Nobody Warned You That Losing These Other Types of Pets Would Feel This Devastating

It's not just that people don't understand. It's that the grief support hasn’t been built yet. Until now.

When you lose a dog or a cat, the people around you usually at least try.

They might say the wrong thing, like “You can get another one” or “It was just a dog/just a cat,” and those comments are particularly awful.

But for the most part, they at least understand that you’re grieving something real.

On the other hand, if you lose a bird, a rabbit, a fish, a guinea pig, a snake, a gecko, a horse, a chinchilla, or any of the other number of pets out there, you probably get something different.

Something like “Er, I didn’t realize you could get attached to a fish.” Or “Are you kidding? It was literally a reptile/fuzzball/work animal.”

Or you just get silence… that polite, blank, not-really-sure-what-to-say kind of silence that lands like having someone tell you your grief doesn’t count.

Today I want to spend some time on that because I’ve heard from enough people in this situation to know how much that particular type of aloneness can hurt…

Not to mention how much any pet, regardless of how small or how different, can bring real grief.

Basic Animal Love Math

The depth of grief is not determined by the size of the animal, the length of the lifespan, or what species they were.

Grief is determined by the depth of the bond.

And bonds happen in all directions:

• The parrot who said your name every morning when you walked in.

• The rabbit who would come and press their head against your hand when you were sad (I don’t know how they knew, but they knew).

• The fish that you watched every single evening, whose presence in the tank became part of the rhythm of your home, and whose absence left something you didn’t expect.

These relationships are real. The love is real.

And so the loss is real. That math is pretty simple.

The Assumption That Gets Made

There’s an idea floating around (unspoken, mostly) that grief should be proportional to something measurable, like the size of the animal. Or the number of years the animal was in your life. Whether they could be trained, whether they cuddled, whether they were warm-blooded.

But consider this: That’s not how attachment works in the human brain.

The brain doesn’t measure the animal’s characteristics and calculate how sad you’re allowed to be.

The brain forms a bond, and when that bond breaks, it hurts. Consider

…the hamster who sat on your shoulder every evening while you watched television.

…the turtle you drove forty-five minutes in traffic to get to the right vet when they looked sick.

…the parrot you held wrapped in a blanket on their last night with you.

These are real relationships, and the fact that most people don’t understand them is their limitation, not yours.

I mean, hey — I don’t understand every pet relationship myself. At least, not those I haven’t witnessed.

But what I have experienced, even from afar, has changed my view on this. Like watching my young son with his little orange corn snake. If you’d asked me prior to him getting that snake if one could get attached to a snake, I’d have said it was more of a hobby than a pet.

And then I saw my son’s heart break when said corn snake escaped. (Yes, in our house, and yes, he’s still on the run.)

Same thing when my kids got ferrets. Ferrets, to me, were previously just rodents. But to my kids, they were companions, playmates, jokesters, sources of comfort… the list goes on.

All to say, you don’t know till you’ve been a witness to one of those bonds.

The Part That Makes This Especially Hard

Beyond the loss of a non-dog or cat, there’s this extra layer of challenge: any pet grief support that exists mostly wasn’t built for you.

Most articles about pet loss talk about dogs. Most communities are organized around dogs and cats.

When you go looking for someone who understands what it’s like to lose a bearded dragon,

or a horse you’d had since you were twelve,

or the birds that filled your house with sound for fifteen years —

you often find yourself in spaces where the grief being described doesn’t quite fit what you’re feeling.

That isolation on top of the loss is something I think about a lot.

I started this newsletter and this community because I believe grief is grief, and every bond deserves to be honored. That includes your special bond with your unique pet, whatever it was, however small they looked to the rest of the world.

And while I write about dogs and cats a lot, I’m committed to being all-animal-inclusive — even for those animals where a bond seems unlikely to those who’ve never seen such a thing.

The more you share about your own pet experiences, the more I can share those stories with the world.

So would you do me a favor, please, and tell me about your pet? Just comment below and tell me their name, what kind of pet you had, and one thing you miss. I’m listening.