How do horses perceive death?

A study from Portugal analyzing the reactions of feral horses to the loss of herdmates has lessons about the emotions and intelligence of all horses.

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A sad event provided researchers in Portugal with a rare opportunity to observe how feral horses react to the death of a herd mate and to collect data that may advance understanding of emotions and intelligence in all horses.

Scientists from the University of Coimbra in Portugal and Kyoto University in Japan were doing routine fieldwork, observing a feral herd, when they noticed a 2-month-old foal whose hind legs had been severely injured in a presumed wolf attack.

“We started to work with this horse population in the north of Portugal in 2016,” says Renata Mendonça, PhD. “Every year in the breeding season, from April to July we conduct fieldwork. We are almost every day in the field following and observing horses’ behavior from morning to late afternoon. Additionally, this population is subjected to predation pressure from the Iberian wolf, and for the past two years, foal mortality has reached almost 100 percent and we believe it is mainly due to wolf predation. These two factors combined increased our chance to observe this event.”

The researchers watched the foal for nearly six hours, making notes on his behavior as well as that of his dam and other members of the herd in his vicinity. They noted the activity of the nearby horses—such as feeding moving, resting or social interactions—every five minutes and documented the approximate distance between all the observable horses and the injured foal every two minutes.

For the first several hours, the herd was walking, but the foal moved only when prompted by his dam. Eventually, the foal went down and was unable to stand. His dam stayed close by grazing and occasionally nuzzling the foal. About 15 minutes later, the herd began to move again, leaving the dam and foal behind. The stallion returned to the dam soon after and attempted to herd her away from the foal. After the seventh attempt, he was successful and the dam left, whinnying to the foal 10 total times during the separation. The foal responded only once.

A few minutes later, a second group of horses arrived in the area and remained within 20 yards of the foal for about 40 minutes. All the group members initially showed interest in the foal, but most eventually started feeding nearby. Two adult females, however, remained interested and licked and sniffed the foal for several minutes. The foal’s dam watched this interaction from a distance and whinnied 44 times, but the stallion prevented her from approaching. The foal responded only once, after the other adult mares had left.

The foal’s dam briefly returned to his side later in the day and clashed with bachelor stallions who showed an interest in her, but not the foal. Eventually, the dam moved away from the foal to join the herd, which was 200 meters away. The foal stood three minutes after she left but fell twice and made no further attempts to follow. The researchers estimate he died about an hour later.

Although conceding that it was difficult to watch these events unfold, Mendonça says researchers must try to avoid interfering with animals in the wild. “It is always hard for us to see our subjects of research get injured or die,” she says, “and our first instinct is to call for help or try to intervene. However, when we are dealing with natural causes, as in this case, we try as much as possible not to intervene. We have to think about the complex environmental and trophic interactions that are occurring and can benefit from such a loss. A carcass is a food resource for other animals, scavengers, which depend on them to survive and to feed their offspring (which were born in the same season), such as wolves, foxes, crows and wild boars.”

Mendonça says that the dam leaving her foal may seem heartbreaking, but it makes sense in evolutionary context. “Ensuring her own survival seems to be a priority for the mothers in the animal kingdom, in general, even if the mother-infant bond is the strongest bond established among individuals. While a mother can produce offspring every year (in the case of horses), developing, growing and reaching sexual maturity requires a lot of time and has a lot of costs, so, for the benefit of the species, it is more advantageous, and less costly, if mothers prioritized their survival over their offspring’s,” she says, adding, “The constant harassment by the two bachelor males could have hastened the abandonment of the foal. The situation might have been different if she had been alone with her foal.”

More difficult to understand, says Mendonça, was the attention the two unfamiliar adult mares gave the dying foal. “I was surprised by the reaction of the unrelated females toward the injured foal,” she says. “Usually adult mares and stallions behave agonistically toward foals from other groups. These agonistic interactions (e.g., chasing and bite threats) are observed when foals get lost from their band and approach other groups while seeking their own or when foals are lying down far away from their group and other groups approach. Showing affiliative behaviors, instead of agonistic as expected considering previous scenarios, could mean that the horses somehow perceived that the foal’s condition was unusual.”

As for the broader question of how horses perceive death, much more remains to be learned, but in the meantime it’s advisable to take equine emotions and reactions into account when managing domesticated horses.

“Some studies suggest that [after the death of a herdmate], horses show signs of anxiety, cessation of feeding and social withdrawal,” Mendonça says. “Therefore, it is important to consider horses’ needs when they are facing a situation of loss before asking them to complete or perform their daily tasks.”

Complete Article HERE!

Mourning Our Dogs

The death of a much-loved dog is sometimes followed by regrets and self-doubt.

When we lose a canine companion, self-critical thoughts and feelings may become a part of our grief. We may disproportionally focus on our perceived failures and imperfections rather than view our actions as those of someone doing her or his best to stand by a canine loved one during painful circumstances. This is known as “moral pain,” and fortunately, there are things we can do to relieve it.

By Scott Janssen

Will was distraught after his dog, Ray, died. Though Ray had been slowing down and sleeping more, Will had passed it off as normal, signs that his trusted buddy was simply getting older. By the time the vet diagnosed cancer, there was little that could be done.

Looking back, Will blamed himself for not getting Ray to the vet sooner—“He was counting on me and I let him down.”—and kicking himself for not being able to afford additional diagnostics, much less treatment. “I just didn’t have that kind of money and it’s tearing me up inside.”

He couldn’t shake memories of Ray’s death, or stop the self-critical thoughts that brought guilt and a sense that “I’ll never be able to forgive myself.”

Moral Pain

When we lose a canine companion, these kinds of thoughts and feelings may become a part of our grief. Though rooted in positive values such as loyalty, protectiveness and a commitment to our dog’s well-being, these values can also leave us in moral pain when we believe that we have failed to live up to them. According to Brandon Griffin, PhD, “Moral pain may be attributed to an event or series of events that a person views as a gross transgression of his or her moral beliefs and values, such as when we violate our own values by what we did or failed to do.”

In his book, The Loss of a Pet: A Guide to Coping with the Grieving Process When a Pet Dies, Wallace Sife, PhD, points out that caring for an animal companion involves “a complex set of responsibilities” in some ways “similar to the obligations of raising a child.” Given that we cannot always protect our dogs from suffering and may have to make decisions about when to end their lives, there may be times when we second-guess ourselves and wonder how well we have fulfilled these responsibilities.

In our grief, we may disproportionally focus on our perceived failures and imperfections rather than view our actions as those of someone doing her or his best to stand by a canine loved one during painful circumstances. Thus, when a dog dies, Sife observes, we may “need to consider the feelings of guilt and failed obligation that almost always crop up during intense bereavement for a pet.”

Often, moral pain abates as we process our grief. There are times, however, when it persists. When this happens, it may indicate deeper issues such as depression, anxiety or what counseling professionals call moral injury. According to the Moral Injury Project at Syracuse University: “Moral injury is the damage done to one’s conscience or moral compass when [one] perpetrates, witnesses or fails to prevent acts that transgress one’s own moral beliefs, values, or ethical codes of conduct.”

People struggling with moral injury may feel intractable shame, guilt, anger and/or remorse. They may experience unwanted and intrusive memories of painful events or harbor a sense of being morally defective. Over time, moral injury can lead to social isolation and a diminished sense of self-worth.

When it comes to our canine friends, there are many potential sources of moral pain. When a dog is sick or injured, we cannot talk with them about what is going on. We can’t get their input and involve them in decision-making. The pressure is on us to make painful but necessary decisions, which may involve euthanasia or treatments that temporarily cause suffering. Under such pressurized circumstances, it’s easy to agonize about what to do and to criticize whatever choices we make.

Veterinary social worker Jeannine Moga points out that dogs can be very stoical and mask underlying physical issues until they are advanced. “Diseases can progress in their bodies before they start to show overt signs of illness. Add to that the significant expense of veterinary diagnosis and treatment, and people can be faced with animal losses complicated by unknown causation, questions of ‘Why didn’t I see it?’ and worries that they’ve somehow failed to take adequate care of their companions.”

The decision for euthanasia, even when done to alleviate suffering on the recommendation of a veterinary professional, can be a source of acute moral distress. In their book, The Pet Loss Companion: Healing Advice from Family Therapists Who Lead Pet Loss Groups, Ken Dolen-Del Vecchio, LCSW, MFT, and Nancy Saxon-Lopez, LCSW, reflect on painful questions that arose after euthanizing a beloved cat.

Had we waited too long and prolonged his suffering unnecessarily? Had we put enough thought into the decision to end his life? Should we have taken him home and thought it over more carefully? Should we have sought another opinion? … Should we really have stayed with him when the vet put him to sleep? Did Reggie think that we killed him? Should we instead have said our goodbyes and left the room until he was gone?

According to Maryjean Tucci, MSEd, MDiv, lead bereavement coordinator for a hospice program and coauthor of A Peaceful Path: A Supportive Guide Through Pet Loss, decisions about euthanasia can raise other moral concerns. “When a person’s religious beliefs are such that they believe they are killing their pet by ending their life in an unnatural way, moral distress may play a role in their grief.”

“There are times,” Tucci continues, “when individuals may not understand the medical implications of what is happening to their pet and therefore are unable to make a clear decision on the process of euthanasia. If a pet partner experiences their pet struggling when their pet is being euthanized, this may cause an interruption of their grief experience by thinking they may have made the wrong decision. This is also true if the pet rallies and is perky just before the injection.”

There may be moral anguish if a grieving person looks back and concludes that they failed to understand the extent of an animal’s suffering and/or put off making a decision about euthanasia because it was too painful. In such instances, humans may blame themselves for allowing a pet to suffer. “When this occurs,” Tucci says, “there can be extreme feelings of guilt and low self-worth.”

Circumstances specific to an individual dog’s death may also cause moral pain—for example, the dog who escapes through an open door and is hit by an automobile, or the dog euthanized against an owner’s wishes due to aggressive behavior shown to a neighbor.

 I worked with a patient who had no one to adopt her aging and infirm Beagle, Rosie. Days before we met, she made the heartbreaking decision to end Rosie’s life in order to save her from being abandoned and feeling unwanted. Though this client was terminally ill, much of my counseling with her focused on the moral pain of this decision despite the loving intention behind it.

Sometimes moral pain has nothing to do with the specifics of the death. For example, I worked with a woman who was providing care for her dying mother, which left her little time for her 14-year-old Basset Hound. “I was so stressed by Mom’s care that I just wound up ignoring him. He started having occasional [urinary] accidents, and I found myself getting impatient and yelling at him. I even had occasional thoughts that it would be easier if he were gone.”

When her dog needed to be euthanized, she felt at peace with the decision but agonized over having lost her temper in moments of frustration. “I feel horrible. I worry he might have thought I didn’t love him anymore or that I wanted him to die. I wish I could have that time back.”

Ritual and Remembrance

When grieving for a beloved dog, it’s important to have opportunities to share one’s grief and, if desired, engage in rituals that honor and help make sense of the loss. Unfortunately, some who have lost pets find that such opportunities for rituals and support are rare, even nonexistent.

When it comes to our canine companions, says Tucci, “Families, friends and society do not always recognize this loss as important or legitimate. Statements from others such as: ‘This wasn’t a child,’ or ‘The impact isn’t as bad as losing a sibling or a parent,’ minimize the loss for the person experiencing grief.”

She likens this to what Kenneth Doka, PhD, calls “disenfranchised grief.” In his book, Disenfranchised Grief: Recognizing Hidden Sorrow, Doka describes situations in which the significance of a loss goes unrecognized, unacknowledged or is dismissed by others—situations for which there is no recognized social or communal context in which to express one’s grief and receive support.

Feeling isolated in one’s grief can intensify the suffering of moral pain by presenting barriers to processing one’s thoughts and feelings as well as to receiving reassurances from a caring other. Attempting to grieve in isolation can complicate such pain and even cause some to wonder if there is something wrong with them. Sometimes, this isolation is experienced as abandonment, even betrayal, by those from whom a grieving person expected compassion.

In “Grief and Moral Injury,” a blog post about his grief following the death of his German Shepherd, psychologist David Fisher, PhD, describes feeling abandoned by those he counted on for support and understanding. Having no one to “witness” his “inconsolable grief,” he writes, significantly intensified his pain.

Over time, moral pain typically lessens as we grieve and gain perspective. For those who are struggling with this kind of pain, the suggestions that follow may be helpful.

• Give yourself a break. Moral pain comes from caring about doing the right thing and wanting the best for your dog. If you did not care, you would not be feeling this kind of pain. Sometimes, there are things we don’t recognize or cannot control. We may need to make decisions under duress. Intense emotions and conflicting responsibilities can make these decisions very difficult, and whatever we decide, we may criticize ourselves. Acknowledge the difficulty of this kind of pressure and let yourself be human.

• Find someone with whom you can talk. If you don’t have someone, think of somebody in your life, even if they are no longer alive, from whom you have felt love and compassion. Imagine they are in the room with you and tell them what you are thinking and feeling. Imagine their response.

• Get creative. Some people find it helpful to write in a journal. Some write poetry or letters to their dogs, telling them what is in their hearts. Others express their feelings and honor connections with deceased dogs through other forms of creative expression, including music, art, storytelling, play, humor or dancing.

• Share the story. As we tell the story of our dog’s life, even if it’s just to ourselves, we see the longer journey we had with our pet, not just the last weeks, days or hours. When we place end-of-life events in the larger context of a friendship that may have unfolded over years, we remember good times and moments of connection and warmth that may have been minimized or forgotten in the midst of our pain.

• If desired, create formal or informal rituals to honor your dog’s life and affirm the enduring meaning of the relationship. Tucci says these kinds of rituals “legitimize the grief experience and reflect the importance of the pet in this person’s life. This also becomes part of the letting go and moving forward process necessary in the healing of grief.”

• Be mindful. It’s easy to get caught up in negative thoughts and beliefs. Being mindful means paying attention to what we are thinking, sensing and feeling in the present moment without avoiding, judging or identifying with negative states. In his book, The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion: Freeing Yourself from Destructive Thoughts and Feelings, psychologist Christopher Germer, PhD, observes that “it seems that the more intense our emotional pain is, the more we suffer by obsessing, blaming ourselves or feeling defective.” He recommends bringing gentle attention to our inner experience and responding with self-compassion, “taking care of ourselves just as we’d treat someone we love dearly.”

• Beware of cognitive distortions. Part of mindfulness is being aware of our thoughts and what we are telling ourselves. When doing this, it’s important to be on the lookout for what psychologists call cognitive distortions. These are ways our minds convince us of things that aren’t true and unconsciously reinforce painful beliefs that keep us feeling bad. There are dozens of cognitive distortions, including personalizing, black-and-white thinking and negative mental filtering.

For example, emotional reasoning refers to a belief that if you feel something, it must be true. If you worry that your dog was angry at you or felt unprotected because you discovered too late that she was sick, you assume it’s true even though it’s not. The key to not getting hooked by cognitive distortions is to notice when they are occurring and gently “talk back” to them. “Oh, I’m falling into the trap of emotional reasoning. I feel sad about what happened, but Maggie was good at hiding when she was in pain. She knew how much I loved her.”

• Don’t confuse regret, guilt and shame. This is easy to do. In simple terms, regret is a sense of sadness that things turned out the way they did. It can convey a wish that we had understood a situation better so that we could have done things differently. Guilt refers to a belief that we knowingly did something that violated our code of ethics. Shame takes guilt to a whole new level by replacing the belief “I did something that was bad” with “I’m a bad person because of what I did.”

It’s easy to confuse these experiences. If you’re feeling intense regret, it’s easy to start blaming yourself. Before you know it, regret can turn into guilt and guilt can lead to shame. If you’re feeling shame, ask yourself, “Could this really be guilt?” If you’re feeling guilt, ask yourself, “How much of what I’m feeling is really regret?”

• Tend to your body and spirit. Moral pain doesn’t just affect your heart and mind. It’s important to take care of your body by getting exercise, rest, and practicing good nutrition and sleep habits. If you have a faith tradition or spiritual/contemplative practice, these can be sources of strength, comfort and perspective.

At times, moral pain can be intensified by destructive messages we’ve received and internalized at some point in our lives, often as children. Messages like, “I’m not good enough,” “I can’t do anything right,” “I have to be perfect,” “It’s my fault when something goes wrong” or “It’s my job to make sure everyone is safe/happy.” Readers for whom this registers are warmly encouraged to find a safe context, possibly with a caring professional, to explore and gain perspective on these messages.

Don’t be afraid to ask for professional help or to join a support group. It’s okay to reach out to a psychotherapist, clergy person or professional bereavement counselor. Many counselors understand this kind of pain and how deep the grief can be for a deceased animal companion.

Complete Article HERE!

Are Animals Capable of Grief?

When animals lose a member of their species, they often show behaviors that look like human grief. Does this mean they are mourning the dead?

By Leslie Nemo

In August of 2018, millions of people watched a video of an Orca in the Pacific Northwest and felt their hearts break. The new mother named Tahlequah had lost her calf, but persisted in pushing the corpse around for 17 days. It was almost impossible not to feel, deep down, that the mom was grieving.

Scientists are tempted to draw those conclusions, too. But even if researchers feel that an animal’s behaviors mean it is mourning, that’s not how their job works. “We need documented evidence that this is indeed an analogue to grief,” says Elizabeth Lonsdorf, a primatologist at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, that proof is hard to get. “In terms of emotion, animal cognition is tricky,” she says. “It would be a lot nicer if you could ask them what they’re feeling.”

Since that option is off the table, scientists resort to observations, analysis and testing hypotheses to figure out why animals interact with their dead, and whether those interactions count as grief. And it’s going to take a lot more than just observations in the wild to get an answer. “The short answer is this is one of these great scientific problems that will take people working from all areas to sort out,” Lonsdorf says.

Rare Sightings

To begin with, it’s important to understand how rarely researchers see animals interact with the dead. Even if observations make headlines, those are single incidents. Scientists need a large dataset of interactions to reach any conclusions about why animals do what they do.

For many animals with documented behaviors toward deceased individuals, the field notebooks don’t have many entries. When Lonsdorf and her colleagues analyzed incidents of chimpanzee mothers carrying infant corpses for a study published in July, there were 33 total cases to work with — and that was after 60 years of research in the same chimp communities in Tanzania. Data is scarce for cetaceans, too. Between 1970 and 2016, there were only 78 recorded incidents of different dolphins and whales showing interest in a dead individual. 

Observing these interactions in the wild is somewhat serendipitous. Unlike other animal behaviors, it’s not possible for researchers to head out into the field intent on observing interactions with the dead. “You can’t go out and wait for animals to die,” Lonsdorf says.

There’s also a chance that the incidents that do end up in studies are only the ones that intrigue us humans the most. As behavioral ecologist Shifra Goldenberg and her colleagues point out in their 2019 analysis of elephant behaviors, “There is probably a bias within this body of anecdotes that favors the recording of interesting or more obvious behaviors.” Even when compiling all recorded instances, finding a pattern of behavior can be hard if not all research groups know or document the exact same details every time. These details might include how long the interactions were, who showed up, or the exact nature of the relationships between the living and deceased.

Using Context Clues

Researchers can still take a close look at the ways in which different animals interact with the dead to try and suss out their motivations. For example, some scientists have proposed that maybe a given species nudges, touches or carries a corpse because they don’t yet know their child or friend is, well, dead. When it comes to cetaceans, like dolphins and whales, many biologists think that within a few days of interaction, the living individual would have figured it out. After all, their motionless companion starts to reek of decay. But there’s still no concrete evidence that the aquatic mammals are aware that the individual won’t be revived. “Though research into this realm started over fifty years ago,” wrote zoologist Giovanni Bearzi and his colleagues in their 2018 analysis of these cases, “there has been little direct research on this topic and the matter is still open to investigation and debate.”

With chimpanzees, it’s a different story. In their study, Lonsdorf and her team analyzed the same possibility — that mothers didn’t realize their child had died — but found evidence to suggest otherwise. The moms sometimes dragged the infants, something they’d never do while their child was alive. In some cases, they cannibalized their young, a pretty clear indicator that they knew something had changed. Other theories about why these mothers interacted with their deceased kids didn’t fit the evidence, either. One idea was that mothers are so overwhelmed with the postpartum hormones influencing their maternal instincts that they can’t bring themselves to let go of their child. If that was the case, then the research team would have seen mothers who lost older kids let go faster, as they’d be well past the wave of hormonal attachment. But there wasn’t any relationship between infant age and how long the mother carried the body around.

When their analysis was done, Lonsdorf and her colleagues were left with the impression that chimp mothers know their child has died, but still can’t let go — even grooming their baby as if it were still alive. But that doesn’t mean the team concluded that these primates were feeling grief. “Our conclusion was, ‘Okay, at least for chimps, the simple solutions don’t work.’ We need to think more creatively.”

Understanding Grief

To better understand why chimps — or elephants or cetaceans or any number of animals — interact with their dead, more nuanced research needs to happen. When it comes to chimpanzees, maybe experiments with captive individuals could show how they react to, say, photos of deceased friends. After a death, primatologists could look for changes that mirror some common human grief behaviors, like withdrawing from others or losing interest in food, Lonsdorf says. For cetaceans, Bearzi and his colleagues think that it might be worth trying to record the sounds the marine mammals make after a death, as many species are famous for intricate echolocations.

A better understanding of animal behavior could use some introspection, too. Grief is a vague, variant concept and process for humans, and even death itself comes with a learning curve. Lonsdorf, for example, remembers watching Star Wars as a kid and believing the actor who played Obi-Wan Kenobi actually died on screen. “I was shocked when he showed up in another movie,” she says. Death and grief can still seem strange and unfamiliar to us. Naturally, a more nuanced understanding of those concepts in people might help us recognize them in other creatures, too.

Complete Article HERE!

5 Ways To Make Your Dog’s Last Days Their Best Days – DogTime

By Maggie Clancy

Grieving over the loss of a pet is traumatic. But sometimes, it can be even harder when we know that our dogs don’t have much time left. Anticipatory grief is real, and it’s a completely normal emotion to feel.

Dogs are very intuitive, and your grief may be contagious to your ailing pet. Perhaps instead of spending your remaining time with your canine companion in a state of grieving and sadness, you can make the rest of your dog’s life as comfortable and wonderful as possible.

Here are some tips on how to make your dog’s last days the best that they possibly can be.

Create A Bucket List

Dog parent Riina Cooke made the decision to make a bucket list for her terminally ill Boxer, and it helped her with the grieving process tremendously. From a cheeseburger to a pedicure, she filled her dog’s remaining time with fun and happiness.

What makes your dog ecstatic? Is it taking luxurious car rides? Hanging out with some of their favorite friends?

Create a list of what your dog loves to do best, and cross off as many as you can as long as your dog’s health and safety permits.

There’s nothing better than seeing your pup at their happiest, and there’s no better way to remember them than in that state, as well.

Go All Out With The Food

If your dog’s vet agrees that certain people foods are okay for your dog to ingest, give your pup the tastiest, most decadent food possible.

When my childhood dog, a nine-year-old Cocker Spaniel, was suffering from a myriad of ailments, we gave her steamed rice and steak every night for dinner. Some nights, her dinner was fancier than what the humans of the household were eating.

Ask your vet which foods are appropriate, and start making Fido gourmet meals.

Indulge In All Forms Of Pampering

Go buck wild with any and all forms of pampering, especially anything that will relax and soothe your dog.

Have a dog masseuse come to your house. Go to a dog bakery and get them the most outrageous dog cake you can find.

You can even go a little less traditional route and do things like take your dog to a pet communicator or psychic to hear what they’re really feeling. You may not be a believer, but it will probably be a fun experience and a fond memory.

Get Educated On Pain Management

This may not be the most fun part of the list, but it’s crucial. If your dog is suffering, it may not always be apparent that he or she is in pain. Educate yourself on the signs of pain in dogs.

If your dog hits a point of extreme pain or a point where you cannot take care of your pup yourself, it may be time to consider dog hospice care. Much like human hospice care, dog hospice care is from the comfort of your own home.

You can work with your vet on things like administering medications and deciding if and when it’s the right time for euthanasia.

Allow Your Friends And Family To Help You

In order for you to be in the right state of mind for when your dog is nearing the end of their life, you should have a solid support group. Talk to friends who know your dog well, family, and a veterinarian you can trust.

Many animal hospitals also offer support groups. By having this ring of support for yourself, you will be able to effectively and lovingly support your pooch through this painful time.

Letting go of a dog is never easy, but you can make it as positive of an experience as possible for both you and your dog.

If you’ve gone through the grieving process of a dog passing away, what did you do to make your dog’s last days their best? Do any fond memories bring you comfort? Let us know in the comments below!

Complete Article HERE!

Emotionally preparing for the death of a pet

The reality of having a pet is that we will outlive most of them.

By Kellie Scott

The grief when an animal dies can feel like losing a friend or family member to many of us, explains Annie Cantwell-Bartl, a psychologist specialising in grief.

“For some people it can be absolutely profound.”

Veterinarian Anne Fawcett, who has a special interest in end-of-life decision-making, says often the anticipatory grief can be worse than the experience of when the animal dies.

When you have some warning that your pet is nearing the end of their life — for example, when your pet is old or terminally ill — there are some things you can do to emotionally prepare for their death that can make the pain more manageable.

Our love for pets and disenfranchised grief

My mum Joanne Scott is a big animal lover and has given a home to many rescues over the years.

She’s had to say goodbye to dozens of pets including horses, dogs, cats, cows, guinea pigs and chickens — most of which were my family too.

A loss that stands out the most for her is horse Razie, who she had for 22 years.

“I was just so close to him. He was like my right arm.

“He understood me, I understood him. I just loved him dearly and he was a pony that was very loving.”

She had to judge the right time to euthanase Razie when his cancer was causing him too much pain.

“You feel like you’ve lost a friend.”

Dr Cantwell-Bartl says often the grief is not recognised as valid by the person themselves or others around them which can make it harder to work through. This is known as disenfranchised grief.

“There’s not those same social supports and rituals like when a person dies.

“People can feel embarrassed and guilty that they are so distraught.”

Dr Fawcett says she’s lucky to be surrounded by people who “get” the human-animal bond.

“As a companion animal veterinarian, I see people who are very bonded to their animals.

“There are often mutual tales of rescue — a stray cat who kept a person going when their spouse died of cancer; a dog that someone rescued from a pound who gave them a reason to get out of bed during a period of mental illness.”

She says while there is still room to improve, society is getting better at understanding pet grief. For example, she has clients whose bosses have granted them bereavement leave.

Ways to emotionally prepare for their death

Spend time together

Making the most of the time you have left with your pet can start the grieving process in a way you have control over, says Dr Cantwell-Bartl.

“You can spend time with them, stroke them, delight with them, and feel the sadness.”

Find a vet you are comfortable with and talk to them

Finding a vet you feel is understanding and supportive is important. There are vets who specialise in palliative care and can offer options like euthanasing at home.

Dr Fawcett says to talk openly about your concerns and the pet’s quality of life.

If you are considering euthanasia, make plans with them.

“Where will it happen? Who would you like to be present? What are the options regarding the animal’s remains; for example, burial, private cremation? If cremated, what sort of vessel do you want to keep the remains in? What are the costs you need to expect?” are some questions to consider, Dr Fawcett says.

If you do proceed with euthanasia, know it is normal to question if you did the right thing.

“That doesn’t mean it was the wrong thing,” Dr Fawcett says.

Joanne says she still struggles with some of her decisions.

“One horse I put down still haunts me. Even though everyone says you did the right thing, I still think sometimes, ‘Did I do all I possibly could?'”

Talk to people who understand

Seek out people who get what you are going through, Dr Cantwell-Bartl says.

“Find those people who can put their arms around you and walk by your side.

If you are struggling to find the support you need, consider professional counselling.

Make them comfortable and do your best

Joanne says knowing you’re doing your best by your pet can help you can have some closure.

“Making them as comfortable as possible in the time they have left shows that you love them.

“Then you know you’ve done all you could.”

Dr Fawcett agrees and says doing our best by our animals includes not prolonging suffering.

“That can mean letting them go when it is in their interests.”

Know that it’s OK to grieve

Dr Cantwell-Bartl says feeling like you should “just get on with things” can shut down your grief.

Give yourself permission to feel the hard emotions and go through the processes of grieving.

Words of comfort

Knowing she has given an animal the best life possible is what helps Joanne prepare to say goodbye.

“That is a wonderful thing because there are too many animals that don’t have a good life.

“I always look back and think about some of the kittens we only had for nine months, and a fantastic nine months is better than a shitty five years.”

Dr Fawcett says it’s important to be kind to yourself, no matter how you are feeling.

“For people who experience profound anticipatory grief, the death of an animal can be a relief.

“These owners can feel guilty for not grieving as much as they feel they should. I think the key is to be kind to yourself.”

She says the grief of losing her own animals has left a pain in her chest, but she has some peace knowing she gave them a good life.

“As one of my clients said to me, grief is the tax you pay for love — but it’s a tax worth paying.”

Complete Article HERE!

Do Animals Truly Grieve When Other Animals Die?

By Denyse O’Leary
Anthropologist Barbara J. King, author of How Animals Grieve (2014), has written a thought-provoking essay on the difficulties that COVID-19 has created for people coping with the death of a loved one because they are not allowed conventional grieving methods. Although it is titled “Animal Grief Shows We Aren’t Meant to Die Alone,” King’s essay turns out to be appropriately skeptical of ambitious claims about animal grief. She writes,

There is a popular perception that some animals, particularly elephants and crows, participate in their own kinds of funerals. But there’s little solid evidence—at least, so far—for this kind of community ritual. Elephants may occasionally cover a dead companion’s body with leaves or branches, but the meaning and intent of this action remains unclear. A 2012 paper includes the words “scrub-jay funerals” in the title, but the “funerals” were actually noisy gatherings of birds around scrub-jay skins and feathers laid out by researchers in an experiment. The birds’ response to what they saw indicates acute social assessment of their surroundings, to be sure, but it’s a stretch to consider that behavior a death ritual.

Barbara J. King, “Animal Grief Shows We Aren’t Meant to Die Alone” at Sapiens (April 22, 2020)

That said, she cites a number of instances of animals showing apparent grief at the death of a companion:

At the Farm Sanctuary in New York state, after years of close companionship, a duck named Harper withdrew socially and refused to form new bonds after the death of his duck friend Kohl in 2010.

Barbara J. King, “Animal Grief Shows We Aren’t Meant to Die Alone” at Sapiens (April 22, 2020)

But wait; it’s hard for a human to be sure what’s happening here. Harper may simply have lost the ability to form close bonds with other ducks, irrespective of what, if anything, he understands about Kohl’s absence. Again, while much is made of primates grieving over dead companions,

Monkeys and apes don’t act exactly as humans do around dead bodies. Mixed in with compassionate caretaking may be aggressive or even sexual behaviors: They might strike or mount a corpse. Yet human grief, too, can manifest in unusual ways. At a solemn memorial service, a mourner may suddenly laugh in involuntary response to tension.

Barbara J. King, “Animal Grief Shows We Aren’t Meant to Die Alone” at Sapiens (April 22, 2020)

Well, we are beginning to get a clue now. A human being may behave oddly at a funeral but that is because of an awareness of what death means. The monkey is troubled by death but does the monkey understand what death is? Anthropologists like King resist making that distinction:

For much of the 20th century, it was common practice for ethologists to resist acknowledging the profound emotions expressed by these animals. Anthropologists and zoologists who broke with tradition to describe animal grief—and other emotions as well, including joy—found themselves accused of anthropomorphism, the projecting of human capacities onto other species. The tide began to turn, however, as ever-more research in the field and in captivity showed unmistakable evidence of animals feeling deeply what happens to them. More than ever before, researchers now recognize that grief and love don’t belong only to us humans.

Barbara J. King, “Animal Grief Shows We Aren’t Meant to Die Alone” at Sapiens (April 22, 2020)

No, love and grief don’t belong only to us humans. But there is something that does. Consider the story of Hachikō, the Akita dog (right, in 1934) whose human friend, a professor named Hidesaburō Ueno, died of a cerebral hemorrhage while on a train trip in Japan in 1925 and never returned to the station from which Hachikō had seen him go:

Hachiko moved in with a former gardener of the Ueno family. But throughout the rest of his ten-year-long life, he kept going to the Shibuya Train Station every morning and afternoon precisely when the train was due to enter the station. He sat there for hours, patiently waiting in vain for the return of his beloved owner which sadly never came back.

Maria Wulff Hauglann, “The Amazing And True Story Of Hachiko The Dog” at Nerd Nomads

Hachikō has inspired much devotion ever since, along with several films and monuments.

The touching part of the story is not simply Hachikō’s devotion but the fact that the dog could not know that his beloved Hidesaburō had died.

Death, after all, is an abstraction. We can be told that someone has died and, without seeing the person’s body, we know what that means. We also know that all human beings (and all animals) will die sometime. But that is an abstraction too. For humans, mourning is a philosophical as well as an emotional affair. As a result, death raises questions about the meaning of life which Harper, the monkeys, and Hachiko could never ask.

It is these thoughts and questions, not only grief, that have always underlain funerals:

What’s undeniable is that our early Homo sapiens ancestors began to create increasingly elaborate burial rituals. At around 24,000 years ago in what is today Sunghir, Russia, for example, a boy of about 12 years of Animals ranging from elephants to cows, ducks to dogs, may grieve.age and a girl of about 9 were buried together. The research paper describing the remains says they were “head to head, covered by red ocher, and ornamented with extraordinarily rich grave goods.”

Barbara J. King, “Animal Grief Shows We Aren’t Meant to Die Alone” at Sapiens (April 22, 2020)

But then those human beings knew what it meant in the abstract to say that the children had died. The grave goods they provided suggest that the mourners thought the children might need something somewhere. But they surely understand that somewhere to be another dimension of reality. That’s part of what the animal doesn’t have.

So do animals grieve? Yes indeed. Do they grieve the same way humans do? No, because, for better or worse, they can’t. There is no turning back from the gift of reason.

Complete Article HERE!

4 Lessons You’ll Learn If You’re Grieving The Loss Of A Pet

The pain is unimaginable.

By Catie Kovelman

I recently lost my childhood horse, Amanda. To say that I feel devastated would be an understatement.

I’ve spent more than a decade loving and learning from this horse, and it seems impossible to imagine life without her. But no matter how much I miss Amanda, I can’t stop life from moving forward, and I can’t bring her back.

I can still learn from her, though, so here are four things that losing Amanda taught me about grieving a pet.

1. There’s no right or wrong way to grieve your pet.

First and foremost, please remember that there is no correct way to mourn your pet. Grief affects everyone differently, so we all react differently to losing our favorite animals.

Mourning also doesn’t come with a time limit. I’ve known friends who seemed to be fine the day after they lost their pets, but I still feel sad about losing my horse weeks later.

No matter how long I feel down, my feelings are valid. If you’re mourning a pet, there’s no shame in taking as much time as you need to heal.

2. Don’t feel ashamed that you’re grieving an animal.

Since Amanda passed away, I’ve felt a bit awkward telling people that I’m grieving a horse, not a person.

Sometimes, I feel like people judge my inability to stop crying over an animal, even though studies show that we feel the loss of our animals more intensely than we feel the loss of human friends or family.

However, Amanda was so much more than a horse to me; she was a friend. My grief is valid, so I shouldn’t feel embarrassed. And if you’re grieving a pet, yours is, too.

3. Find creative ways to remember your pet.

Right now, I take comfort in finding ways to memorialize Amanda and keep her memory close.

For example, I wear a locket with her photo in it, so that she’s always with me. I’ve even donated to multiple charities in Amanda’s name to honor her and spread positivity in the wake of her death.

If you’re grieving a pet, you can also create a photo memorial in your home or use an old feeding bowl as a planter to cultivate new life.

4. Talking through your grief can help you heal.

Amanda was an extremely special horse with an amazing story, and I love to tell the world about her. I genuinely want people to know how incredible she was, and I feel like it’s my responsibility to keep her legacy alive.

I often fear that people will forget about her, but I refuse to let that happen. Some people are hesitant to talk about Amanda with me, because they don’t want to upset me, but I love reminiscing on positive memories of my horse.

Since her death, I’ve laughed as I share happy Amanda stories and reminisce on her quirks. It’s also felt therapeutic to talk through the immense pain I’ve felt since losing my horse, because I can’t bottle up my emotions for long.

Although losing a pet is the hardest part of owning one, I take solace in knowing that my horse lived a truly incredible life and I’m grateful to have gotten the chance to love her.

If you’re grieving the loss of a pet, remember that no one can tell you the “right” way to grieve. It’s your journey, so mourn your pet in whatever ways feel right for you.

Complete Article HERE!