially with something that we all share—loss and grief—is concerned.

 

And so, will that momentum in being more sensitive to others during times when they’re experiencing a high emotional load because of their pet’s illnesses, decline or death continue to move in the right direction? I certainly hope so. But more importantly, I do think that will help make issues surrounding grief and loss less taboo and better equip our culture to understand how to support others who need it.

With over 20 years of experience in pet care and the past 8 of those focused on animal hospice, Lorrie Shaw is a Certified Animal Hospice Practitioner and Certified Fear Free Professional. She is CXO of Telos Companion Animal Services, LLC and can be found at lorrieshaw.com.

 

Imagining your life after a pet’s death during their decline can seem like a betrayal. It’s actually a healthy tool.

“Are you just waiting for her to die?”

That was a question that two people—one who I’m closely tied to—asked me when I spoke about plans I was sketching together to travel to a place I’d never been. It was 2015. Puerto Rico had been on my mind. And as a late-bloomer when it had come to traveling, much less doing so alone, it had become an essential mental well-being tool. It also, ironically, helped to squash paralyzing social anxiety that had plagued me into adulthood. 

I’d not traveled in the final few months of Gretchen’s life. And as a sole human in the household, I was her main caregiver. 

Gretchen was my nearly 16 year-old St. Bernard/shepherd mix. I’m quite certain in imagining the gasp (16!) that invariably escaped from your lips that I need not go into too much detail about how heavy the caregiving was for a geriatric, large breed dog with advanced osteoarthritis, a touch of renal disease and had been recently treated for hemorrhagic gastroenteritis. Gretchen was never the same after the latter and in fact that was the diagnosis that became the tipping point of a steeper decline over three months: a touchy GI tract, stress impacted her gut more easily and many of her favorite things to eat were now off limits. 

We’d been traversing ever-so-gently into this phase of our life together (I was also caring for my geriatric cat, Silver, who had his own share of issues, but I digress). And with the help of a mental health professional specializing the needs of humans immersed in a life circumstance such as this, a plan was crafted. A plan which supported me in navigating the process of being a caregiver to pets with ever-increasing needs, and the expected anticipatory grief, the frustration, the decision-making, the unknown, re-framing/re-imagining my relationships with both Gretchen and Silver—and preparing for life after both of them died. Especially Gretchen, I won’t lie. Heart dog, soul dog… whatever you want to coin it as, she was it. My ride or die being. I never saw her as my child. She was a dog, and I felt I needed to honor that. Gretchen was at that point more like my smart, sassy, independent-minded elderly aunt who never married and needed tending in her dotage. She loathed being fussed over, like someone else I know. 

Anyway, I knew it’d be hard. I’d have a very new life. I knew I’d be a different person. I’d have a different identity: I’d not be a dog guardian anymore. And I wasn’t sure what any of that would look like or feel like, because I’d spent over a third of my life living in that identity that would be unwillingly stripped from me. Yes, it scared me a little. But I was more afraid of how things would unfold if I didn’t give a lot of thought to what life would be like after. Because going from a life where your pets are naturally the first thing you think of in the morning and the last before your feet lift off the floor and into bed, to having their needs increase so much to the point that being away from home for four hours is a big deal, that’s a lot. And then when you’re aware, even though it feels unfathomable, that all of that will, in a blink of an eye—vanish. And you’ll not need to think about heavy caregiving, or medication refills or ‘what will they be willing to eat today?’, or anything else. And your instinct is that your life will develop a natural sense of emptiness when all that comes with loving and caring for a pet edging toward their end-of-life comes to a physical end. 

And then it does. And for how long, that depends. And it’s not unusual for that to ebb and flow. 

Back to the question I was asked. 

‘Are you just waiting for her to die?’

I bristled at it. And then I softened. Because if nothing else, I had no mental bandwidth to get curious about what they meant. Nor to help either person feel comfortable with how I was navigating through a brutal time. 

Because most of the time, that’s what those who are expressing things like that need. Or because it’s weird for them to hold two ideas in their hands at a time—that one can be fully engaged in the heavy caregiving and anticipatory grief while realistically looking to a future where their pet will be gone and not coming back—because they seem completely incompatible. Or because they feel like acknowledging the fact that life will go on is a kind of a betrayal of the love one has for their pet.  

I could also see how easy it is for others to mistake a healthy coping tool for rushing through a period of life that’s full of unpleasantness and gut wrenching changes while full of love all at once. Or stuffing it down so it doesn’t need to be felt because it’s too hard. 

So, was I just waiting for Gretchen to die? No. Of course not.

I couldn’t stop her dying from happening, I could not save her despite the advances in vet medicine. Nor was her dying going to be a failure on my part or anyone else’s, or of vet medicine. But what I could do, was control how I reacted and coped with the process, and the outcome. And I knew I’d not be moving on, but moving forward. I was envisioning what life would look life after she died and planning for it. I was taking care of myself, and my mental health. 

I was accepting the inevitable. And that I would never not grieve Gretchen. 

So, I responded with that. And then, I guess, they understood. 

That looking ahead and giving the reality of what life would be like some much-needed space to stretch its legs came naturally to me. That, along with my having good instincts about how I might respond to things along the way given my history, how I used my existing coping tools, and how to adjust and gain additional healthy strategies as needed. Planning the trips I was going to take after experiencing two deaths in what would be a short 10-month span was an integral part of that. As I later discovered in my professional training in Grief Companioning and animal hospice, that looking ahead is a tool that is used in working with guardian caregivers when we are supporting them in navigating through a tender-but-brutal time. 

It’s perfectly normal and natural if your thoughts move into a direction of thinking ahead to a time when you’ll have far less to think about, to manage, with a pet who is in decline. You don’t love them any less, you’re not betraying them, and you are still the very best guardian caregiver you’re able to be because you’re taking care of yourself. 

And yes, Puerto Rico was amazing.

With over 20 years of experience in pet care and the past 8 of those focused on animal hospice, Lorrie Shaw is a Certified Animal Hospice Practitioner and Certified Fear Free Professional. She is CXO of Telos Companion Animal Services, LLC and can be found at lorrieshaw.com.

The out-of-order death of a pet poses brutal challenges

It’s not uncommon for me to be brought on board by a family to tend to their pet who has received a life-limiting illness or is experiencing age-related decline (in many cases, both)—and for them to have much-younger pets as well. The former tends to be the focus of my care and tending of course, but as any family in this situation will tell you, the other pets become just as much a part of the equation because they’re as much a part of the family unit. 

It’s no secret that the younger pets lend a sense of lightness to the overall situation and in themselves offer some respite from the day-to-day changes, decision making, monitoring of a pet who is in delicate health. In fact, I often remind my families that though the pangs of guilt that they experience from having fun with their younger pets and tending to their emotional and mental needs are completely normal, resisting that and setting time aside for play and all else can actually make them a better caregiver to that pet whose needs are increasing and abilities changing. 

I’ll admit, those interactions are good for me, too. 

I don’t think it’s lost on anyone whose pet has died after a long period of decline that the younger pet is a font of respite from the grief hangover that is experienced. The absence of medication regimens, tending to hygiene, the worry of getting home in a timely fashion to get an aging dog out to potty—yes, that is a welcome thing. The more carefree aspects of focusing on sharing life with a younger, healthier pet that we have a bonded relationship are definitely something to look forward to. 

And for some families, in the midst of caring for the pet in delicate health and all that is associated with it, their world crashes in. 

The usually robust, younger pet seems a little off. Or very much so. And then it’s revealed that they are in fact quite sick and a bigger conversation—one that blindsides—needs to be had. Perhaps, even, it’s an accident, or the negligence of another party that causes the unfolding of events. And then the beloved pet that was counted on to be a part of the family for years is then gone, not from memory, but sight and earshot and so many memories that will never be. 

The out-of-order death of a pet is especially brutal, just as it is with a human counterpart. Though I think in many ways, maybe more so: the representation that pets hold in one’s daily life can be much more tethered than other relationships. We often spend far more time thinking about and tending to the care of pets more than we might our human loved ones because pets inherently depend on us. And walking through the grief of a pet that died suddenly and far too soon all whilst navigating another pet’s terminal illness possesses a layer of difficulty that is unmatched. 

And so, that reliable buffer of being able to depend on the younger pet vaporizes. We’re left with emotions and grief that we didn’t expect to grapple with, and yes, confusing degrees of guilt often bubble up. It can be especially complicated having this unfold—contending with the usually stuffed-down anticipatory grief associated with knowing that we’ll be saying goodbye to one pet, and then of course living in a culture where the all-too-common accompaniment of disenfranchised grief is already so prevalent. The social interactions in our personal and professional lives can ride roughshod over us: the questions, comments and avoidance from others, well-meaning and not; the tone-deafness of the trauma that is so prevalent with these losses. This is of course married with, ‘how do I navigate losing the pet who is expected to die without my younger pet softening the blow?’.

So for those who are navigating the shock of an unexpected and life-limiting diagnosis of a younger pet, the sudden loss of another family pet sooner than you expected, grappling with how to grieve the loss of a pet that you at first blush thought would carry you through the expected death of another—you are seen, heard, acknowledged. This kind of loss and grief is very real and challenging to wade through. Know who the trusted parties are that you can confide in, and seek them out. And don’t apologize for taking custody of any kind of grief sooner than you might have expected. The out-of-order grief after a pet dies is as uncomfortable, confusing and gutting as any that is experienced. 

Lorrie Shaw is a Certified Professional Pet Sitter, holds a certification in Pet Loss and Grief Companioning, and is owner of Professional Pet Sitting, where she specializes in pet palliative and pet hospice care support. She's also a member of International Association of Animal Hospice and Palliative Care, Pet Sitters International, Pet Professional Guild, International Association of Animal Behavior Consultants (supporting member), National End of Life Doula Alliance and Ann Arbor Area Pet Sitters. Lorrie can be found at lorrieshaw.com. She tweets at @psa2.