By Bonny King-Taylor, the doggy lama, pet coach
We all know that losing a pet can be one of the hardest things any of us will have to deal with. Thankfully, awareness has increased regarding the impact of such losses. Some corporations are even offering bereavement leave similar to when human family members die.
But despite a huge number of books about “The Rainbow Bridge”, which can be comforting to some, there really hasn’t been a practical guide for healthfully grieving a pet’s death until now.
I’d like to sincerely recommend Going Home, by Jon Katz. It is a compassionate, thoughtful guidebook to help us navigate a pet’s passing.
Grace brought this book to me when I was deeply in grief over the death of my beloved Bartleby. It turned my life around.
Katz offers some wonderful stories about the surprising changes animals have made in his life. The ways in which he has become a better human for having known them. You can probably relate to that, right?
What I find even more enriching though, is his compassionate truth talk about what it takes to honestly grieve. Openly mourning a pet can be awkward, if not impossible, around people who don’t understand what you are going through.
Katz follows my own philosophy about not expecting others to understand…because really, they can’t…and he offers practical advice for dealing with end-of-life decisions about medical care and what it means to know when ‘it is time.’
Honestly, the chapters on managing guilt before and after your pet passes, and mourning around other people, are worth the cost of 100 copies of this book!
Bartleby’s memorial was beautiful and healing for so many people
His tips on physically saying goodbye helped me to organize an event to honor Bartleby that ended up being one of the most healing experiences of my entire life.
In the chapter titled, Helping Children, Katz cautions that, while it is natural to patronize children and to want to protect them from pain, it is unwise to underestimate what they can handle. Even worse, telling stories about how your pet has ‘Gone to…fill-in-the-euphemism’ can later be experienced as trust-wrecking lies.
He suggests taking into account a child’s natural interests or abilities and incorporating them into the grieving process.
Olivia, who is an integral part of Saving Grace Petcare boarding…and happens to be Grace’s eldest daughter…is something of an artist. She and I have drawn and colored together many times. When Bartleby died, Grace asked her to draw me a picture in memory of him. She did, and in the truest, clearest honesty of a 7-year-old, she added something that Grace later said she was concerned about. “Bartleby had a nosebleed. I will miss him.”
This is one piece of art I will never throw away.
I have tears in my eyes as I write this because her blunt honesty was such a gift to me. Bartleby had a tumor that caused the kind of nosebleeds that made my house look like a scene from CSI. While others might skirt around the more painful parts of a friend’s loss, Olivia told the straight up truth.
Kids can be amazing like that.
At the end of Going Home, Katz offers “A Letter from a Dog.” You’ve probably seen a few such poems on the internet, all of which strive to be comforting. As an expert in dog behavior and in what actually goes on in their minds, I can say that this one is the closest and most empathic to what your dog might say to you. It is beautiful and so helpful.
No one wants to think about loss, but when we don’t prepare for the inevitabilities of life, we can miss valuable opportunities to be the best humans we can be. Jon Katz understands that, and reading his book can help you to understand it as well.
