How to Make the Most of Pet Bereavement Leave (If You're Lucky Enough To Have It)

A growing number of employers now offer paid leave for pet loss. Here's how to make the best use of those days to support your healing. Plus, tips on bringing bereavement leave to your workplace.

Here’s some wonderful news for pet lovers: A growing number of companies now offer bereavement leave for pet loss.

It’s not a huge number, but the list is definitely longer than it used to be (because it used to be zero). Kempton Hotels, Mars Pet Care, Brewdog, and others are just a few companies that have formalized their own pet bereavement policies in recent years. Some cities and countries are even beginning to explore it legislatively.

The fact that it’s happening at all is fantastic. It means someone in those organizations looked at the deep grief their employees were carrying around following the loss of a pet and recognized that it deserved to be acknowledged and honored.

And it’s a major step in legitimizing pet loss grief so we don’t have to go hiding our feelings anymore.

So if you happen to work for one of these amazing companies, or any company that offers pet loss validation of some sort, then please take the leave. Make the most of it, actually use it, and try not to spend it the way that most people might spend it, which would include:

1. cycling through social media,

2. lying in bed,

3. feeling vaguely guilty about not doing anything,

4. and going back to work worried that you wasted your time.

Bereavement Leave Helps More Than You Might Think

What those days are actually for seems like it would be obvious. But, given the disenfranchised view of pet loss, not everybody uses pet bereavement leave to actually mourn their pets.

This holds true even for those who are deeply saddened or even devastated by the loss of their pets.

Part of it is because there’s a lot of guilt in actually making time to grieve a pet.

Too often, someone who takes pet bereavement leave sees it as a way to get a few days off work to maybe get something done around the house.

But this is not supposed to be a period of “productive healing,” nor is it supposed to be a period of productivity and knocking things off your to-do list. It’s also not a time for forced emotional processing (which, let’s face it, is really unappealing to most people, even those in deep grief).

Really, pet bereavement leave is buffer time.

It’s time to pull yourself out of your routine and allow your nervous system the space to begin absorbing what happened without the additional requirement of showing up for colleagues and bosses and clients and then performing normalcy for 8 hours.

In fact, grief researchers who study bereavement in the workplace have noted something counterintuitive: people who take the designated time to grieve, even if it’s just 1 or 2 days away from the normal day-to-day, show a faster return to baseline functioning than those who push straight through.

This isn’t because you can resolve your grief in a day or three, or whatever your bereavement leave amounts to. It’s because just allowing yourself the permission to process instead of suppress what’s going on is, in itself, a form of healing.

Truly, what you do with that time you have off matters. Not every single minute of it, but the bulk of it.

How To Make The Most Of Those Days Off

Don’t think of any of the following as rules. These are just things that people tend to look back on and feel really glad they did.

1. Slow mornings. Maybe your bereavement leave starts with one slow morning that does not have an alarm, where there is no list of things to accomplish and nowhere to be.
   Grief can benefit from uninterrupted time, meaning space where you’re not rushing toward doing anything. We have almost none of that in our daily lives, and then when we go through something traumatic, we give our grief none of that space.
   So even just one morning of real space and quietude can make a profound difference.

2. Move your body with intention. The next thing you might try is doing something physical in a significant place.
   Maybe that’s taking a walk somewhere that your pet loved to go, or spending time in the garden, or sitting by a sunny window.
   Anything that involves your body moving through an area or space that holds a memory of yours. This kind of movement, with intention and purpose, can benefit your nervous system in ways lying in bed can’t.

3. Start a meaningful project. Consider beginning something that is dedicated to your pet.
   Maybe it means you gather the first few photos for a memory book, or you write the first line of a letter to your pet, or you put a vase on a dresser where you plan to have a small memorial.
   Really, you’re just looking for one small action that says, “I’m going to intentionally begin something that honors the memory of this pet.” Note: I didn’t say finish. This is just about beginning.

4. Connect with a feeling human. Spend time with someone who truly gets it, not someone who wants to go play tennis with you because you got the day off.
   Maybe reach out to someone who knew your pet or who takes the loss very seriously. Someone who can sit with you and just be, without pressuring you to talk about moving on or any other aspect of life outside of what you had with your pet.

If Your Employer Doesn’t Offer Pet Bereavement Leave (Yet)

The truth is, most don’t. If that’s your situation, you are in the significant majority.

Here’s something worth looking into: more companies have added, or are in the process of adding, pet bereavement leave in recent years because employees started the conversation and asked for it.

This proves the cultural narrative is shifting and YOU can be part of it. If you have a human resources department or something similar, go talk to them. Express the desire. Ask your boss about it. Share it with the decision-makers.

If you’re a manager or an employer reading this, please know you have more power here than you might realize. Offering even informal flexibility around pet loss, like a delayed start to the day, a shorter workday, or some kind of quiet acknowledgment that this is a significant event in your employee’s life, costs you almost nothing.

But it means more than you can probably imagine to the person receiving it.

Thank You, World, For Moving Forward

In the meantime, if you don’t have pet bereavement leave and you’ve lost a pet, take advantage of whatever kind of space to grieve you can arrange. That might just be half a day on the weekend or maybe a work-from-home morning where the bar is just a little bit lower than it would be if you have to show up to the office. Try to use that time with intention.

Even a very small amount of space, when used deliberately, is worth more than a week of pushing through as if nothing significant happened.

For anyone reading this, please consider that bereavement leave is formal permission to grieve. But if you don’t have that formal permission, allow yourself that space regardless, even if your employer hasn’t caught on yet.

Happily, the world is getting better at this, albeit very slowly. The fact that I’m even able to write about this… the fact that “pet bereavement leave” is a phrase that now exists… is beautiful evidence.

And the more people who ask for it, make use of it, talk about the benefits,
and respect others who take it, the faster the rest of the world catches up.