Thread: Dealing with pet loss?

Has anyone had to go through this with their Snow Pea yet?
One of our dogs, who we got as a puppy and she was our first "baby," has cancer and we have to put her down this week. I am a total soggy mess and being pregnant on top of it means I am basically a waterworks factory all day long right now. Obviously Griffin has noticed I am sad a lot the last few days, and he's noticed the extra attention the dog has been getting. I had to explain it to him today and tried to be honest and tell him she is sick and has a bad owie that won't go away. He keeps telling us to take her to the vet to fix her owie I explained we are taking her to the vet, but that she isn't going to come back from the vet this time, that it is time for us to say goodbye to her. His response was that she should stay home, and not go to the vet if she can't come back. He doesn't get it, of course. I did say that she is going to die at one point, but he really has no idea what that means, we haven't had any deaths in our family or any other pets die recently so he really has no concept of death at all. I am trying to avoid saying that the dog is going to be "put to sleep" because I don't want the idea of going to sleep to scare him, and I don't want him to think that HIS owies will lead to the same outcome. Anyway, anyone have advice for dealing with this or have any suggestions?

Sorry, no advice there. We have yet to go through it, but will in the next year or so. Our dog is gettin up there in age. I do NOT look forward to it.

Oh gosh, I'm sorry Maggie. I know how sad that is. I have no experience w/this subject in relation to toddlers, but I googled it and thought this article was pretty helpful. I'm sorry you're going through this!
http://www.babyzone.com/toddler/touc...h-of-pet_72455

Sorry to hear about your pet. I hope you can find a way to help Griffin through this tough time.

I don't have any experience with young children and pet loss since Dana was 6 when we lost a beta fish (which we only had a few months) and 9 when we lost our cat Tika.

Two of our current animals aren't young but still have quite a few years left if they remain healthy, Sadie (medium dog) is 5 and Silver (in-door cat) is 10. We also have a 14 month old cat, Mal.

My parents had to put one of their dogs down a couple months ago. My mom told the kids that she was sick and went to live in the stars and when they look in the sky, the brightest star is Molly looking down on them. Thy call it the Molly star. We also got rid of our cats a couple months ago due to some behavior issues. We used the farm excuse.

Well, my grandpa passed away on Monday. Looks like we may be having the death talk with Daniel. The funeral is on Sunday I think he's still super clueless and might not even ask, but his cousin Emma (born Jan 21, 2009) is for sure going to ask where Great Grandpa is when she sees Great Grandma.

Wish us luck.

Sorry for your loss Janelle

Thank you. I didn't mean to hi-jack. Just to update, he didn't even seem to notice Great Grandpa was missing, but cousin Emma sure did. Even with her asking where he was and us explaining it in a way she'd understand, he still didn't seem at all affected by it. Maybe when our dog dies it will be more traumatizing. I mean, he'd only visited with him a few times over a few years.

Janelle - Sorry about your grandpa, it's a little sad that Daniel doesn't really remember him though I guess it is of some relief that you don't have to help a young child grieve.

We may be going through a similar situation soon with Natalie's great grandmother, she is already quite ill and may have cancer, she'll be going for a biopsy soon. Natalie knows her great grandparents well, and has an amazing memory, so I am not sure how we will handle this.

I'm sorry for your loss, Janelle.
An update on our doggie: We did end up putting her down, which was possibly the hardest thing I've ever had to do (maybe I should consider myself lucky for that!). Griffin didn't really get it. He asked when we'd be going back to the vet to get her, if she was going to get more medicine, if her owies were better, etc. I would explain every time that she got sick and died and wasn't going to come back anymore, and he would kind of go "oh" and just go on with whatever he was doing. He did see me crying about it a few times and would ask why I was crying, and I'd tell him I was sad because our dog died. He did go through a period of time where he would tell me I was wrong, and she WAS coming back, but he seems to have settled into it now and accepts that she isn't here anymore. He never seemed particularly upset about it, just a little confused. It was really hard, but I'm doing better with it now. I still miss her sometimes, and the other day I started crying during dinner because of something DH said (unrelated to the dog, thank you pregnancy hormones!) and Griffin asked me if I was "sad because Lulu died" which made me cry even harder. Ugh. But, mostly we are OK now! We got through it.