Why it hurts so bad when we lose an animal friend

By Valerie Brideau QPBP, CCE

So often in our lives we have losses that we do not acknowledge or perhaps are not even aware have occurred.

In this day of twitter, facebook, chatrooms, emails, webinars and all the day to day 'busyness' that we attend to in our
professional and personal lives, we have learned to 'suck up' a great deal of our stress and motor on.  Unfortunately,
at some point in time, these stresses do come back to haunt us.

In all that mix, that hectic lifestyle, we open our hearts to our animal friends.  They ground us and bring us back to the
reality of day to day existence.  No matter what happened on the other side of that door that we close when we enter
our homes, apartments, trailers, or cardboard box on the street, they hold us in their spell of unconditional love until we
decide or need to engage in that 'busyness' again.

The loss that we suffer when our animal companions die is not only the physical loss of their presence but the emotional
buffer that they provide from all that outside stresses that we endure.  We may love our jobs, love our friends and love our
extra curricular activities but there comes a time in every life when we need that gap, that pause, those sacred moments
when we can just be ourselves, warts and all. That is what is lost when our animal friends die.

But there is help and there is hope.

You will grieve, it's hard to believe but when you are ready, you can love again.