Grieving When A Pet Dies With Kevin Ringstaff

The death of his cat prompted Kevin Ringstaff to study pet loss and find ways to open up conversations on the devastation that comes with the loss of a pet. Today, we’re discussing why the loss of a pet is so devastating, how to cope with the guilt of euthanizing a pet, and how to navigate coming home to an empty house after a pet dies.

Transcript

Grief Growers,

I am so delighted to introduce you to one of your fellow listeners,

A reader of permission to grieve who took some hilarious photos and somebody who specializes in pet loss,

Kevin Ringstaff.

Kevin,

Welcome to the show.

And if you could please start us off with your loss story.

Hey,

Thank you so much for having me on.

I'm super excited to be here.

This was the first podcast about grief that I've ever listened to.

And I've learned so much about grief and how to talk about grief.

And like I've read many of the books and listened to the other podcasts from listening to you and all the other wonderful guests that you've had on.

And so the story of my life.

So I,

I set upon my journey of grief back in 2014,

When I lost my first cat,

Henry Fats Rothschild.

So back then I didn't know anything at all about grief or how to deal with it.

You know,

I grew up in a family that never talked about these kinds of things.

And my background was in tech programming,

Back in development,

That kind of thing.

Right.

So my,

My social skills were already lacking.

Plus,

You know,

As a man growing up in the South,

It was expected that,

You know,

You should stay strong and not show any kind of emotions.

So I didn't really have an outlet for that kind of grief.

So when I lost him,

When I lost Henry,

I did what I was programmed to do.

I just took all that sadness,

That grief,

That guilt,

That anger,

And I pushed it way down and held onto it for a long time.

Of course,

As many of your listeners already know,

That only works for so long.

And sure enough,

That grief manifested itself in other ways in my life.

For me,

It manifested in like anger,

Drugs and alcohol that I used to mask and deal with all these feelings.

You know,

And I kept going on about this,

You know,

And for a couple years until I found out about the Association of Pet Loss and Bereavement.

After reading The Loss of a Pet by Dr.

Wallace Seif,

A lot of things about grief started to become clear for me,

How to handle it better.

I went through their certification program and it changed the direction of my company to specifically talk about this type of loss.

And then last year,

For some reason,

I decided to quit my job and then move my happy bud all the way across the country to San Francisco to build and grow this company out nationally to like become a resource for anyone going through the pet loss.

Such a wild story from the sense of,

You know,

As a man,

I was trained to do this.

And then there was always the backend developer commentary too of,

So the social skills weren't there.

And then the societal training of,

I was taught to push it down in a way and it almost seems like this perfect storm of don't grief.

It's like the two words coming to the front of my brain is just don't grief.

And you're absolutely right that that only works for so long.

And I kind of want to dig into this because I know there's a lot of people listening who have lost pets and it's been absolutely devastating.

And it's one of the losses that the world refuses to acknowledge.

The world is pretty much only satisfied if you lose a spouse,

A child,

Or a blood relative.

And then anything else,

Especially the life of an animal,

Is seen as secondary or even tertiary to other losses as if they are replaceable or you can get over it faster or they're not as important because they're not a human.

But can you speak on why pet loss is as devastating as it is for people?

Yeah,

You're absolutely correct.

It's a very disenfranchised loss.

People look down on it.

But when we think about it,

That human animal bond that we form with the connection to our pets is so important because our pets are there for us through all the kinds of problems that we have in our life.

Our pets are always there.

They're always happy.

They're always willing and able to come and comfort us.

They give us touch.

They're just there for that kind of emotional connection.

And it's something that not a lot of people have.

So imagine that if you're living by yourself,

Your animals sometimes are the only connection,

The only love,

The only affection that you're ever going to get.

And so when you lose that,

It's a very visceral,

Raw loss.

And since it's disenfranchised,

It's not a loss that you can just readily talk about with other people.

Yeah.

And there's this sense of,

If other people don't think this is important,

Then maybe I shouldn't either.

And maybe I'm crazy.

And there's this,

I think there's a story we tell in grief all the time of,

Oh,

I think I'm going crazy.

But somehow pet loss especially makes it seem more so.

And there's these tropes or stereotypes even of the crazy cat lady or the cat dad or the crazy horse girl,

Or mostly anti-women,

Which I don't really know why.

But there's all these stereotypes of if you're too attached to your animals,

Something's wrong with you.

And I just don't agree with that.

Yeah,

Well,

I obviously agree with you too,

And not agreeing with Ed.

I appreciate that.

And I appreciate you speaking to the notion that pets are constantly with us.

They live in our homes and they have,

I literally wrote down comforting touch,

Emotional connection with us because especially in this age and era of everything's moving online,

We're all on social media,

We're less connected than we've ever been in the past.

Animals are kind of,

For lack of a better phrasing,

Like a grounding energy for us.

They remind us that other living,

Breathing things exist.

And in a world that seems to be climbing in loneliness,

They are a thing that can help alleviate that.

And there's a comfort,

There's a routine,

There's a stability there that's getting harder and harder to find other places.

So it makes a lot of sense that the loss of an animal would be devastating.

I'm curious about your cat,

Henry Fats Rothschild,

Which is a very long name for a cat.

So I'm wondering kind of the story of how he came into your life,

Who he was to you,

And then like what the effects were of his loss on your life.

Okay.

Well,

I always like naming my animals fun names,

But I called him Henry.

He was this orange fluff ball of a cat.

And at the time I didn't have a cat.

I just had my dog Brody,

My old English sheep dog,

Who's still breathing right below me.

I don't know if you could hear him.

But so my mom asked me to babysit her cat.

And she randomly found this kitten on the side of the road on her way up to visit me.

She's like,

Hey,

Kevin,

Just watch this cat too.

And so I watched that cat along with hers for about four or five days.

And when she came back from vacation,

She's like,

Okay,

Well,

Do you want this cat?

Because if not,

I'm going to take it to the shelter.

So in a way she kind of tricked me into taking the cat.

And I'm so glad that I did because he's just such a part of my life and still is in a way because I get to talk about him and get to relive those moments with them all the time.

I wonder,

I love the story of my mom tricked me into owning a cat.

But what was it about him specifically that really formed that bond for you?

I guess it was more just that intimate because the intimate relationship that we have with our pets,

When we think about it,

We don't have that kind of relationship with any other person.

Even our children,

Because at a certain point our kids grow up and they become independent and they leave and we stop doing that kind of touch.

We don't pick up our 16 year old son and hold them and they don't climb into our laps like the way our cats do.

And touch is one of those basic human needs that we all have.

When your cat jumps into your lap,

No matter the kind of day that you had,

No matter what's going on in your life,

It's a calming effect.

I'm immediately thinking of one of my favorite articles online about grief and the loss of a cat specifically is called My Cat's Death Broke My Brain.

And it's about this woman who I believe she was an alcoholic and got sober and she got this cat around the same time she got sober.

This cat saw her through so much life and was the one stable or consistent element of her life as she was navigating sobriety for the first time.

And of course there were major losses that followed that.

And so when this cat died,

It really marked more than the death of a cat,

But almost like the end of an era.

And I have this own similar relationship with my cat right now.

And I look at him sometimes,

He's eight years old,

And I look at him and I'm like,

I'm going to be sad when you die.

Like I can see it coming.

There's like a weird anticipatory thing for his death,

Even though there's nothing quote unquote wrong with him because he is the animal that saw me through the death of my mother.

And so there's these moments in our lives that pets are party to.

I mean,

Even people that do like engagement photos with their dogs or birth announcements or weddings or these big milestones that we survive.

It's like pets are alongside that.

And it's like,

There's these little living,

Breathing memory boxes that hold space for whatever we're going through.

What's his name?

Oh,

My cat,

His name is Gigi.

Yes.

Everybody thinks he's a girl when they hear his name.

And I'm like,

No,

No,

It's based on that movie,

Kiki's Delivery Service that I used to watch as a kid.

I do too.

I'm so glad you know what it is.

And there was the boy cat,

Gigi,

Who always got in trouble.

And my favorite scene was when he got stuck in a tree with a bunch of crows.

And it was just one of my favorite movies to watch as a kid.

And so as soon as I found out I was going to get a cat that was all black,

I was like,

Oh,

That's definitely going to be his name.

I want to switch gears into this realm of unconditional love,

I think is the direction I want to head next.

And there's so much backlash,

Stigma,

I'm not entirely sure the correct word to use,

Around the loss of a pet,

Because there's a story that society tells that they don't have the same intelligence as humans,

The emotional capacity,

They're not biologically related to us.

And time and time again,

The thing I hear back from pet owners,

Those that work at shelters,

Those that work at animal hospice,

Is that pets are a source of unconditional love.

And for many of us humans on two legs,

We never receive that from the other people in our lives.

And so animals are our outlet for that.

And so I'm wondering if you can speak more on the loss of unconditional love when a pet dies.

Yeah,

That's very true that all the other love that we have in our life is conditional.

It's conditional on the things that we do and or not do.

And it's based on judgment too.

Like our pets don't judge us.

Like my dog doesn't look at me in the morning and like,

Oh,

You're wearing that out to work today.

Wouldn't it be great if they did though sometimes?

Yeah,

It would probably be helpful to me,

But yeah,

It's unconditional in the fact that there's nothing that we can say or do that's going to break that,

That's going to change the opinion of us.

And it's interesting to think about it in that way because dogs in particular are very intuitive.

They pick up on if you're happy or sad.

And I have a story about that too.

The first time that I really realized this with a dog was,

There's this one time after my birthday and I was,

The day after you're kind of hung over and you're sick and whatever.

And there was a dog in my life named Jinx and that dog knew that I was feeling bad and she just came up and just sat down and just laid down beside me.

And that's the only thing that I needed and that dog intuitively knew it and intuitively knew how to be there and to support me.

Yeah.

And it's something in grief especially that I think we crave is that the quiet nonjudgmental unconditional loving presence.

And we're so,

I mean,

We've talked about it on previous episodes of coming back is that we're so almost desperate to get that kind of attention from other people of,

I wish people would just listen.

I wish people would just sit with me.

I wish people would just show up and not feel a need to fix,

Cure,

Comfort,

Make better.

That's not necessarily other people's jobs and we don't want them to be in the aftermath of loss.

And so the presence of pets is like,

Oh yeah,

That's exactly what I was looking for and didn't even really know it.

Or you did know it and but didn't recognize that an animal might be the source of that.

I think that's really beautiful and animals do know something that we don't know,

Which I think speaking in an intuitive sense,

I really love that you use that word.

And I think it's really significant that animals are some of the biggest entry points into hospitals into communities after a natural disaster or even after a traumatic event like a school shooting or even with those who may be speaking back to your language who aren't as socially adept.

It's like if we release a dog into the room or release a cat into the room,

All of a sudden everybody has something to talk about and contribute and the focus is off of or away from what's wrong,

Quote unquote,

What's wrong with the situation or when people feel like they can release their emotions to a dog,

They're like,

Oh,

I can speak freely here without being judged or without being unseen.

Yeah,

Disregard it.

So I really,

Really love that story for you.

Yeah,

I always feel really special when I'm at a party and the dog chooses me.

I'm like,

This is amazing.

It rarely happens.

And it's not because I'm a person that dissuades dogs,

But I move around so much and talk to so many people that like,

Usually people don't follow me.

But there's those jokes and those memes online of,

If you're looking for me at a party,

I'm the one in the corner with the dog.

So I always I always love to find that person at the party and go,

Gush mush on the dog for a little bit.

I actually want to share the loss of a dog in terms of a community.

There's a beautiful,

Beautiful Instagram here in Chicago called Sporty the dog.

And Sporty was a golden retriever who lived for a long time.

I don't remember how old he was when he died,

But he died pretty recently within the past four months or so.

And he was this sweet golden retriever who would carry his own leash when he walked.

And so his owner would would put it in his mouth and he would essentially walk himself around Chicago,

His owner would be walking behind him.

But he'd walk himself all around Chicago and he'd create these little videos.

And it was so popular that other people in all over the world were training their dogs to walk themselves on leashes and take cute videos and stuff.

And I ran into him once in downtown Chicago,

And I felt like it was one of the most special things in the whole world.

Like I was just running into joy.

When I met him,

I was like,

You're so famous.

I've shared you with all my friends.

I am so excited to finally meet you.

And then he died a little while later.

And there has been a community grief,

A global grief for the loss of a pet.

And I feel like that happens sometimes too.

There was even like the death of Grumpy Cat was a public and a community global grief.

What happens then?

What's going on with all of us that we mourn pets publicly,

Or maybe we mourn some pets publicly and other pets get swept under the rug,

So to speak?

Yeah,

I'm not really sure why we would do that all in a public setting like that.

But like when,

Because we're not,

In some cases like Grumpy Cat,

I remember reading about that.

I've never met Grumpy Cat,

But like at the same time,

Like I still felt that loss with that family with them.

I was reading those articles and I even posted on their Instagram,

I believe about it,

Saying I was sorry for their loss.

But there's like when we see that and when we see someone else going through loss,

It involves a sense of empathy in us because we know those pet lovers,

Pet lovers know that,

Know the pain of losing a pet and they can feel for that family.

I think you're absolutely right in that we put ourselves into other people's shoes.

But then also,

One of the things I love the most about pets is this blanket of innocence around them.

And I wonder if you can speak to this too,

Because with humans,

When they die,

It's almost like there's undelivered communication in the sense that,

Oh,

We weren't done.

We still need to forgive them for stuff.

We're still angry at them for something.

We're still,

Like we have things to say related to things we did or didn't do.

And with pets,

There's almost like this innocence thing of like,

They may bite us every once in a while,

But it's not something that they do without cause or without reason.

So there's,

I'm not entirely sure what I'm getting at,

But I think you kind of know what I mean.

There's a lot of baggage that has been going with it.

Like when you lose your pet,

You're not thinking about,

Oh,

You chewed up my speakers a while ago.

I'm still mad about that.

I'm still mad about you peeing on my bed.

No,

It puts things into perspective in a way that we're not mad about all this trivial stuff.

We're just sorrowful for our loss.

Yeah.

Do you think the grief is bigger when that happens?

If there's nothing to,

If there's a baggage free relationship,

Like the baggage of a pet,

Do you think grief becomes bigger then or is it just?

Yeah,

I do.

It's,

I'm not comparing it to,

But it's similar to the loss of a young child because it's at the same level of innocence that before they can do really anything to create this baggage,

To create this distance and independence,

They're absolutely dependent on you for everything.

And when you lose your pet,

You just lose that innocence that they had.

And that makes it more traumatic for a lot of people.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I actually appreciate this.

I know you said it's not a comparison,

But the similarity to the loss of a small child in terms of the temperament,

The innocence,

The lack of baggage,

There's almost this like sweetness that is present with the loss of a pet.

Yeah.

They're absolutely reliant on you for everything.

And when you lose them,

You can feel like you failed.

And there's a whole lot of guilt associated with that too,

Especially because sometimes we have to make that decision to put our animals down,

To release them from pain.

And we don't have to,

We can't do that with other humans or there's no other kind of loss where we have to choose when that loss is going to happen.

Or like we're the sole decider.

Because I know sometimes it's even with clients that I work with,

There's people who are medically responsible for their loved ones and they make the decision to take them off life support.

But still there's an independence there,

At least prior to being put on some kind of life support.

And so you know their wishes,

You know what they would want.

You would know if they want to stay or go,

At least in optimal circumstances.

But with animals,

It's like you are the God of their world.

And so to be the person who determines when they live and when they die,

Yeah,

There's a lot of guilt there.

Can you say more on where that guilt comes from and or how it shows up in people who are grieving pets?

What does that look like?

Well there's a bunch of different types of guilt,

But specifically for like euthanasia,

People have guilt over,

Oh,

I did this too soon or I waited too long to do it and they suffered needlessly.

And there's an incredible amount of guilt around that because too soon people feel like they've killed their pet.

They feel like it's like an act of murder in some cases.

But like too long they feel guilt that they just,

They were unable to make that decision because of unable to accept their loss or their grief coming in,

Coming into it.

And so they,

And so their animals suffered needlessly.

There's other kinds of guilt too.

For instance,

When say you were to run over your pet or an accident happened like that,

Something that you were actually at fault for.

People can carry that guilt with them for years,

For years and years.

And it's not something that you can really talk to other people about.

So where do you go?

Like when you have guilt over the death of an animal?

Like I know there are resources like yours in the world and you found SOLUS,

I think I wrote this down,

Association of Pet Loss and Bereavement.

But if people are feeling guilt over the loss of a pet,

Where should they start?

So I have,

I do video chat rooms,

So sort of like Zoom.

So any person anywhere can come on if they need support.

And I do groups every Sunday.

Every Sunday anybody can come on and just talk about and just get this kind of grief off their chest.

Because like when you're in that kind of group and there's smaller groups,

Probably eight people or so,

And just seeing other people who are going through this kind of thing really puts it into perspective for you that you're not alone going through this.

And it really helps a lot of people.

But there are other groups too,

Depending on where you are,

A lot of pet shelters and adoption centers will have pet loss support groups in person.

People generally meet once a month or so.

And there are,

You can search around for them,

But on the APLB.

Org there's an inventory of all the,

A lot of the support groups and resources that are available.

That's actually really helpful because I think a lot of people perceive pet loss as just another loss that gets suffered in silence.

And to know that there are groups out there that actually meet to talk about the loss of a pet,

Especially the guilt over loss of a pet,

Which can provoke some mind circling or heavy rumination,

Or even to the point of preventing you from living your life of like,

I can't trust myself anymore because I made a decision that killed my pet.

And that's a lot of weight to carry around that a lot of the world,

A lot of society does not acknowledge.

I want to shift gears again and speak on the societal perception that pets are the preparation for other major losses or parents,

Caregivers,

Adults in children's lives,

Getting pets with the intention of the death of the dog will teach kids how to cope with the death of grandma.

This notion that when we learn from pet loss,

We also learn about human loss too.

And I wonder if you have a perspective on that good,

Bad,

Neutral,

Whatever.

There's a lot of truth to that.

A lot of my clients are young adults who have their first pet.

You get your first pet as an adult in your twenties and it dies sometime in your thirties,

Maybe forties,

Early forties.

And for a lot of people,

That is the first time that they've ever experienced any kind of loss.

And in a way,

I wouldn't use those exact words,

But it does prepare you for how to deal with loss going forward,

As any loss does.

And when you're younger,

As a child and you're going through that loss of a pet,

It's up to your parents to teach you how to grieve.

We learn from watching our parents grieve.

And so if our parents are the kind of people who aren't going to show us how,

Like if they're going to just internalize and hold onto that grief and not cry in front of their children,

Well then their children also aren't going to grieve.

And so in that case,

It wouldn't be a teaching or preparation tool other than,

Hey,

You should not be sad or hey,

You should just go out and replace it,

That kind of thing.

Yeah.

And well,

And one of the very first videos that I ever did when I started doing grief work about three or four years ago was called Stop Telling Your Kids Not to Fall in Love.

And it was based on a conversation I had with a friend where they said,

Oh,

We weren't allowed to have pets growing up because my parents told us we would be sad when it died.

And I'm like,

That's a terrible reason not to get a pet because essentially what they're teaching their kids is we're going to prevent grief by preventing loss in the first place.

But then as my friend got older,

They were realizing some losses you can't prevent.

And so they were wholly unprepared to deal with grief.

And so to have that be an excuse of here's why we can't get a pet,

As opposed to a practical reason like I don't want to pick up poop is a practical reason why you wouldn't want to get a pet.

It was this excuse of I don't want you to fall in love with something that's going to die,

Which is such a warped way of seeing the world because I don't know,

In my mind,

I was like,

Oh my gosh,

You're teaching your kid to keep itself distant from everything.

So it never feels the pain of loss,

But then you never experience the joy of love either.

You kind of miss out on both ends of the spectrum.

You can't have one without the other.

And so there are a ton of lessons in the loss of a pet.

And of course,

It's not the point of getting a pet is to learn all these lessons about grief and loss.

But I think it's something that people should think about.

So do you think that when people are going to a shelter or an adoption center or a breeder or a pet store,

Wherever they're getting their pets from,

Should people with their kids or with their families or with their spouses or whoever they're getting these pets with and for,

Should they also have death on their mind?

No.

I don't think you should go into a new relationship thinking about how it's going to end because then you have to really enjoy that relationship.

This idea that grief as a training tool,

That we shouldn't experience grief.

I don't know.

Grief is a part of our life.

It's a part of living.

There's a good quote that I heard recently about that and I forget who said it,

But it's grief is love's receipt.

And to have grief is also to have had love in your life.

And to prevent grief is also to prevent love.

They go together.

Yeah.

And so to enter into something new,

Thinking about the end.

You know,

Maybe wise,

But if the end outweighs the beginning,

Maybe not the time,

Maybe not right now.

And I think this is an interesting test of how people enter into human relationships after loss too.

Like if you enter into new relationships thinking about when you're going to lose that person or when they're going to walk away,

It's like you're immediately entering in with anxiety,

Over-attachment and or even like a codependency kind of thing going on of like,

I'm already afraid of your death.

And that can result in either distancing of you're going to leave me one day,

So I'm not going to get close to you.

Or conversely,

Like an over-attachment,

Like a really stuckness,

You're going to come with me everywhere because you're going to die one day.

And those,

I mean,

I'm kind of butchering the different attachment styles that people learn in psychology.

But yeah,

I think you're correct.

I have some part of me wants to say,

Well,

Yeah,

We should be thinking about death when we go into adopt pets because I think people get them sometimes thinking that they're never going to have to deal with death and then they're unprepared when the sickness or terminal illness or death of a pet arrives.

But then conversely,

I absolutely agree with you.

Like why would we enter into something thinking of the inevitable demise,

You know,

That's coming at the end?

It kind of robs the beginning of its joy.

Yeah,

It's just focusing on the future instead of living in the present.

So you're too busy thinking about what's going to happen that you don't really enjoy what's happening.

Yeah,

And I think a neat way to deal with that is to focus on the losses that are happening right now,

Which is a weird reframing of thinking about grief in the future.

So if I go into a shelter and adopt a dog,

It's like,

Yeah,

I know you're going to die in the future,

But what am I losing today?

I'm losing a quiet household.

I'm losing loneliness.

I'm losing not having a routine because now I'm going to have to have a routine with a dog in the house.

And those aren't necessarily positive or negative losses,

But they're just losses that are happening as a result of a new commitment,

A new adventure.

And to know that grief and loss is coming,

Death is coming in the future,

But to acknowledge the smaller losses that are happening today alongside the joy might be,

The phrase that's coming to me right now is a better marriage of the two.

Yeah.

I never thought about it that way.

I liked the way you said that.

I just know the very first night I got,

When Gigi came home for the first time,

I was like,

Oh,

It's a lot louder in here.

Because I would get meowing at two in the morning and I was like,

Where's that coming from?

Did I have a window open and somebody's out in the parking lot,

But now he was hungry and wanted food at two in the morning.

And I was like,

Oh,

I have just lost my quiet house.

And now that's very much part of the routine.

And so that's something that I will lose when he dies because I will lose the loud house and go back to a quiet house.

They certainly add a lot of ambient noise to the household.

Yeah.

There's the jingling and the claws on the floor.

That's one of my favorite sounds in the whole world,

The tippy tap.

Mostly dog claws,

Cat claws don't do it too much,

But the tippy tapping is my favorite noise in the world.

Sometimes that people say most often that when they come home after a loss,

Their house is so quiet.

It's so empty.

That presence,

Even as small as it was,

Is gone and they know it.

Oh yeah.

We know where they are in the house.

And one of my favorite podcasters,

Gretchen Rubin,

Does the Happy In This project,

But the podcast is called Happier.

A few years ago,

She put a question out to her listeners of whether or not she and her family should get a dog and debated it for quite a while because they live in New York City and it's not convenient to have a dog,

But a lot of people do.

And she was like,

I know they're important for happiness and blah,

Blah,

Blah.

And ultimately they decided to get one.

And every now and then she'll come on the show and talk about writing more of her books.

And she's like just having another presence in the room to hear him snoring on my feet.

Or laying on the rug in the other corner is so comforting.

And I never expected that.

It's like a really lovely,

It's again,

Going back to what we were talking about,

That quiet companionship that we didn't know that we needed.

And I really appreciate that in Gigi too.

Even at night to reach up on,

He gets a pillow above my head and then I have the pillow that my head actually goes on.

And so to reach up there and to know that he's there at night is really sweet.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right now my dog's sitting right here at my feet and I can hear him breathing and I just feel that warmth.

And you know,

He's a big dog.

And so when he moves around,

I just know it.

Yeah.

And it's something that we're attuned to,

But we don't necessarily have to pay a lot of attention to.

It's like it doesn't cost energy to be present with a pet in the ways that it costs energy sometimes to be present with humans in the room.

And I know we've been drawing a lot of comparisons between humans and animals in the show,

But I think that one's a really significant one and you're absolutely right is that the silence of the house is almost deafening.

So as we're kind of drawing closer to the end,

I want to reach out specifically to people who have suffered a pet loss relatively recently and are coming home to the empty house.

I wonder if you have any practical tips or advice about dealing with the loss of the companionship,

The loss of the routine,

The loss of the presence that may be able to help or even maybe one or two things that you heard where you're like,

I didn't think of that,

But that actually really is helpful.

Yeah,

That's a very hard thing to go through.

And the best thing that you can do is just talk about it.

Find someone in your life that knows what this is like to go through and who's going to be able to support you and just listen to you and hold that space for you and just talk.

There's not a lot you can do about that empty household or the broken routines.

It's just something that we have to go through and grieve.

I'd like to tell people to journal about it,

To write down those stories.

People so many times are telling me that they're worried about forgetting all the little things.

Well,

Let's write down the little things.

And we don't have to physically write for those who don't like to do that.

We can record it on our phones now.

We can video ourselves just talking about it because in a few months or years down the line,

You can go back and you can revisit those tiny little memories.

And then you're instantly right back in that space with them again.

And it's just a way to remember,

To record and to honor them.

And for someone who's just going through this kind of loss,

You can also hold a ceremony for them.

The same way that we honor our dead humans,

We can have a funeral ceremony where you bring everyone together who knew that animal,

Who was touched by their presence.

And you just talk about them.

Just tell your stories,

Draw pictures.

If you have kids in the house,

You can have them draw and have them a part of that ceremony too.

I love both of those ideas because they're really practical and they're really connective.

It's like,

Yes,

Talk about it.

Find somebody who's lost a pet before or knows what you're going through.

And even if it's online,

Even if it's Kevin,

Your support group is immensely helpful for that.

Or people in person who are like,

Oh yeah,

When I lost my pig two years ago,

It tore me to pieces.

So to have that recognition of,

Yes,

This is real and it's hard.

And then also to ritualize it in some way.

And immediately I'm thinking,

This is where social media has actually been a help instead of a hindrance.

I forget sometimes that I have a story on my Instagram page or a highlight that's just called the best cat.

And it's little clips that I've taken of Gigi over the past,

I don't know,

Two,

Two,

Three years.

And so whenever I'm sad,

Whenever I'm traveling or sometime when I have to be away from the house,

I'll watch that.

And I'm like,

Oh my God,

He does play fetch.

Oh my God,

He does sleep on my head.

Oh my God,

He does hide under all the blankets.

And then when I come home,

I have to find him.

But it's one of these things where social media can really remind us and help us trigger memories of pets that we've lost or remember the idiosyncrasies or that trend now on TikTok where people take videos of their dogs at different growth stages.

And so it's like day one and then day six and then month 12 and whatever.

And the dog gets gradually bigger with time and it's really,

They're really fun and funny to watch.

Yeah.

And it's a time when social media can actually help us remember our loved ones instead of torturing us with replays of here's the life you're no longer living,

Which I think social media does quite a bit of in the aftermath of loss.

So maybe even using things like that to help too.

Reviews

The audio was really low but the content was great. I lost my boy 5/11/2024.