Managing Guilt Over Pet Death

Guilt is a strong emotion, and people often experience extreme versions of it when it comes to pet death. The death of a pet can take a toll on your emotions and your life because you have lost a member of your family that you had formed a close bond with over the time that you were together. It is very normal to feel guilt, but it is also one of the most powerful and inconsolable emotions. Dealing with the guilt will take time and patience.

At the root of guilt is a feeling of helplessness and despair because you could not save your pet (or in some cases, find a pet that has gone missing). You may also feel guilt if you had to make the difficult decision to euthanize your pet. It is best to take a step back and realize that you made the best decisions that you could with the information that you had at the time. Berating yourself over what could have been will not help you come to terms with your pet death. Instead, you have to accept that you are human, and you did everything that you could to make sure that your pet lived a full and healthy life. All animals and humans will eventually die, and it is not your fault that the normal course of life happened to your pet.

All that you can do now is remember your pet and reminisce about the time that you were able to spend together. Grieving over a pet is much the same as grieving over a human loss, so you will experience a tumult of emotions. What you have to be able to do in the end is find support and share your feelings. If you try to downplay your emotions, you will never feel like you have truly let go. And letting go of pet death does not mean forgetting your pet. By remembering your pet, you are keeping their spirit alive, and that you can carry with you forever. Your fond memories, the funny moments, the special place that they have in your heart will never disappear, but you do need to let go of the guilt so that you can get to a healthy place in the grief process.

Grieving over pet death is not unnatural or uncommon. In fact, many people are experiencing the sadness and loneliness of losing a pet right now. If you are finding it hard to share your grief with the people around you, then you should find people that are also experiencing the death of a pet or that have in the past to help you through this time.

By: Renee Wood, MSW

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Renee Wood founded The Comfort Company in 2000. She is a social worker that has helped families deal with the loss or pending loss of a child, as well as aiding patients in the end-stage of renal failure. The gifts provided by The Comfort Company offer Pet sympathy gifts as well as hope for healing hearts.