Signed off sick for pet grief

[MellowYellow552]

I'm a pet sitter. One of my furry clients was PTS last week, the day after I concluded my assignment. I'd looked after her for a few years and she had health issues but I noticed something wasn't right with her. Since then the family have been in deep pain. One of them has been signed off work because of reaction and the little boy has begun acting differently, whilst the mum is holding it all together. I lost my cat a few weeks ago and understand completely. People don't take this seriously enough ("it's just a bloody animal" kind of responses).

I'm going to start pet grief counselling training which I had thought of after losing my last cat but this has pushed me to it.

@RedHotWings

Thank you and to you too :)

I don't post joke threads.

@Phillipa12
So sorry for your loss.
I've loved and lost pets, and today when the vet suggesied my 14 year old cat should be PTS I was surprised by just how hard this hit me.

anyone of those feelings of loss can't even begin to compare to what I felt whilst my son was in a 12hr surgery and I had to contemplate the risk of not getting him back.

Grief is individual, but I cannot begin to get my head around a comparison between a pet and a child.

What I do think about some of the grief people experience with losing a pet is perhaps more a loss of what that animal gave them...love, comfort, routine...and less about the actual individual pet that is lost.

My cats haves lots of character...but a world away from my 18month old discovering language and the world. Also I'm pretty sure however friendly my cat is...if he got scaled up to lion size he would kill and eat me without a second thought .

Surely it's not about which grief is worse, human or animal death. It's about whether or not you are so upset that you really cannot work properly.
If you are grief stricken and crying, and unable to function normally, it doesn't matter whether it's a beloved cat, or dog, or horse or goldfish, time is needed to recover.

Animals cannot replace human relationships.
I’m sorry you didn’t have a great upbringing I really am but it’s insulting to suggest the grief for an animal is equivalent to a person.

I lost my horse, aged 19 who I have had since he was just a few months old (when he was weaned from his mum) in a shock, traumatic experience just a few weeks ago. It happened in the early hours of the morning and I had the next day off work.
I needed to deal with the practicalities and had not slept. I was in shock and was and still am totally devastated.
I am really struggling and getting through each day in a haze. It's a raw, physical pain and if I think about it or have to talk about it I just can't hold it together.
I couldn't have longer off work but I probably should have done.... I know I'm really not in a good place right now and I think it's because I have just bottled everything up and carried on. I just can't stop now - I'm almost scared to.

I think this is so true. One of my good friends actively dislikes cats, and is generally not an animal/pet person. When our cat was pts I expected her to think I was being daft, but she simply said, “grief is grief, and I am so sad that you are so sad” - that really meant a lot.

I am sorry about your horse. 19 years is a long time to know someone, no matter if it’s a human or an animal. It hurts. Of course it hurts.

Fortunately I was off ill with covid when my dog died - I sat crying for days. Work only let me take 1 day off when my mum died so I'm guessing they wouldn't have been receptive to any time off for my dog!

You missed the point entirely. You were on about 'oh you never lost a parent then'. I want to say to you that grieving a parent who actually loved you and cared for you and didn't give you a lifetime of issues must be so much easier compared with grieving a parent you never had. Never knowing a mother's love. But I'm not going to.

I know your view comes from a point of not understanding something that goes against human nature and who can blame someone if they have never experienced it.

My parents are alive. I grieved my living parents. I am without family. Many people are. Nobody can replace the parents I never had. Ever. I have to rebuild my life. I only have my cat who is my everything. You can judge all you want and convince yourself of how right you are.

It gets better, I promise. It's been 5 years since mine was found in the field and it's not that raw grief any more
I miss her like crazy and weirdly I can't speak about her or I well up but I can look at photos and videos

I have lost a parent.

Losing my cat, who was my soulmate, was far, far more traumatic and the grief went on for much longer.

Grief is individual.

I know someone who wept buckets when his golden retriever died aged 12. His dad died later that year and he really wasn't bothered. His dad was a controlling nasty person and he didn't love him, so it's understandable that the dog meant more to him than his dad.

*I don't know why it's hard to comprehend that the loss of a pet is far worse than losing a person/family to some people. With how nasty, harsh and judgy people are being on this thread it's really no surprise is it?

I lost my last dog 2 years ago and it was probably the most traumatic experience of my life and I don't really care if you think that's pathetic.*

I don't think you're pathetic. I do think it's offensive to compare losing an animal to losing a person. My best friend is grieving the loss of her 10 year old child, he died seven months ago and she is just returning to work and struggling to get up every morning and keep putting one foot in front of the other. That's traumatic and in no way comparable to an animal dying.

When my cat died it knocked me for six. She’d been in my life longer than my poor dad, and my mum had only died 18 months before.

As I say when everyone plays the grief game (my loss is bigger than yours) nobody’s grief or circumstances trumps how you’re feeling. Nobody should judge, and those who do need to take a good hard look at themselves.

@PotatoBreadForTheWin ah we are now judging what's traumatic and what isn't. Aren't you a delight.

Honestly people are weird. Some posters say how difficult the death of their pet was for them and someone comes along and gets offended and has to say that someone else lost a child. Like it's some kind of ranking of levels of grief.

Not everyone has lost a child. Not everyone even has kids. Many will never lose a child, so will never know what it's like.

It doesn't lessen how they feel about their pet. Nobody has walked in another person's shoes. People will never know what someone else's life feels like to them.

It's ridiculous

Someone might have a parent who walked out on them at a year old and people would still say they should grieve their death more than a pet they've spent 20 years with

Families and grief are complicated and you can't tell someone their parent/relative matters more than their pet to them

It is not ridiculous. While all grief is individual and should be respected, many people on this thread are basically saying that losing a pet for them represents a level of trauma, due to the importance of the animal in their lives, that corresponds to the level of trauma that another person might have losing a child, due to the fact that the importance of the animal and child for those individual people are broadly equivalent.

That is diminishing the utter horror and terror of losing a child. Therefore, it is necessary to say that however important the animal is, it just can never be the same. There is something qualitatively different about losing a child that can never be experienced in losing a pet, regardless of the importance of the pet to the person involved.

Yes - but why would I compare my grief to losing a child? I haven't
I can't have children
So I wouldn't say "I'm so upset about my horse but obviously it's nothing compared to a child" because it's irrelevant to me

Someone's child dying doesn't make my grief any less, I wouldn't say to them I know how you feel because I don't and no, it isn't the same

But in the context of was losing my mum or my horse worse, for ME it was my horse

What you are missing though is that it is framed by the relationship with the child.

For example, one might think that a man who fathered a child by a one night stand and never met the child might actually be more upset by the death of his dog of 15 years than the death of his child who would, in that scenario, be quite remote to him.

@RedHotWings I don't think anyone here has compared losing a pet to losing a child. Nobody has claimed that losing a child is the same as losing a pet.

A couple of people who have lost children have said they have felt insulted when people have compared it in the real life.

But people here have jumped onto those who have very much grieved a pet saying 'its nothing compared to loosing a parent or a person'.

A parent and a person also aren't the same to some but are to others.

I dont know why someone would come onto a thread about grieving pets and point out that some people lose children? I think they are hurting very much but their anger is a bit misplaced here.

Someone always has it worse.

I think a day or two of compassionate leave for a pet is ok. After that if more time is needed it should be signed off sick / annual leave.

I know I will find it difficult when my cat dies. I live alone, she is my constant companion. I work for a caring company, they know my cat from me talking about her/zoom appearances, I have little doubt they would give compassionate leave.

I don't think there is any value in comparing the grief to that of a parent / child dying and getting offended.

I certainly mourned far less the passing of my grandparents than any of my pets.

I don't think there is any direct comparison of levels of grief. I have no doubt that the loss of a child would be the hardest loss of all but that isn't really the point of this thread.

With regard to the loss of a parent, it is a sad fact of life that not all kids grow up feeling loved or nurtured or wanted and thus they may not maintain a close adult relationship with parents. My mother has always been emotionally absent from me so it is difficult for me to ever relate to her as a parent. You cannot mourn a mother you never really had in the first place.

My dad, however, was my main carer growing up but he had Alzheimer's for many years before his death so I had, in effect, already lost him. By the time he died he was no longer the same person I'd spent my childhood with. So yes, I mourned him, of course I did, but I didn't miss his physical presence in the same way I missed my cat and my dog, so for those losses, I felt more grief. It doesn't make me a weirdo or a nasty person to feel this. They both died young and I think that was a factor also - my father's death was not unexpected, he was 85 and very frail, but my cat died from cancer at 8, my dog a year later aged just 7 from a vaccine reaction. Both those deaths were very traumatic for me because I have a lot of health problems and my pets are my world.

So it's all about context. Some pet losses can be far, far harder than human losses and it isn't a competition about whose grief is worse.

The death of a child is the most traumatic, life-altering event any of us will ever go through, and whether you have children or not I'm sure we can all agree on that. Losing a pet is incredibly sad and can affect us deeply, but it's the natural order - we get pets knowing that we will (in the main) outlive them. We love them and give them the best lives we can, but we will say goodbye to them one day. It's not a competition to say that.