Pet Bereavement

Animals bring us tremendous joy and can help us lead a really full life. We take a young animal and we work to train them, feed them and care for them. We nurture them and they in kind return our love. They quickly become part of our family, it doesn’t take long, often it is love at first sight, other times, well, it takes a while. We go about our lives, we change plans to include our pets, we may even alter our lives so that they can be part of a celebration. And so they become a part of us, part of our very being. Then they get a little older, maybe they slow down, maybe they have health issues, but still we take care of them.

Sometimes we adjust our homes to accommodate our pets conditions, in many cases we buy vehicles just to move them around. And they still provide us with unconditional love, they are there when we come home after a hard day, always happy to see us and say hello. In fact, they seem to miss us even if we just leave to take out the garbage. And cats, well, they have their own special way of communication.

Then, as time goes on, they get very old and sometimes very sick. And it is not fair, they are only 8 or 12 or even 16 years old. A mere blink in the time of our own lifespan. We come up with tricks to allow ourselves to see them as older. We try 7 cat years for every 1 of our years, for dogs there is a new calculator that uses the natural log of the calendar years to try to calculate the age of the patients dna. The bottom line is that the earth does not spin faster for a dog or cat than it does for us. We want them to live longer, but their bodies are not designed to.

And so we eventually have to say goodbye. And it is hard, very hard. Each of us processes this loss differently, sometimes we can talk about it, other times we can’t. Some of us have a good support system and others are alone with their thoughts.

We know the depths that can be reached, we have been there ourselves. We want you to know that we are here for you if you need us.

On this page we will list resources and information about our bereavement support group meetings. Please check back often for updated information. Also you can visit some blog posts that we have done about Quality and End of Life issues. We understand the feelings and emotions that you are experiencing, we hope these resources can help.

Peace,
Kim and Jerry