Weeks after Luigi, Maria Sandomenico's chihuahua, died in August, she shared a long post in a Facebook group for residents of the Park Slope neighborhood, in the New York borough of Brooklyn, in which she told how she was having a hard time
assimilating. the death of his dog
.
In an interview last month, Sandomenico said that in the seven years she lived with Luigi, she had become his "north star," trotting beside him in custom-made clothes she had bought for him.
A pink and black pom-pom hat was his signature, although he was also known for wearing cashmere.
Sandomenico says that when Luigi died, he turned to Facebook because
he didn't want to burden his friends with his feelings
and because he wanted to connect with other people who had suffered the death of a pet.
He was surprised by the number of people who responded to his message saying they were also grieving the loss of a pet and didn't know where to find support.
Shortly after posting it to the Facebook group, Sandomenico, 53, who runs a dog training and walking business, met up with several of the group members at a local bar.
He had invited them to an
informal grieving session
.
"In about 20 minutes, everyone collapsed in front of everyone," he explains.
"Everyone had very different experiences, but we all had the same feeling that no one understood us."
Many feel judged by their loved ones for mourning the death of their dogs or cats.
Photo: Shutterstock illustration.
He described the meeting as cathartic.
It made me feel like I wasn't crazy," said Sandomenico, who has a silver necklace with a photo of Luigi. He has since organized another meeting and plans to organize them regularly.
Grieving pet owners
Celeste Jones, an interior designer in Palm Beach, Florida, also struggled to find ways to cope with the death of her 12-year-old Maltese dog, ZsaZsa, in 2020. "The more I searched and the more I searched," she said, "the more desperate I became. ".
Jones, 45, ended up paying for a virtual program that she said gave her the
tools she needed to process her emotions
.
Since then, she began hosting free online sessions for others dealing with the loss of their pet.
These sessions and Sandomenico's informal meetings are among the growing resources available to
grieving pet owners
, who must compare options when considering any service to avoid scams.
Some providers say there has been an increase in demand for their support services since the start of the pandemic, as many people acquired new pets and others developed stronger bonds with them due to restrictions requiring them to spend more time at home. .
About 62% of Americans have a pet, according to a 2023 Pew Research Center study, and an ASPCA survey found that nearly 1 in 5 American households had adopted a dog or cat between March 2020 and May 2020. 2021. But dogs and cats, the most popular pets in the United States, have a much shorter half-life than humans, as do many other animals kept as pets.
Most die before their owners
, many of whom are left with complex feelings of sadness that they may be ill-prepared to handle on their own, said Colleen Rolland, 67, president of the Pet Loss and Bereavement Association.
Some claim that demand for support and containment services has increased since the start of the pandemic.
Photo: Shutterstock illustration.
"People sometimes think they're going crazy because of how they feel and how bad they feel," Rolland says.
His organization, founded by a psychologist in Brooklyn in 1997, offers a free online chat service that attracted more users in 2023 than in 2022, he said.
Jill Goodfriend, a nurse and social worker in the San Francisco Bay Area who serves grieving pet owners, says she's also noticed increased interest lately in her services, which include free consultations.
Goodfriend, 79, who began counseling pet owners in 2005, attributed this uptick to the pandemic, which she said made people "more aware of pain and more willing to express it."
At Schwarzman Animal Medical Center, which has been operating in Manhattan, New York since 1910, a free pet loss support group has existed since 1983.
Susan Cohen, 79, a veterinary social worker who came up with the idea for the group, says she started with about five people attending each in-person session.
By the time she stopped working at the center in 2011, that number had doubled.
The demand for this type of meetings led the center to expand its offering.
Photo: Shutterstock illustration.
The demand for this type of meeting led the center to expand its offering: there are now
several grief groups that meet by video call
several times a month.
One is for people whose animals died in the last three months, while another serves owners who are still grieving the deaths of pets in the last year.
Judith Harbour, 40, a veterinary social worker at the centre, who runs the bereavement groups, recently created a third center for owners of dogs with serious health problems.
Each group has 20 participants from all over the country, and some have a waiting list.
According to Harbour, attendees come from very diverse backgrounds and range in age from 18 to 85 years old.
Pets that cry are not just dogs and cats
: turtles, cockatoos, parrots, lizards, horses and rabbits also participated in the sessions.
Harbour, whose work also includes daily counseling to individual clients and the centre's veterinarians, says many group attendees said they felt unable to fully express their sadness over the death of a pet to those close to them.
Some felt judged
for mourning the death of their pets, while others felt rejected by loved ones who have told them to get another pet and move on.
According to her, the pain of the death of a pet
is often not recognized by the
person's community or by society as a whole.
"When you go through something like that, you really feel invisible and you're a little bit alone," she said.
Victoria Villarreal attended Schwarzman Animal Medical Center's grief group sessions for a year after the death of her 13-year-old gray tabby cat, Einstein, in 2022. Villarreal, 55, a nurse in Seattle, named the cat his intelligence and described him as a
constant companion
at home and on trips, including one to New York, where he said he charmed the housekeepers at his pet-friendly hotel.
She said her grief over Einstein's death was no different from the sadness she felt when her father and husband died.
The 2023 Pew Research Center study showed that about half of pet owners
consider pets as much a part of their family
as they do humans.
"They are loved more than sometimes seems possible." Photo: Shutterstock illustration.
"I don't think I would have been able to get through that first year without AMC," Villarreal said, using an abbreviation for the medical center.
"Your pain is validated. You don't have to explain why you feel sad. All you have to do is show up."
Hamilton's Funeral Home in Des Moines, Iowa, operates a free virtual grief group for pet owners ages 18 and older.
Like the Schwarzman Animal Medical Center group, it draws people from all over the United States, said Buffy Peters, who oversees grief support services at the funeral home.
"We know
they bring a lot of light and love
to our lives," Peters said of pets.
"Yes, you can get angry with them, because they made a mess or whatever. But
you also love them more than sometimes seems possible
."
© The New York Times
Translation: Patricia Sar