Grief after Companion Animal Bereavement

Abstract

Companion animal grief is disenfranchised: when companion or service animals die, most owners experience considerable grief, but most owners also feel strange or stigmatised because they do. Outdated assumptions about human-animal relations could be a cause of this paradox, and the aim of the article is to summarise relevant research in the field and derive suggestions for how to support grieving companion animal owners in Denmark. We first describe grief over companion animals in the context of research on Companion Animal Benefits, the Human-Animal Bond and Attachment Theory. Companion animals serve several functions for their humans; some of these arise when relating to the animal as a unique being, and this makes the animal irreplaceable and grievable in the same way as other objects of attachment. The grief itself seems largely similar to grief after human bereavement, but the disenfranchisement reduces access to social support.