How To Get Over The Loss Of A Dog – Love, Life And Healing

Navigating Through The Grief: Healing After Your Dog or Pet’s Passing. What is love and what is Life All About.

 

Losing a dog or any pet is a very deep and personal experience because pets make it possible for us to experience a pure way to express our life and love without any judgments or expectations. They let us be our true selves without any interference. When you have a dog or any other pet, you don’t need to act up or try to impress it. You just say what you want to say and feel what you want to feel. It is a link with another life where you can just be, a clean and honest link, as honest and pure as we can be with life.

For many people, losing a pet is very hard to cope with because it causes intense emotional pain. It’s literally the loss of a link to the experience of living part of your life in an open, natural and pure way. This article is a guide to how to get over the loss of a pet and puts us on a journey to reflect on what is love and what is life all about. The bond we form with our pet is special and precious. With this, pets become more than just animals in our homes.

It’s also worth noting that the level of grief can be surprising to those who’ve never bonded with an animal in this way.

Your feelings are legitimate, and acknowledging the pain is the first step toward healing. Give yourself permission to grieve.

Navigating Through the Initial Shock and Sadness

It can be hard to deal with the shock and sadness of losing a pet at first. It’s a big change from the familiar daily routine of mental and emotional support we’ve become used to. It’s important to let yourself cry without judging yourself. This is how you were with your pet anyway. You expressed yourself without judgement. Let it be without judgement in your grief, like how you always expressed yourself with your pet. Accept the feelings that come with the loss. The way you feel sad is unique and also okay because it is about how your life was enriched by the connection you had with your pet.

Your emotions deserve an outlet. If you want to cry, cry. If you want to talk about your pet non-stop, do that. Some people might find solace in writing down their thoughts or creating a piece of art. Anything that helps you to process these emotions in a healthy way is worth considering.

What Is Love And What Is Life All About?

Looking after yourself during this trying time can’t be underestimated. That’s going to include, most importantly, understanding what is really going on in this process.

Knowing what life and love are all about can help you to deal with the loss. When we get a pet we’re not just bringing a companion into our life; we’re extending our life, our love and our affection. This sharing of our life and love through affection is how we grow and live life well.

When we lose a pet, we often think that we’ve lost a part of ourselves. However, this is not true. No part of us is ever lost. It is more accurate to say, the real life connection or link we had is now broken. Knowing that you haven’t lost a part of you at all changes how you heal.

 

 

When that pet dies you hurt, and hurt, and hurt like nobody knows. Why, because when that pet’s life has come to an end you feel as if a part of you is gone or lost, that you have become less than you were. This is where it all begins to go wrong and you fail to heal properly from a loss. No part of you is ever lost. Here is why…

We All Have Two Bodies

You are born with two bodies, one that you can see and one that you can’t. These bodies function exactly the same. You have a physical and non physical body. Your physical body is easy to identify because you can see it. The thing you call Life is your second body and you can’t see it. These two bodies are your basics that you can increase or stretch to manage tasks, to enjoy living, to make more of or decrease whenever you want. What you can do with your physical body, you can do with your Life body. We can easily show similarities that happen with these two so that you can clearly see how this is.

Think about the body. You can say ‘leg’ to describe a part of your body, yet your leg is also your body. The legs, using energy, make it possible for the body to go to the shops and your hands to pick things from the shelves into a trolley or basket. If you stand with one leg inside the shop and your body outside, that leg is still part of your body even if the rest of your body is outside the shop. If someone inside the shop were to step on it you will go, ouch! and quickly pull it back outside where your body is. Your life body is the same way.

Life is our full invisible body.

The different parts of life similar to arms or legs for the body are the different kinds of love that we extend to others through affection. You have a body with legs and you use energy to make it possible to walk to the shops. Without energy your body can’t walk to the shops. Through energy you can move your body and thus your legs too. So, you have the body, the legs and the energy to move the body and that’s the process for physical movement. The same goes for life.

Your non physical body is the thing we call Life. The different parts of it are the different types of love. You can say ‘life’ and then you can say ‘love’. These are two names for the same thing similar to ‘body’ and ‘leg’. Life is the full body. Its different parts are the different kinds of love like Man and woman love, love for a dog, love for flowers, love for nature, love for friends, all these are parts of life just like legs, eyes, arms, feet, lips are parts of the physical body. The thing that moves life and its different parts, as you do with energy in the body, is affection. A leg without energy cannot move and love without affection can do nothing for anything or anyone. Through affection you can move or stretch your love and thus also your life, just like eating food gives us energy and makes our bodies grow. So you have life, love and affection as the process for moving or growing life. I hope this is making sense.

This is a basic way of understanding how the not so obvious things about life work. Know Thyself and the basic tools that you have for running your life. This information has been created to help you to understand your foundation, know who you are basically, and how you can get over different kinds of emotional stuff in your life especially dealing with death.

By loving your pet you are stretching your life.

Why does losing a dog hurt so much, when you even don’t know if the dog cares that it is dead? We also don’t know where the dog is or anyone is after the body has died. This makes it hard to find where to connect the line of affection that we had in place. The love you extended to the dog is still part of your life body but now, on the other end, the link has become disconnected. It is now a live, open line of affection that is just hanging out there somewhere. It hurts because death breaks the link of affection that was your way of increasing your life, which also made you happy. Like broken skin, it is an emotional open wound and it hurts. The bond with the dog is now really just existing like an open wound that is losing affection. The good thing is, you have a choice to close it and heal.

How then does this work?

 

You had no connection to the dog before you got it. When you got it you extended your love by giving it affection. The flow of affection from you to the dog creates a link, connecting your two lives.

Continuous show of affection makes the link stronger and difficult to stop or break. You extend your love to experience more life through giving affection to other people or other forms of life. That means that a link cannot be established between you and the dog if there is no affection. It is hard to accept death because once we start showing affection, we enjoy it and it increases our life, and so, we don’t want it to stop. Do realize that YOU started the flow of affection to the dog, YOU created the connection. This means that when the dog dies, only YOU can stop the flow of affection in this link. This is how we create and manage situations in our lives. It is important to keep this in mind for more understanding as we go along.

Just like you can choose to go shopping for food to eat and have more energy and also to grow your body, giving someone or something affection is a decision you make to express more of your life and enjoy yourself more. You create and live your life in many different ways this way. Until I wrote this, I always wondered why “love your neighbor as yourself” is listed as the second most essential commandment in the Bible. Now I know that it’s because we make more of our life and happiness in this process. Our lives go beyond what they were at birth by doing this.

Love and life are part of who you are from birth. Affection is the power that pushes life and all of its components into motion and growth. You can’t influence your life or make progress without affection. Life and all of its varieties of love are merely the basic building blocks that you possess; they cannot take you very far on their own. What allows life or love to experience other ways of living is affection. It is also the tool that is your power of choice. You can choose to give or show affection or not to.

You Never Lose Any Part Of You

In the shop situation I mentioned before, if someone steps on your foot, you quickly move your leg back outside to where your body is. You don’t leave the foot there, inside the shop, when it’s hurt, yet this is what we do when someone dies or our pet dies. A portion of your life or love is hanging since the body to which you used to give your affection has gone. You go ouch! but keep that part of your love dangling and your affection flowing to no point of contact. No wonder we feel lost. We feel as if we have lost a part of us. When someone trips over your foot in the store because they didn’t see you and didn’t know there was a foot there, it doesn’t mean you have lost your leg. Your foot is not lost or no longer a part of your body just because it has stepped into the store while your body is still outside. It is still your foot and you can pull it back to your body anytime.

When we fail to see that it is the link that is broken rather than a part of our life that is gone, grieving takes a wrong turn. We don’t realize that we need to pull back the part of ourselves or our love that is hanging out there. The loss feels like we now have less of what we had and have become less of what we were. This causes emotional pain for longer than is required and maintains the broken or damaged link alive throughout our lives. Seeing this process for what it is, is key to shorter and proper healing.

The Best Way To Heal

When we know that it’s the link that is broken, we can easily understand and accept that the other body is no longer there for us to connect to and that a part of our life is still hanging out there pointlessly. This makes us realize that in order to truly heal, we need to actively pull back the love that is no longer grounded. This pulling back isn’t making less of our life; it’s a necessary step to begin the healing of the broken link; That the time we’ve spent with our pet has made our life better but it’s now necessary to store those moments as memories and not an active emotional link. This isn’t about forgetting the pet or forgetting the pain; it is a better way to see and remember the life shared and to continue to appreciate the part of us that grew through that connection but now through memories and not by aimlessly keeping the link alive. We can watch these memories as our own real-time movies instead of the ones that are or were produced by other people. Our life can collect enough of these movies to keep our mind occupied, in a grateful way, for a long time.

Since you created the connection, you are in charge of taking it down and heal if you so choose. It works well both ways. When you create the link your life expands. For that, you feel more alive and happy. On the other hand, death breaks the link, leaving behind a wiser and more experienced part of you. You pull yourself back together and you are stronger and wiser. You have to be aware of this, you have to see this and it helps you to make up your mind that you are going to pull that part of your love back to your life body. Remind yourself that a piece of you is now a live wire connected to nothing and that it hurts because the link is broken. All you have to do is to say to yourself, ‘I am deciding to remove this link because it is no longer valid. I let that part of my love return back to my life.” This sets the right healing process. After that, what’s left are memories of the life you shared and the things you did together. It takes this different approach to heal for real.

The memories continue to make your life richer.

Instead of thinking of it as a part of you that you have lost, that part of you has actually grown from how it was before the connection was made. Instead of thinking that you are grieving, think of it as a process of healing of a broken link of part of your life. Be grateful for the one that helped to make your life brighter. Also send them kind wishes for wherever they end up after their body dies. The experiences that, that part of your life had with that other, has made that part of you stronger and wiser.That part of our life went out to experience and learn more, and now it’s coming back with experience and more knowledge for us to cherish and use. When you pull it back to reunite with the rest of your life, you are not losing but getting back a part that has experienced more life and love.

Broken Links And Withdrawing Affection

We usually don’t withdraw affection because we don’t realize that the pain is coming from a broken link that needs to be recovered. Instead, we think that withdrawing our affection is rejecting the departed and that pulling back our love makes us less, but the opposite is true. In reality you are taking back a part of you that has experienced more life and love than before and has a lot to be grateful for. Taking it back adds to your life. Leaving it out there hanging creates suffering and misery. It is a leak that makes your life less than you were with a true connection. Moreover, the leak takes and wastes your life and affection in place of having wonderful memories to cherish and continue to bless your life. So pulling yourself back together again is your best way forward, it makes your life bigger. Just like eating food grows your body taking back a part of you with more experience grows your life. Celebrate both your own life and the life of the other, it’s the way forward.

Looking at someone or a pet you care about bleeding feels disturbing. It’s not a broken or bleeding part of your body, so why should it be frightening to you? It’s because seeing that bodily bleeding means seeing a disconnection of your own life that it connected to that individual or animal. Seeing the death of a loved one is similar. It looks like a part of you is dying right in front of your eyes because of the link that gets broken…

But Life is elastic, through affection, we can extend or pull it back whenever we want. Living our life is about the ability to extend our life as well as to pull it back when any situation can no longer let us connect.

Get Support

Reaching out for support when you need it is important. Don’t worry too much about feeling like a burden. Your friends and family care about you; lean on them when you need to. If you’re not comfortable with that, there are pet loss support groups and counselors who specialize in this kind of grief – you’re not alone.

In my opinion, as the initial waves of shock and sadness begin to go down, it’s the perfect time to think about making a lasting tribute to your pet. This doesn’t need to be anything elaborate or immediate, but just something to signify the important role they played in your life. That’s where we’re headed next – creating a legacy that honors the special connection you shared with your pet.

Creating a Legacy for Your Beloved Companion

Losing a pet can leave an emptiness that seems impossible to fill. But one of the most beautiful ways to bridge that gap is by crafting a legacy that honors their presence in your life. It could be as simple as framing a favorite photo, creating a coffee mug imprinted with your pet’s image or creating a garden mosaic with your pet’s image on it or as elaborate as creating a garden in their memory. Some people find solace in writing letters or poems, while others prefer to compile a scrapbook or a digital slideshow of their pet’s happiest moments.

Sharing stories about your pet with those who understand your bond can help. Just talking about your favorite memories can be therapeutic. I’ve seen people find comfort in starting blogs or social media pages dedicated to their pets’ lives, connecting with others who’ve experienced similar losses.

Gradual Steps Towards Healing

You’re going to experience a gentle progression back to a sense of a new normal after the loss of a pet and pulling yourself back together. Healing is a process that unfolds in its own time. Allow yourself that space.

Finding peace may initially seem impossible, but with each passing day, there’s an opportunity to reflect on the joy and love your pet brought into your life. The sadness may not disappear completely, but its edge will soften.

If you’re wondering about the right time to introduce a new pet into your life, don’t worry too much about an exact timeline. It’s a personal decision, and you’ll know when the time feels right.

Support Resources and Professional Help

I’m going to wrap up by emphasizing that reaching out for help is a sign of strength, not a weakness.

Support and help from people who know about your bond with your pet can be good. Get support from family and friends when you need it. If you have no family then find online communities or support groups for people who have lost a pet. All this helps and offers you comfort. Get help if you feel you need it and do not go through this by yourself.

Last but not least, losing a pet is a very sad event that gets to the heart of what it means to love and live. We can get through this hard time if we understand how our relationships with our pets and others work and how we grieve when we lose the connections we make with them. We can turn our pain into a celebration of the life we shared, and in doing so, we can find peace and a new way to understand love and life.

Various other resources that are available to assist you through this tough time.

Counseling might be a good option if your grief feels overwhelming. Many therapists specialize in pet loss and can provide personalized coping strategies.

Online forums and communities specifically for pet loss can offer comfort by connecting you with people who understand exactly what you’re going through.

There are also pet loss hotlines, staffed by volunteers trained to provide support and comfort to those grieving the loss of a pet. It’s a very direct way to talk to someone when you need to.

Sometimes, the grief may persist and interfere with your daily life. In these cases, seeking professional help is a crucial step towards healing.

I hope that you find solace in the resources I’ve shared. Remember, mourning the loss of a beloved pet is a personal journey, but, do not go through it alone if you feel you need support. Reach out, take your time, and be gentle with yourself as you navigate this challenging experience.