"It was just a dog": pet loss and the grief nobody counts
When a person dies, a machine switches on around you. People bring food. Work gives you leave without asking questions. There is a funeral, a notice, a card, a set of things everyone knows to say.
When a pet dies, almost none of that happens. You are back at work on Monday. Someone asks how your weekend was. And at some point in the first fortnight, somebody who means well says one of these:
"At least it wasn't a person." "Are you going to get another one?" "You knew this was coming, though." "It was just a dog."
Grief researchers have a name for this. Disenfranchised grief — a term coined by grief researcher Kenneth Doka in the 1980s — is grief for a loss that a person's community doesn't fully recognise as a real loss. The grief is normal. The lack of social permission around it is the problem.
Pet loss is one of the clearest examples there is.
Why it makes the loss harder, not softer
The instinct behind "it was just a dog" is usually kind — people are trying to shrink the loss so it hurts less. It does the opposite, for three reasons.
You end up managing other people's comfort. You learn quickly which colleagues will be weird about it, so you stop mentioning it. Grief that has to be hidden takes longer and costs more.
You start auditing yourself. "Am I overreacting?" is the single most common question families ask our partner clinics in the weeks afterwards. That self-doubt is not caused by the grief. It is caused by the audience.
The support never gets offered. Nobody brings a meal to someone whose cat died. So the practical scaffolding that carries people through a human death simply isn't there, at exactly the point it would help.
Why the loss is genuinely large
You don't need to argue the case with anyone, but it helps to have it straight in your own head.
A dog or cat is usually a daily relationship, not a weekly or annual one. Most people see their pet more hours per week than they see any other living thing, including their own family. The relationship runs on physical routine — feeding, walking, contact, the same seven moments of the day repeated for a decade or more.
It is also a relationship with no conflict history and no unfinished argument. Whatever else was going on in your life, that was the uncomplicated part.
And for some people, the pet was the structure. Anyone living alone, working from home, recently bereaved, unwell, or recently retired often finds the pet was the reason the day had a shape at all. When that goes, it takes the shape with it.
None of this makes pet loss "the same as" losing a person. It doesn't need to be the same to be big.
Bereavement leave in New Zealand, plainly
This comes up constantly, so here is where the law actually sits.
The Holidays Act 2003 gives employees three days of bereavement leave for the death of an immediate family member — spouse or partner, parent, child, sibling, grandparent, grandchild, or partner's parent. Pets are not on that list.
The Act also provides one day of bereavement leave for other deaths where the employer accepts that the employee has suffered a bereavement. Whether a pet qualifies is at your employer's discretion — the Act doesn't rule it in or out.
In practice, that means:
- Some New Zealand employers will grant the one day if you ask. It costs them almost nothing and it is increasingly common.
- Others will not, and you are entitled to use sick leave or annual leave instead. You don't owe anyone a detailed explanation of what a day of leave is for.
- If you manage people: granting the day is one of the cheapest goodwill decisions available to you, and people remember it for years.
What to actually say to people
You don't need a speech. A short, flat sentence does more than an argument, because it declines the debate instead of entering it.
For "at least it wasn't a person":
"It's hit me harder than I expected, so I'm just taking it as it comes."
For "are you getting another one?":
"Not yet. Maybe at some point."
For colleagues you'd rather not discuss it with:
"Family stuff. I'm all right, just a bit flat this week."
That last one is not dishonest. It is accurate and it closes the topic.
For the people you do want to tell, be specific about what you want, because they genuinely don't know:
"I don't need advice — I'd just like to tell you about him for ten minutes."
Most people are willing. They just have no script for this one, so they reach for the wrong lines.
Who to tell instead
If your immediate circle isn't the right audience, the answer is not to go without.
- Your vet clinic. Vet nurses and receptionists deal with this every week of their working lives, and they take pet grief seriously as a matter of course. A call to say thank you and talk for five minutes is not an imposition — most clinics would rather hear from you.
- 1737 — Need to Talk? Free call or text, any time in NZ, trained counsellors. Pet loss is a legitimate reason to use it, and they will not dismiss it.
- Lifeline NZ — 0800 543 354, or text HELP (4357). Samaritans NZ — 0800 726 666.
- A GP, if it's affecting sleep, work or eating beyond a few weeks.
- Online pet loss groups. Not for everyone, but the entire point of them is an audience that already agrees the loss counts.
Make it visible somewhere
Part of what disenfranchised grief takes away is the ritual — the notice, the service, the card on the mantelpiece that tells everyone this happened. You can put some of that back, and it helps more than people expect.
A memorial page you can share. A printed photo instead of one on a phone. A paw print somewhere you'll see it. A native tree in their name. A small thing said out loud at Matariki with the other names.
Every family we work with gets an online memorial page for exactly this reason: it makes the loss a real, visible thing that other people can see and respond to, instead of something you carry quietly around the office.
The short version
Your grief is not out of proportion. The response around it is out of proportion — and that mismatch is doing real work to make this harder.
Stop putting it to a vote. Tell the people who take it seriously, use the free services if you need them, take the day off if you can get it, and put something concrete somewhere you can see it.
PetAftercare partners with NZ vet clinics to provide complete end-of-life support for families, including grief booklets, keepsakes and the online memorial portal.
