Love Never Leaves
Pet Loss Therapy
Pet loss therapy can support you through one of the most painful and often unrecognized forms of grief. The loss of a beloved animal companion is a deeply meaningful experience and can be as painful as losing a family member. These bonds are often more significant than they are given credit for and can shape how grief is experienced, as I discuss in this article.
I work with pet loss drawing from both personal understanding and over a decade of research and writing on the human–animal bond, recognizing how these relationships become part of daily routines, identity, and the sense of home, and how their loss can leave a space that is difficult to name.
Pet loss is not limited to death. It can also include experiences that change or disrupt the bond, including:
- Anticipatory grief after a serious diagnosis
- Making end-of-life decisions
- Sudden or traumatic loss
- Rehoming a pet
- Losing a pet after separation or divorce
- A missing pet
- Major health or behavioural changes that alter the bond
- Significant life transitions affecting your relationship with your pet
These experiences can bring intense emotions such as sadness, guilt, anger, emptiness, anxiety, or a profound sense of silence in everyday life.
When to seek support
- Your grief feels overwhelming or longer than you expected
- Others minimize or don’t understand your pain
- You are struggling with guilt or difficult decisions
- Your daily routine feels disrupted
- The bond you had with your pet was central to your emotional life
- You feel alone in your grieving process
My approach
- honours the depth of the human-animal bond
- helps process grief at your own pace
- supports you through complex emotions such as guilt and ambivalence
- integrates the story of your pet into your life in a meaningful way
- helps you gently rebuild daily life while staying connected to this bond
Bringing Together Research and Clinical Experience
Through my research and clinical work, I have come to understand a few key things about emotional bonds and grief
- Emotional bonds are more central to people’s lives than we often acknowledge.
- These relationships shape daily life, offering structure, meaning, and connection.
- Grief reflects the depth of that bond, it is not only about loss, but about what that relationship meant.
- The bond does not simply disappear, it continues in different ways and often needs to be understood, not erased.
- What we grieve reflects what mattered. And what mattered rarely disappears.
Selected Writing and Interviews
Drawing on my clinical experience and research, I have also shared these perspectives through articles and interviews on the human–animal bond and pet loss.
Below are a few selected pieces. These include articles on Psychology Today and The Conversation, as well as interviews on CBC.
- A piece exploring how the loss of a companion animal can bring forward important attachment dynamics, highlighting its clinical relevance.
- A piece discussing why pet loss is often overlooked and why it deserves greater recognition within mental health conversations.
- An interview about the impact of pets on mental health.
Additional pieces can be found in the Media and Media Articles sections.