The painful process of losing a beloved animal

Coping with grief over loss of pets, horses, cows 

When Ann Maclean’s dog Seamus, a rescued black Labrador retriever, began to decline, she spoke with her veterinarian about the decision to say goodbye to the family’s cherished pet.

The Flint Hill resident scheduled a veterinary technician to come to their home on a Sunday, when she and her husband, Nick, could both be there with their sons.

“We canceled all our engagements and spent the weekend loving [Seamus] up,” she recalled.

Afterwards, the boys found sticks and cut twine to create makeshift crosses which they stuck in the ground, over the grave their father had dug.

Over the years Maclean has found beautiful stones on their property to also mark the site. “It’s sort of in the woods, by the stream where he loved to swim,” she said. “It feels like a nice little spot.”

The painful process, familiar to so many animal lovers, provided a bonding and teaching time for the family, Maclean said.

“Animals really help kids process hard things, and we wanted to help [our sons] have an open conversation about it,” she said. When Seamus died, “There was lots of crying, hugs and tears, telling the dog how much we loved him and going to visit the grave.”

Difficulty losing a pet

Anyone who has endured the death of a beloved pet can identify with political comedian Jon Stewart, who in his third week back hosting The Daily Show, broke up on camera Feb. 27 while telling the audience his dog, Dipper, had died the day before.

“Psychologists tell us that it can be as difficult to lose a pet as it can be a human member of your family,” Dr. Michael Watts of Clevengers Corner Veterinary Care in Amissville said.

Watts said a strong feeling of grief is common, largely because of the unconditional love pets give.

“[Pets] don’t criticize you like your spouse or yell at you like your kids,” he said. “They always love you, and so when you lose that, it can be a very big psychological trauma.”

Ellen Adams, of River Oaks Counseling and Wellness, a telehealth private practice in Virginia, believes that our culture doesn’t do a great job of helping people figure out how to grieve, let alone for pets.

“It can feel like it’s hard to find support [from other people],” she said. “A lot of times the people in our lives, the sense might be, ‘get over it,’ which I think a lot of people do when you’ve got a human loss too. They can be like, ‘Do we still have to go through this? Are you still depressed?’”

Adams urges those suffering a pet loss to understand that their grief is valid, and to continue searching for those who will support them.

Grieving over horses, livestock 

Dr. Thomas Massie Jr., of Rose Hill Veterinary Practice in Washington, said horses tend to engender those same kinds of emotions in owners as dogs and cats.

“And people don’t think about a cow, but [that cow] can also be critical to someone’s mental wellbeing and life,” he said. “However many dogs and horses you’ve had, you can probably name one or two that were the best. There’s always one that seems to be the hardest to let go.”

Massie described helping a 70-year-old dairy farmer handle the transition.

“He looked as hard as you could be, but there he was, sitting with his head in his hands, crying beside his 12-year-old dairy cow,” Massie said. “They’d been depending on each other for years. Every day they’d had physical contact, and he knew all the babies she’d had and how kind she was.”

That hurt is part of being human—and a caring animal owner, Massie said.

“It ought to hurt when you lose them, whether that’s a herd of cows or one horse. They’re a part of you; you had them for a reason,” he added.

Many livestock in Rappahannock are buried, although veterinarians can also provide options for cremation.

Massie said he had one of his own horses cremated individually, with the ashes returned in a five-gallon bucket, at a cost of $1,200.

“The [cremation services are] very respectful of the people and the animals,” Massie said. “It’s a nice service to have, and it’s [become more popular] in the last 10 to 15 years.”

Before burying or removing a horse’s body, many owners follow the tradition of cutting a few inches of the tail hair as a keepsake.

“I do keep a chunk of tail hair off my horses,” said Sue Garvin of Sperryville, a lifelong animal lover who has had horses since she was 15. “The old timers used to say that let them go to heaven. I think if there is a heaven, they get to go there anyway.”

Preparing for the end

Massie understands the difficult decision owners face as their animals decline, but he tries not to influence that decision beyond laying out the facts.

“Everybody draws the line of when it’s time to stop in a little different place, but for the most part, it’s fairly close,” he said. “We get to a place where there’s no way out. You can’t do more, and you have to stop even though you don’t want to.”

Watts said people usually worry about whether they’re acting too soon. But that concern often conflicts with their other desires—to not see the pet suffer, and to say goodbye in a peaceful way.

He advised that it’s best not to wait for a crisis. “[You don’t want them] yelling out in pain or vomiting blood, or so miserable they stop eating,” Watts said.

Waiting robs pets of a peaceful farewell, Watts said, which is why so many pet deaths end up happening at emergency clinics.

“You want it to be a nice, sunny day, in your backyard, maybe in time for a kid to come home from college to say goodbye to a childhood friend,” he said.

“I can’t think of a single person who has come back and said, ‘I wish we’d waited another week.’ But I could fill a book with people who said I wish we’d done it earlier,” he added.

As a pet owner, Maclean appreciates a vet who will tell her when it’s time, even if that conflicts with a tendency to want to “fix” an animal or hold on as long as possible.

“It becomes excruciating [at the end] when you have a vet who just keeps giving you more solutions,” Maclean said.

Massie understands people who ask if he has any other way to treat their ailing animal.

“[Clients] want to know when they lay their head down at the end of the day that they did the best they could for the animals in their charge, and you can’t ask for more than that,” he said. “It’s not uncommon that they say, ‘Doc, what would you do?’”

Even then, Massie doesn’t necessarily say he would stop, but instead lays out the prognosis – a clear outline of what the treatment’s likely results will be.

For some of the horses he euthanizes, Massie has been their veterinarian for 25 to 30 years. The animal might be one he foaled or once saved from injury or accident.

“The [owners] know it hurts me, too,” he said. “You can’t detach from the situation. At some level I have to, but in the decision, they realize we’re standing together.”

Saying goodbye

Adams of River Oaks Counseling said even for children as young as five, being part of the euthanasia process — “being able to just sit and touch the pet when they pass” — can help them to understand and process the loss.

Sperryville resident Sue Garvin said she always included her sons in the process of euthanizing an animal when they were young.

“Death is part of life, and I think learning to grieve is an important part of life,” she said. “Letting kids be part of the decision and letting them feel the pain of it is important.”

An advantage of planning ahead, Massie said, is that chance to say your goodbyes.

“If you have the luxury of time, you can see them one more time and not leave words unsaid, things undone, but you don’t always get that—with people, and same with horses,” he said.

He considers this service to be a solemn responsibility—to animals and to their people.

“No other health care professionals are allowed to have those types of drugs. It’s a tremendous responsibility, and we see it very much as that,” he said. “For animals it’s a privilege, but for us it’s a responsibility to do it right, and there’s a lot of reverence associated with the process.

“Not everything with a beating heart gets that luxury, and our animals are blessed to have that,” he added.

Ways of memorializing

At Clevengers Corner, Watts said, pet owners can paint river stones and add them to a memorial garden with a bench and statues of a dog and cat with angel wings outside his veterinary office.

Most veterinarians, he said, will offer a clipping of the pet’s hair or a clay paw print that can be created in the clinic.

Watts said most of the pet owners he sees select cremation, with about half of them asking for the ashes back, and some opt for taxidermy.

He’s had some clients who have found pet cemeteries, which makes it a comfort to visit the grave. Some have sent framed photos of their animals to be hung in the vet clinic or had a painting commissioned.

“I’ve had people set up memorial funds — like the veterinary school at Virginia Tech has a grant program funded on gifts from [the owners of] deceased pets,” he said.

Garvin said her sons have often framed photos of a beloved animal for her, and they keep collars from favorite pets. But she looks forward as much as she looks back.

“For me the memorialization is going and getting another one,” she said. “I’m an absolute fan of rescues and rehomes. The best way I can memorialize them is to experience the grief, but not be afraid of it and do it again, have [another pet] be a great part of my life. The previous pet was so incredibly wonderful, and I want another pet that’s incredibly wonderful, and they always turn out to be.”

That’s a policy Maclean subscribes to.

“It’s still worth it,” she said. “It’s all still worth it. They’re the greatest animals and bring you so much joy. Even when you have the experience of putting a dog down, it’s still been a worthwhile endeavor to have a dog in your life.”

Support resources for pet loss

Here is a sampling of support resources during the process of caring for a sick animal, deciding when it’s time to let them go and managing the grief afterwards:

Aplb.org: Association For Pet Loss and Bereavement, offering support, education, helpful resources and memorials

Rainbowbridge.com: Grief support, chat rooms and memorials

thetillyproject.org: An international nonprofit connecting pet owners with end-of-life pet photographers worldwide and offering free educational and supportive resources for pet loss and bereavement

thepetmemorial.org: Tribute pages, with donations in memory of pets supporting animal rescues, plus a grief support center with videos

lapoflove.com: Pet loss support resources and tools for making end of life decisions

Sign up for Rapp News Daily, a free newsletter delivered to your email inbox every morning.

Foothills Forum is an independent, community-supported nonprofit tackling the need for in-depth research and reporting on Rappahannock County issues.

The group has an agreement with Rappahannock Media, owner of the Rappahannock News, to present this series and other award-winning reporting projects. More at foothillsforum.org.