Years ago, a colleague of mine managed to get his hands on highly in demand, and hard to get tickets to the filming of a local television show. On the day of the event, he came home from work to discover that his pet fish had died. As a result, the young man became so distraught that he was unable to attend the event. The loss of his fish greatly saddened him for some time afterwards.

Another person that I know purchased a parrot, only to come home one day to discover it dead. It appeared to have flown into a window and snapped its neck. She arranged for burial at a nearby pet cemetery, and for years afterwards blamed herself for what happened. She eventually purchased other birds, but never another parrot.

For a long time, I kept hearing the name of pet in connection with my brother, as well as how he had sworn after its death to never own another animal. 'It's too hard when they die' was the reason he gave for his decision. I assumed the deceased animal was a dog, or even a cat. 'Uhh... . I think it was a guinea pig,' my sister told me when I asked her about it.

A guinea pig? It turns out, my brother had found the guinea pig roaming around outside, and had taken it in. He grew attached to it, and when it died, he was heartbroken.

As you can see from the stories above, human beings can become strongly attached to their pets, even when those pets are types of animals that often seem disposable to others. Becoming so distraught over the death of a fish that you'd pass up a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity isn't something that a lot of people seem to have sympathy for. Yet my colleague's grief was as valid as my cousin's was when her horse was on the verge of death. In fact, losing a pet can be as traumatic as losing someone in your own family.

People form attachments to animals for a variety of reasons. Loneliness and isolation only account for a small percentage of animal owners and handlers bonding with their animals. Nowadays we find service animals turning up more and more frequently in a variety of roles. Some guide the blind, others hear for the deaf, while yet others sniff out bombs and assist soldiers in wars zones. When they die, their human colleagues feel the loss, and try to honor the contributions that they have made. Military service animals are given full military funerals.

Studies have proven that the elderly and other vulnerable individuals benefit from the companionship an animal offers. After my aunt's husband died, it was her dog that kept her going. She had emigrated to France when she married, and so her immediate family lived far away. Though she had three children, they had all gone off to live in other cities, and only her daughter was still in the relative vicinity. Her dog became her most important companion, and when he died, she soon fell into depression. She stopped eating, and seemed to be inviting death to visit her. Before long, it did.

It is at this point that many people would simply say, 'why didn't she just get another dog?' and point out that there are thousands, if not millions of unwanted pets at local shelters.

Well, it isn't as easy as that. When you have lived with someone for a long time, you don't just replace them overnight. Sometimes, you never replace them. It is the same way with the animals we let into our lives and hearts. We can only let a new one in when we are ready to love again, and oftentimes the fear of having to go through the pain of loss all over again somewhere in the future renders us unable to.

Yes, for some of us, our pets are people too. They are our family. They are our children, and there is nothing strange about that. Sometimes they are the substitutes for children living far away, or those who are close by but don't have time for us anymore; and sometimes they are the children we cannot have for whatever reason. Perhaps we had an abusive childhood and don't want to pass it on to another generation. Perhaps our life is too unstable to consider having children. So we love our pet, and live to see them die before we do. And, sometimes they are extra children in a family already full of children. What is wrong with that? Pets teach children about responsibility and to treat other sentient beings kindly.

But when a pet dies, we must take the time to grieve. Thankfully, more people are beginning to understand that, and are capable of showing the compassion that my colleagues did way back when I was working in Ottawa. They got together and bought a card and a bouquet of flowers to express their condolences over the loss of my companion. Of course it also helped that most of them had pets of their own, and understood what it means to lose a non-human companion.

If you have recently lost a pet, don't rush into getting a new one. You can't replace a valued friend and companion that easily. Love the ones you still have twice as much, and wait until you are ready before bringing someone new into your family.

If you have lost a service animal, you probably have no choice but to jump into a new relationship. Honor the memory of the animal that died, but give the new one a fair chance. Don't compare the two. It will be hard, but in time, your new companion will find his/her way into your affections too. Give him/her that chance.

Always remember that animals are people too.

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”
-Mahatma Gandhi

Image at top: Pixabay