How can you and your pet(s) help each other through the mourning process?
It’s important to recognize that pets also feel grief and express it in their own ways.
To better understand how animals mourn, read our post, Is Your Pet Also Grieving?
There’s also an informative post on Psychology Today’s blog by Marc Bekoff that looks at scientific data about animals and grief.
Declaring “Grief in animals: It's arrogant to think we're the only animals who mourn”, the author goes on to say, “There is no doubt that many animals experience rich and deep emotions. It's not a matter of if emotions have evolved in animals but why they have evolved as they have. We must never forget that our emotions are the gifts of our ancestors, our animal kin. We have feelings and so do other animals.
Among the different emotions that animals display clearly and unambiguously is grief. Many animals display profound grief at the loss or absence of a close friend or loved one.” (Read More)
Our pets can also provide invaluable emotional support for us in our bereavement. For more about this, read our post Pets As Support, where we discuss the various studies that reveal the ways animals are able to show empathy and affection to bereaved owners.
We’d appreciate hearing about your own experiences with your pets.
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