Sadness after the death of a pet: Support is available

Northern Tasmanian Annetta Mallon has been an end-of-life doula for humans since 2017, but has helped people through grief and loss for more than three decades.

A doula is a trained professional who provides guidance and support for people going through a significant experience, such as their own or another's death.

Dr Mallon extends her services to pet owners whose animals, including dogs, cats, rabbits, guinea pigs and horses, are facing death.

She said she was 12 when she witnessed human death for the first time, at the bedside vigil of a dying relative.

It was a fraught experience filled with hysteria, unsaid words, regret and pain.

"It has always stayed with me, it was awful," Dr Mallon said.

"Even at that age I was thinking 'there has got to be a better way'."

The experience led Dr Mallon to study psychotherapy and work with deep-seated human grief, and she has used these professional skills in her end-of-life doula work.

Dr Mallon said sometimes the grief felt for a pet surpassed the grief felt for a child.

"Research shows that we grieve a pet longer and more deeply than we do a person," Dr Mallon said.

"We can tell our pets anything, love is unconditional and their companionship is absolute. It is our relationships with people that are more complex."

Dr Mallon said pets can offer friendships that fulfil the emotional and psychological needs of humans, and when they die, the resulting loneliness and loss can be great.

She said this grief was then compounded by a lack of social acknowledgement of the pain, making it a longer and harder process.

"It is a disenfranchised grief," she said.

"It is the grief where we don't want to tell or show the world because we don't want to be belittled, demeaned, or have our grief diminished."

Dr Mallon further explained that while respect and empathy shown to people after the death of a pet was increasing, a full understanding of the associated grief was still lacking.

"It is getting better but pet owners are told too frequently, 'oh it was just a bloody cat' or 'just get another dog'. It is these unthinking comments that completely invalidate a person's feelings."

When people enlist Dr Mallon as a pet doula, her support and services are as different as the humans and their pets.

She said a pet doula can help owners make end-of-life decisions when a medical situation or terminal illness arises, or have conversations with children and families about death.

They can prepare an owner for the end-of-life process, help to plan body transportation of the body, and suggest and organise cremation and memorial options.

"If someone hasn't had a lot of death around them, or they don't have people around them, then having a pet doula makes a lot of sense," Dr Mallon said.

"I'm not only experienced with pets, but I'm really experienced with grief, and I can provide information about what people may experience, and help to explain to them that their feelings are perfectly normal."

Dr Mallon said having a doula helped pet owners to openly speak about a pet's death.

She added that it could also prepare them for other emotions triggered by the event, such as unresolved grief from the deaths of childhood pets, or unrelated trauma which has been suppressed and then released.

"It can help people to re-frame human death, help to bring them clarity and perspective, and give a better understanding to things that may have happened earlier in life," Dr Mallon said.

"I see a lot of echoes and ripples, and that is normal."

She said the decisions around euthanasia also became easier.

"People gain a much healthier grief process, they don't generally spend as much time second guessing themselves about the decision, and they aren't sidelining their real feelings with guilt," Dr Mallon said.

"They can exhale and relax and say 'I know I did everything that I could in the right way'."