Living With Your Role In Causing Your Pet’s Accidental Death
When something you have done causes your pet’s accidental death, your emotions can overtake you. The “Blame Game” becomes your focus and can turn inward in an unhealthy way. This stress can be particularly painful to deal with and can take more of a toll than just the death of your beloved pet..
It helps to have healthy strategies for coping during such a difficult time and below are a few ideas to help you:
- Take care of yourself
- Eat healthy, well-balanced meals
- Exercise on a regular basis
- Try and get plenty of sleep
- Talk to others. Share your problems and how you are feeling and coping with a parent, friend, counselor, doctor, or pastor.
- Avoid drugs and alcohol. These may seem to help with the stress, but in the long run they create additional problems and increase the stress you are already feeling.
- Journal. Express your thoughts and feelings or even write an apology to your beloved pet.
- Take action. Think of an action that you could promote that might help another family prevent the act that contributed to your pet’s death. (i.e., encourage people to get a pool alarm that alerts when a pet falls into a pool)
Our grief response
Elizabeth Babcock, one of the speakers who has provided families with information and comfort during Pet Memorial Sunday and in our AfterCare Series, prepared an article about grief from her notes from those presentations. Our society does a terrible job communicating about and preparing us for grief and it is her mission to help families validate their feelings of loss and bewilderment that often accompany the loss of a pet.
Because our pets are such an integral part of our daily life, the grief experienced upon the loss of your pet may even be more intense than grief occurring during the loss of a human family member. I invite you to read her article at Grief: What All Mourners Need to Know.
If you or someone you know would like to begin the healing process of how to cope with such a loss, please email info@ccpc.ws for more information.