Coping with Pet Loss

Grief Resources

Coping with pet loss can be exhausting, both mentally and physically, making it hard to even think about seeking out pet loss resources in these difficult times.

I have therefore gathered these resources to help support you wherever you are in your pet loss and grief journey.

The grief of losing a pet is crushing; and yet it is too often minimized. This talk by Dr. Sarah Hoggan explains why the pain of pet loss is different and why it is valid. Dr. Sarah Hoggan has been an emergency veterinarian for over 20 years.

Many people meet her on the worst day of their life; when their pet is injured, when no else is available, and when it is time to say goodbye.

Her career of dealing with critically injured pets, and their frantic families, gives her a compassionate perspective that only comes with experience and helping many animals to have a soft goodbye.

Euthanasia is a decision that will echo in your mind long after the event. In this second talk by Dr. Sarah Hoggan, she explains that echo and why it occurs. Sarah has worked as an emergency doctor throughout her veterinary career. She feels her most important task as an emergency doctor is translating the medical diagnosis and clinical situation into a more understandable context for the family so they can make decisions feeling empowered instead of overwhelmed.

Nearly every pet owner has experienced pet death – so why do we hardly talk about it? E.B. Bartels, author of Good Grief: On Loving Pets, Here and Hereafter shares humorous and heartfelt anecdotes about loving pets, here and hereafter, and the potential connections we may be missing by not sharing our grief with others. 

In her talk above, E.B. Bartels notes:

"Kindness is the thing that our pets show us every day. They don't care if we step on their tail by accident, or forget to feed them on time. They love us unconditionally. And when a pet you love dies, the thing you need the most to help you get through that grief is kindness shown to you by a fellow person who really gets it. Which is why I really hope that we can all be more open about sharing our own pet loss stories, because it is the only way we can really find each other."

I wholeheartedly agree with this. It is the entire reason I started this website over two decades ago, and I can continue to believe in the power of sharing our stories. In the power of reading the experiences of others, and then sharing your own, in the grief version of "paying it forward", so that those coming after you will read your experiences and know that thousands of others have walked the same path before them and that they are not alone.

For this reason I have made two additions to this space. 

I spent many months building Henry, a pet loss companion, named after my dog Henry, who is the Golden Retriever in my header image and whose photos are all over this website. He is there for you to sit with, to unburden yourself to, for those moments when you need someone to communicate with, but real humans are just too much to deal with. He has all of my knowledge on grief I have learned over the decades, and all of the knowledge from this website. He is a caring and compassionate listener, specifically designed to be someone who really gets it, for those times when you just need someone, and don't want the pre amble, the need to explain yourself, or to have to deal with the social anxiety grief can make feel so much harder to deal with at times.

I also believe in the kindness and connection part, and making real connection in a safe community where everyone there knows how you feel, because they have been and/or are there themselves. Away from the noise and exhausting negative distractions of social media and media generally. A supportive place, to share experiences and stories, learn more about grief and to reflect. 

For this reason, I invite you to our community.

Join Our Pet Loss Support Group

Pet Loss Matters – A Place to Belong

For twenty years, this website has been a place where people come quietly, often in the middle of the night, looking for something they cannot quite name. Not answers, exactly. Not solutions. Just the feeling that someone else has been here too. That what they are going through is real, and known, and not something they have to carry entirely alone.

That has always been what Pet Loss Matters was built for.

And now I want to take it further.

Why a Community?

A website, however full of love and care, can only do so much. It can hold your story. It can offer words that feel true. But it cannot talk back to you. It cannot hold space for what you are going through right now, today, in this moment – and it cannot introduce you to the others who are sitting in exactly the same place.

That is what a community can do.

What I have learned, after all this time, is that the single most healing thing is not a quote, or a poem, or even an article that perfectly describes what you are feeling. It is knowing that someone else felt it too.

So I created the Pet Loss Matters Support Group: a quiet, gentle space where the grief of losing an animal companion is never minimised or rushed, and where it is given the weight and dignity it deserves.

What You Will Find Inside

Nothing overwhelming, nothing rushed. When you join, you will find:

Daily Check-Ins – a gentle place each day to share how you are feeling, even if it is just one word.

Come As You Are live meetings – a warm, unhurried gathering. Pyjamas welcome, cameras optional, no judgement. Just people who understand.

The Emergency Care Kit – gentle guided practices for the hardest moments: the 3am waves, the anniversaries, the empty bed.

The Brain That Grieves – a video course in which Henry gently explains the neuroscience of grief, and why losing a companion can make you feel the way you do. Understanding it, even a little, can make it a lot less bewildering.

Daily affirmations, reflections and journalling prompts – questions and thoughts to help you sit with your grief rather than run from it, and put words to the things that feel almost unspeakable. Grief doesn't want to be fixed. It wants to be witnessed.

The Love That Remains – a free 120-page Pet Loss Matters Grief & Gratitude Journal, yours to keep, with space to write, space to feel, and space to remember.

Henry – Henry is a presence I created especially for Pet Loss Matters: a guide and a gentle voice, the keeper of every story, tribute and diary that has passed through this space. Inside the community, he presents the video lessons and guided practices, and offers quiet moments of reflection and remembrance.

And each other – the other members of this group. People who understand, because they are living it too.

The Pet Loss Matters Support Group is $5 a month to join. I want it to be accessible to anyone who needs it, and self sustainable – so it can continue to help as many people as possible.

All I ask is that you come as you are, and that you treat others in the group with the same gentleness you would want for yourself.

If you are ready, I would love to have you there.

The group is hosted on Skool, a private community platform. When you click the button, you'll be asked to create a free Skool account – it only takes a minute. It is a safe, closed group: your membership is not visible to the public, and the content inside is only accessible to members.

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