Do Dogs Feel Grief? Coping Together

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Dorothy Skarles continues her series on Bereavement, Memoir, and Expressing Oneself in Writing with a post about Dogs and Grief.

Welcome friend.

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Do Dogs Feel Grief? 

Throughout the world many dedicated people own pets.

The bereavement group is no exception.

"I don’t think dogs grieve," one woman said when the subject of grief for the family dog came up during a bereavement session.

"I disagree," cried another.  "When my spouse died, our dog was as sad as any human being. He even looked as if he had tears in his eyes, and I just knew he was suffering."

She was trying to dispel any misconception in the group that family pets didn’t feel grief, and a man agreed with her.

"Well, I think dogs show sorrow in different ways," he said. "My two Chihuahua’s kept running into the bedroom, sniffing and looking for my fiancé. They ran up the steps we had to get on the bed and sniffed her billow where she died, and just laid there."

A new widow joined in. "I had to put my dog in the spare bedroom and lock the door. He didn’t want to leave my husband. She cried all the time the medics were there.  Sometimes, I am so sad I feel comfortable crying while talking to my dog about my husband. She puts her paws on my lap and we cry together. We are a support twosome for each other."

"My dog Angel," I said, getting in on the conversation, "wouldn’t sleep in her own bed, but slept on my husbands bed for a whole month. She roamed the house everyday looking for him. She didn’t even eat her food. I had to coax her to eat."

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The dictionary says, a dog is remarkable for its intelligence and its attachment to man.

Even Senator George Graham said a eulogy on the dog.

"Gentlemen of the Jury: The one, absolute, unselfish friend that man can have in this selfish world, the one that never deserts him, the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous, is his dog."

And as for me, I have always had a dog. I even told my husband when he asked me to marry him that if he loved me, he would have to love my dog. Then after forty years of having many different four-legged barking pets, and the last dog died, I told my husband, "That’s it! No more dogs for me."

But than my grandson rescued an abused dog and brought her to the house, and his grandfather said, "Put her in the back yard, your grandmother needs a dog." So that’s how I got my ten-month-old Jack Russel / Pit Bull, not a pedigree but a thoroughbred mongrel.  My grandson named her angel, and now she and I cope together.

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Thanks Dorothy.