It’s no secret that losing a beloved pet is often an emotionally devastating experience. Readers of this blog and I know this firsthand. The problem is that society at large may not recognize this fact. That’s why I was completely captivated by the Scientific American article, “Why We Need to Take Pet Loss Seriously“.

This excerpt from the article says it all:

As a society, we do not recognize how painful pet loss can be and how much it can impair our emotional and physical health. Symptoms of acute grief after the loss of a pet can last from one to two months, with symptoms of grief persisting up to a full year (on average). The New England Journal of Medicine reported in October 2017 that after her dog died, a woman experienced “broken heart syndrome”—a condition in which the response to grief is so severe the person exhibits symptoms that mimic a heart attack, including elevated hormone levels that can be 30 times greater than normal.

For anyone who has been told, “It was just a dog/cat”, the article may help you to feel less alone with your grief and to know that many people experience the same level of grief. It’s for this and many other reasons why I LOVE this article, and I believe it’s worth the two minutes it takes to scan, so I’m just going to let you read it!