Grief for an animal
Grief after the death or loss of an animal the person was attached to: a dog, a cat, a horse, an animal lost or given up. It often comes with a decision to end the animal’s life, and with people who expect it to be over in a week.
What drives it
An animal is often part of every routine (the morning walk, the weight at the end of the bed), so the absence is met dozens of times a day. Useful for identification because people are often embarrassed by how hard it hits and hide it, and naming it can explain a low that seems out of proportion to them.
How it shows
Work
Taking a sick day and calling it a migraine because ‘my dog died’ feels too small to say. Colleagues who joke about getting a new one.
Relationships
One partner wants another puppy within a month while the other can’t bear to move the bed. Children who ask whether the vet killed her.
Self
Notice the times of day the absence hits: the key in the door with no bark, the walk you still half expect to take. Notice whether you have told anyone how hard it is.
What tells it apart
Grief (complicated, disenfranchised, anticipatory): Any grief can go unrecognized. With an animal it is more likely that others treat the loss as minor, so the person grieves alone and wonders whether they are overreacting.
Bereavement guilt and regret (Li and Stroebe): After euthanasia the grief may run through questions about the timing or the choice. If it keeps circling ‘did I do it too soon, or too late’, bereavement guilt may be the stronger strand.
Prolonged grief disorder (ICD-11, DSM-5-TR): The diagnosis is written for the death of a person, but Hyland’s data show the same pattern after a pet. Yearning on most days for a year or more, getting in the way of daily life, may match the description even where it cannot formally be diagnosed.
A test
Ask how much of the day was organized around the animal and how many people know how the person feels. A large gap between the two may point to grief for an animal that nobody around them has counted.
Questions to carry
- What time of day do I miss them most?
- Whose reaction made me play down how much this hurts?
Go deeper
- Read: The Other Side of Sadness, George A. Bonanno, 2009, revised 2019. Written for readers by a psychologist who has followed bereaved people for years. He questions the idea that grief moves through set stages and argues that most people come through a loss with more resilience than expected. Much of it rests on his own group's studies.
How strong the research is
moderate. In 88 people who had lost a pet (Archer and Winchester, 1994), grief looked much like grief for a person, with numbness, preoccupation and a pull toward reminders common, and it was stronger with closer attachment, a sudden death and living alone. In 71 people who had lost a dog or cat (Field and colleagues, 2009), more attachment anxiety went with heavier grief. A UK survey of 975 adults led by Philip Hyland (PLOS One, 2026) found 7.5% of those who had lost a pet met criteria for prolonged grief disorder, close to the rate after losing a close friend (7.8%), though current criteria count only the death of a person. All three rely on self-report questionnaires.
Where it comes from
Kenneth Doka, Disenfranchised Grief: Recognizing Hidden Sorrow, 1989 (grief others do not recognize). John Archer and G. Winchester, Bereavement following death of a pet, British Journal of Psychology, 1994