Dead Pets and Grief: Faith Leaders Embrace New Chaplaincy 'We Grew Old Together'

Surprisingly sharp grief recently struck the Rev. Lawrence Kyle Hern, a retired United Methodist pastor in Kansas City. In a note to Facebook friends, what he called his “beloved little Yorkipoo,” Bear, died unexpectedly after being his “buddy and companion” for more than 14 years. 

“We grew old together,” Hern says. “We both experienced the things that come with aging.” 

The kind of grief Hern and his wife Marie are experiencing has become the focus of a developing movement in the field of chaplaincy, meaning that some chaplains focus increasingly on the painful feelings of bereavement pet owners feel at the death of their animal friends. 

“In many ways,” says the Rev. Carla Gentry, a chaplain for Kansas City Hospice and Palliative Care, “this is an infant field.” Although much of Gentry’s work focuses on the grief of families at the death of a hospice patient, she has devoted lots of time recently to grieving pet owners. 

Gentry received pet chaplaincy training through an organization called the Compassion Consortium. 

“Animal chaplains provide support for both animals and humans by using ritual, ceremony and the tools of spiritual companionship,” the group’s website explains. “Compassion Consortium’s Animal Chaplaincy Training helps you fulfill your heart’s call to honor and celebrate the lives of all species.” 

Gentry also has officiated at many pet funerals. As she explains, “My brother-in-law lost his dog about 15 years ago and so I offered to do a pet funeral and I’ve been doing pet funerals ever since.” 

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Although animal chaplaincy may be a newer field, pet funerals and burials have been happening at the Wayside Waifs animal shelter in Kansas City for nearly 80 years. In fact, the sprawling pet cemetery there holds the remains of more than 12,000 animals. 

“We do offer medical euthanasias and we have a pet memorial building set up with little living rooms where people can bring their pet in,” says Laura Keyworth, pet memorial services manager for Wayside Waifs. The agency also has “onsite veterinarians who can talk with you about the process of euthanasia in a quieter, more relaxed setting,” she says. 

Keyworth says grief over the death of a pet is experienced not just by the family with whom the pet lived. 

“Even the other animals at that home are grieving,” she says. “They’re going through a transition. There’s a difference when you change the dynamic in your house if you have multiple pets and one passes away. There’s some restructuring going on with how they interact with you and how they interact with each other. It depends on the pet, but some pets will be kind of more withdrawn, maybe not eating like they normally would. Their routine might be off, too.” 

Casey Waugh, Wayside Waifs’ communications and annual giving manager, adds that “a lot of times pets pick up on the people in their lives and their emotions. So when we are grieving, they’ll notice and come to be comfort for us.” 

As Gentry has become more familiar with this field, she also has found that “animals grieve, too” at the loss of their human companions. And that also may require some chaplaincy work. 

“You help the pet understand and know what they’re going through,” she says. “You might place a shirt that was worn by the deceased with the pet for several days. You lead them to process that the person is not coming back.” 

In her hospice work, Gentry has even noticed that “sometimes pets in a hospice will be able to tell the staff who the next person will be to die. They just go to the room and stay. Sometimes they will climb up on the bed with the person and they won’t move.” 

As a pastor, Hern helped many people through grief at the death of family members, but pet chaplaincy is relatively new for him. 

“I became aware of (pet chaplaincy) not long ago because of reading articles referencing research on people grieving the loss of pets, Hern says. “That grief can be even more intense than the loss of a spouse or a child for some people. Or comparable to the loss of a child.” 

Pet counselors, he says, function mainly “to validate that grief — that it’s real and appropriate because it tends to be dismissed. In my own experience, I did do some counseling of people who had lost pets. And I took their grief seriously. I took all sorts of grief seriously.” 

But he acknowledges that “there are a lot of losses that we don’t ordinarily think of as inspiring intense grief. But they do and can inspire morbid grief in some people — the loss of jobs, loss of limbs or organs, loss of independence or mobility and loss of pets, too. Grief is painful. 

“One of the main things I did as a pastor was I just allowed people to grieve. I didn’t say, ‘Why are grieving so much over Lassie?’” 

Even local pet agencies that don’t offer counseling have become more aware of what people suffer when a pet dies.  

Madison Brown, marketing and public relations specialist for the Pet Resource Center of Kansas City, says her agency “offers euthanasia for pets and we sort of go above and beyond. We try to make the experience calming and peaceful and stress free for the pet and the pet owner. We’ve created a euthanasia room separate from our clinic. And we have books that explain the loss of a pet and the feelings you go through.” 

Most religions hold animals in high esteem even as they differentiate them from human beings. But faith leaders are becoming more aware that the humans they serve can experience deeply painful grief over the death of animals. And they’re now training chaplains to help people through exactly the kind of grief that Kyle and Marie Hern have experienced because of Bear’s death. 

(P.S.: Barbara Allen, who helped develop Australia’s first animal chaplaincy program, has written a new book about this field that I reviewed on my “Faith Matters” blog.) 

Bill Tammeus, an award-winning columnist formerly with The Kansas City Star, writes the “Faith Matters” blog for The Star’s website, book reviews for The National Catholic Reporter and for The Presbyterian Outlook. His latest book is “Love, Loss and Endurance: A 9/11 Story of Resilience and Hope in an Age of Anxiety.” Email him at wtammeus@gmail.com.