When Losing a Pet Breaks Your Heart and Life Expects You to Move On — Grief Therapy
- Apr 6
- 5 min read
One of the things I hear most often, sitting with people in grief after losing an animal, is a sentence that arrives almost like a confession imprinted with shame:
"I know it was just a pet, but I can't stop crying."
Every time I hear those words, I feel something break. Not because the person is wrong to feel what they feel. But because somewhere along the way, they have absorbed the idea that their grief needs to be justified. Measured.
I want to offer a different perspective entirely.
The grief is real and it doesn't need to earn its place
Australians love their animals. Unashamedly, wholeheartedly, and that's something I find genuinely beautiful about this country. We talk about our pets the way other cultures talk about family members. Because that's what they are: Family members.
And yet, even here, even in a culture that understands the depth of that bond, there is an unspoken social expectation: that grief after losing a pet should be manageable. Brief. Something you move through in a week or two before life resumes.
If you are finding that harder than expected, if the loss feels rawer, more disorienting than the world around you seems to think it should, I want to say this clearly: what you are experiencing is grief. Real, legitimate, profound grief.
Why pet loss can feel so lonely: disenfranchised grief
There is a term in grief research that I return to, too often in my work: disenfranchised grief.
It was named by psychologist and grief researcher Kenneth Doka, who described it as grief that occurs when a loss is not openly acknowledged, publicly mourned, or socially supported.
In other words: the loss is real, but the world doesn't quite treat it that way.
Losing a beloved animal companion sits squarely in this territory for many people. However well-meaning those around you may be, comments like "You can always get another one" or "At least they lived a good life..." can leave you feeling more alone than comforted. As though the depth of your pain is somehow disproportionate. As though you need to explain, or apologise for, how much you loved them.
You don't. And you shouldn't have to.
The same is true for those who have had to give up an animal for adoption. Sometimes life changes in ways we cannot control: a move, an illness, a housing situation, a family circumstance, and rehoming becomes the most loving choice available. That doesn't make the loss any smaller. If anything, the grief is compounded by guilt, by second-guessing, by the painful judgments of others, by the absence of any social permission to mourn a pet that is still alive somewhere. That loss deserves acknowledgment too.
What you actually lost
An animal companion is rarely "just a pet".
They are the presence that greeted you every morning, without condition. The creature who sat with you through illness, heartbreak, loneliness, and sometimes major life changes. For many people, a beloved animal is the most consistent relationship in their life, one that has witnessed years of living: pain, joy and simplicity, familiarity.
Carl Rogers, whose work deeply informs how I practice, wrote about the profound human need to be received with unconditional positive regard. Animals offer this instinctively. There is no judgement, no condition, no agenda. Just presence. Just love.
When that presence disappears, you don't just lose a pet. You lose a relationship, a daily rhythm, a source of comfort that may have carried you through some of the hardest moments of your life. You lose the sound of them. The weight of them. The softness of them. The way they looked at you. The particular way they knew you.
That is a loss worth grieving, fully and without apology.
Grief doesn't follow a timeline
One of the most disorienting aspects of pet loss is the gap between how long you grieve and how long others think you should.
You may find yourself crying unexpectedly weeks or months later. Avoiding certain rooms. Feeling an emptiness. Some people describe a kind of guilt, wondering if they made the right decisions, especially around end-of-life care. Others feel embarrassed by how present the grief still is.
None of this is weakness. None of it is being too attached. This is what it looks like to have loved deeply, and to be living in the aftermath of that love.
Grief is not a problem to be solved. It is a natural, necessary process. And it moves at its own pace, not the one the world around us might prefer.
When to seek Grief Therapy after losing a pet
Most people who lose a pet will grieve and, over time, find their way through. But for some, the grief becomes prolonged, or entangled with other losses such as a previous bereavement, isolation, depression, or the sense that this loss has opened something older and deeper.
It may be worth reaching out for support if you notice:
Grief that intensifies or feels unrelenting over time rather than softening
Withdrawal from daily life, relationships, or things that once brought meaning
Guilt that keeps returning, about decisions made, time not spent, or the final moments
A feeling that no one around you truly understands what you have lost
There is no threshold of pain you have to reach before you are allowed to ask for help. If you are struggling, that is enough.
A space where your loss is taken seriously
In my work as a grief counsellor and psychotherapist, I sit with people navigating many kinds of loss, including the loss of a beloved animal companion. A dog, a cat, a bird, a horse, a rabbit, a guinea pig, creatures of all sizes and all kinds of presence...
People who often arrive having already been told, in one way or another, that their grief is too much.
It isn't. And it doesn't have to be carried alone.
If you are finding the loss of your pet harder to bear than you expected, or if you simply need a space where you can speak honestly without having to shrink what you feel, I would be glad to hear from you.
I offer a free 25-minute consultation, with no referral required. You are welcome to reach out when you are ready.
Sandrine Lonchampt is a grief counsellor and psychotherapist at Colibri Counselling & Psychotherapy, offering online sessions in English and French across Australia. She specialises in grief and loss, life transitions, trauma, and existential concerns and losing a pet in Grief Therapy.
References
Doka, K. J. (Ed.). (2002). Disenfranchised grief: New directions, challenges, and strategies for practice. Research Press.
Rogers, C. R. (1961). On becoming a person: A therapist's view of psychotherapy. Houghton Mifflin.
Worden, J. W. (2018). Grief counseling and grief therapy: A handbook for the mental health practitioner (5th ed.). Springer.
