Understanding helps heal the hurt when you lose a pet A cherished pet gives you boundless, unconditional love and occupies a special place in your routine, your home, and your heart. When your pet dies, that warm, special place becomes a sad, empty space. This book helps you understand: * The grieving process, including typical stages of grief and techniques for coping * Grieving for a missing pet, one you had to give up because of a change in life situation, and other difficult circumstances * Children and the death of a pet * Euthanasia, including important considerations * Religion and the death of a pet, with articles by various religious leaders * Aftercare facilities, including an extensive index of pet cemeteries, crematories, and memorial gardens This award-winning book has been hailed as the seminal work in the field. And now the fourth newly revised and expanded edition offers so much more to the bereaving pet owner. This edition also includes a significant new way of considering the meaning of afterlife for us and our pets. It discusses the topic from a twenty-first–century scientific perspective that is very different from existing religious or metaphysical ones, offering a new comfort to skeptics and agnostics as well.

Affirming a pet owner's struggle with grief when his or her pet dies, this book helps mourners understand why their feelings are so strong and helps them overcome the loss. Included are practical suggestions for mourning and ideas for remembering and memorializing one's pet. Among the issues covered are understanding the many emotions experienced after the death of a pet; understanding why grief for pets is unique; pet funerals and burial or cremation; celebrating and remembering the life of one's pet; coping with feelings about euthanasia; helping children understand the death of their pet; and things to keep in mind before getting another pet.

Because our relationships with our animal companions are unlike human relationships, the death of a pet is like no other loss that we will experience. Draws on the wisdom of Ecclesiastes, the author's own experience, and interviews with dozens of pet lovers to guide the reader through the initial loss of a pet to the dawning of new hope and reassurance.

The purpose of this book is to provide a resource to help animal owners work through the pain anticipating or following the loss of their pet. In our society there is often a message that there must be something wrong with anyone who feels despair or " falls apart " over the loss of an animal. Because of this message, the "survivors" of animal loss are often left feeling alone and "crazy" because they are having such a strong reaction to their loss. This book serves to "legitimize" the grief following the loss of a beloved pet as well as a guide to try to make the pain of that loss more bearable.

Without proper support, navigating the icy waters of grief may feel impossible. The grieving person may feel spiritually bankrupt and often the loss is so painful that the bereaved may lose faith in what they once held dear. Mindfulness meditation can restore hope by offering a compassionate safe haven for healing and self-reflection. While nobody can predict the path of someone else's grief, this book will guide the reader forward through the grieving process with simple mindfulness-based exercises to restore mind, body and spirit. These easy-to-follow meditations will help the reader to cope with the pain of loss, and embark on a healing journey. Each chapter focuses on a different aspect of grief, and the guided meditations will calm the mind and increase clarity and focus. Mindfulness and Grief will help readers to begin the process of reconstructing the shattered self that is left in the wake of any major loss.

If you've found yourself almost inconsolable after your pet died, please know that you're normal. If you've found that your family and friends don't seem to understand the level of your grief, please know that, too, is normal. Without comparing our relationships with our pets to those with people, we know that, because of the unique emotional relationships we have with our pets, their deaths produce a level of pain that is difficult to describe. If you relate to any or all of these sentences, this book is for you. We have been there and most probably will be there again. We will be with you on this journey to help your heart deal with the absence of your cherished companion. --Russell, Cole, and John Your relationship with your pet is special--it's a bond that is very different than those that human beings share with each other. When a beloved pet passes away, people often resort to incorrect mechanisms to deal with the grief, such as trying to move too quickly past the loss (dismissing the real impact), or even attempting to replace the pet immediately. However, these are merely two myths out of six that the authors discuss and dismantle in The Grief Recovery Handbook for Pet Loss. Based on the authors' Grief Recovery Method(R), this book addresses how losing a pet is different from losing a human loved one, and ultimately, how to move on with life.

Professional bereavement counselor Wallace Sife updates and expands his book for readers who need help coping with and understanding this particular kind of grief. 30 photos.