Pet Loss and Disenfranchised Grief: Supporting Clients Through Bereavement After Animal Companions
Pet Loss as a Legitimate Bereavement Experience
Pet loss is one of the most common grief experiences in the United States — and one of the most consistently minimized. Helping professionals who work with bereaved individuals will encounter pet loss regularly, often embedded within other presenting concerns, and often carrying a layer of shame because the grieving person has already received the message that their loss does not warrant serious attention.
It does. The bond between a person and an animal companion can be one of the most consistent, uncomplicated, and emotionally significant relationships in their life. For individuals who live alone, who have experienced relational trauma, or whose human relationships are complicated or limited, a pet may represent a primary attachment figure. When that animal dies, the grief is real, the loss is significant, and the disenfranchisement that frequently follows compounds the bereavement in ways that have direct clinical implications.
In this episode of the GRIEF Ladies podcast, Adam Greenbaum shares the experience of losing his Boston Terrier, Baxter, and how that loss led him to found Love, Baxter — now one of the largest pet end-of-life support resources in the world. The conversation addresses the emotional complexity of pet bereavement, the particular weight of euthanasia decisions, and what meaningful support looks like for grieving pet owners. For helping professionals, it is a clinically relevant and practically grounded discussion of a grief population that is frequently underserved.
What This Episode Covers
The conversation addresses several areas with direct relevance to professionals supporting bereaved individuals:
Why pet loss is structurally disenfranchised, and how that disenfranchisement affects the grief experience
How to prepare emotionally and practically for a pet's end of life — and why that preparation matters for bereavement outcomes
The specific emotional burden carried by pet owners who make euthanasia decisions on behalf of their animals
How memorialization and ritual support grief integration after pet loss
Where pet bereavement support resources exist and how professionals can connect clients with them
Clinical and Systemic Implications
Pet bereavement is a grief population with specific clinical features that helping professionals benefit from understanding directly.
Disenfranchisement is the primary clinical risk factor in pet loss. Disenfranchised grief — grief that is not openly acknowledged or publicly supported — is associated with more complicated bereavement outcomes, increased isolation, and higher rates of depression. Pet loss is disenfranchised at nearly every systemic level. There is no bereavement leave. Memorial services are uncommon. Social scripts for responding to pet loss are underdeveloped, and well-meaning people routinely say things — "it was just a dog," "you can get another one" — that communicate that the grief is disproportionate. When a grieving person arrives in a clinical or support context having already been told their loss does not matter, the first and most important intervention is straightforward acknowledgment.
The euthanasia decision carries distinct grief features. Unlike most human deaths, pet owners are frequently asked to make an active end-of-life decision for their animal — to choose the timing and circumstances of the death. This is an act of care, but it is also an enormous weight. Grief following euthanasia often includes guilt, second-guessing, and a particular form of moral distress that is not present in the same way after deaths that occur without a decision point. Professionals who are not familiar with this dynamic may miss it entirely, or inadvertently reinforce the client's self-doubt by failing to name the decision as an act of love rather than a source of culpability.
Pet loss can activate or reactivate prior grief. For many individuals, a pet has been a companion through significant life events — illness, divorce, the death of other loved ones, major transitions. When that animal dies, the loss can carry the accumulated weight of everything the pet witnessed and accompanied. What presents as pet grief may also be a portal into earlier, unprocessed losses. Clinicians should be alert to this layering and assess accordingly.
Veterinary professionals are an underrecognized grief-adjacent workforce. Veterinarians and veterinary technicians make end-of-life decisions alongside pet owners regularly, and many carry significant secondary grief and moral distress as a result. This population has high rates of occupational burnout and mental health concerns, in part because the grief dimensions of their work are rarely named or supported. Grief-informed care extends to the professionals administering that care — a dimension of workforce wellbeing that organizational leaders in veterinary settings are beginning to address.
Pet loss affects children in ways that are often not adequately supported. For many children, a pet is their first encounter with death. How that loss is handled by the adults around them — whether it is acknowledged honestly, whether the child is included in rituals, whether their grief is taken seriously — has implications for how they understand and relate to loss throughout their lives. School counselors and educators who understand pet loss as a legitimate bereavement experience are better equipped to respond when students are affected.
Practical Applications for Helping Professionals
1. Explicitly acknowledge pet loss as a legitimate grief experience. For many clients presenting with pet bereavement, the most powerful early intervention is simple and direct: naming that the loss is real and that the grief makes sense. Do not qualify it. Do not compare it to human loss in either direction. Treat it as what it is — a significant bereavement that warrants the same quality of attention as any other.
2. Assess for disenfranchisement and its effects. Ask clients directly about the responses they have received from others. Have they been told to move on? Have they felt embarrassed about the intensity of their grief? Have they minimized or hidden their distress? Understanding the disenfranchisement landscape helps clinicians target their support and helps clients feel less alone in the experience.
3. Address the euthanasia decision specifically when relevant. If a client was involved in a euthanasia decision, do not wait for them to raise it. Ask about it directly. Explore what the decision involved, how they made it, and what they are carrying as a result. Explicitly framing euthanasia as an act of care — one of the most difficult and loving things a pet owner can do — can be a significant point of relief for clients who are self-condemning.
4. Assess for prior grief activation. When a client's distress around pet loss seems disproportionate to what they themselves expected, explore the history of the relationship with the animal and the losses the pet accompanied. This is frequently where layered grief becomes visible. The pet loss is real — and it may also be carrying grief that has been waiting for a container.
5. Connect clients with pet bereavement resources. Pet loss support groups, bereavement hotlines, and resources like Love, Baxter exist specifically for this population. Knowing what is available and making direct referrals is a practical and meaningful form of bereavement support. Many grieving pet owners do not seek out these resources because they have already internalized the message that their grief does not warrant support.
6. Incorporate pet loss into grief education for school personnel. Equipping educators and school counselors to respond to pet loss in students — with honesty, acknowledgment, and age-appropriate support — builds grief literacy at a foundational level. How a child's first encounter with death is handled shapes their long-term relationship with loss. School-based grief education that includes animal loss is more complete and more responsive to students' actual experiences.
About the Guest: Adam Greenbaum
Adam Greenbaum is the founder of Love, Baxter, currently one of the largest pet end-of-life support resources in the world. He previously built WhiskerCloud — now part of PetDesk — into a platform serving more than 10,000 veterinary clinics worldwide. When his Boston Terrier, Baxter, died in October 2024, Adam channeled his grief into building a resource dedicated to supporting pet owners through end-of-life decisions and bereavement. His mission is to ensure that every pet receives a calm, dignified farewell — and that the people who love them have access to compassionate, informed support.
Resources from the Center for Informed Grief
The Center for Informed Grief provides training and professional development for therapists, educators, healthcare providers, and organizational leaders working with bereaved individuals across loss types and populations. Our programs address grief-informed practice in its full scope — including disenfranchised bereavement, pet loss, and building the professional capacity to recognize and respond to grief that falls outside conventional frameworks.
To learn more about upcoming trainings, workshops, or consultation opportunities, visit the Center for Informed Grief.
