Why Losing a Dog Feels Like Losing a Part of Yourself

A deeply human look at pet grief, attachment, and the psychology behind the pain of saying goodbye

The Poem That Inspired This Article

I’d not intended to post anything this weekend, but felt compelled to write this article after watching a video that popped up unexpectedly in my Facebook feed. I suspect it appeared thanks to the algorithm clocking my love for classic cinema (Rear Window is my all-time favorite movie). The video in question was a clip of Jimmy Stewart on The Tonight Show in 1981, reading a poem about his dog, Beau. To say I wasn’t emotionally prepared for what followed would be an understatement.

The tone at first is light - even playful. There’s laughter from the audience. Stewart fumbles gently with his words in that unmistakable voice of his. But then the poem unfolds - and with every line, something deeper takes hold. By the end, this wasn’t just a Hollywood legend sharing a memory; it became a visceral experience that floored me with the emotional weight of love and loss contained within the poem.

If you’ve ever had a dog, I confidently predict that this clip will leave you a blubbering wreck - it certainly did me.

Watch the video below, and then we’ll explore why losing a dog can hurt so much - psychologically, emotionally, and even neurologically.

The Science of Why It Hurts So Much

At the heart of it all is attachment theory - a cornerstone of psychology that explains how we form emotional bonds.

Dogs often function as primary attachment figures. Especially for people who live alone, are elderly, or lack strong social networks, a dog becomes more than a companion. They become a secure base - a source of unconditional love, a constant presence, a reassuring rhythm in the chaos of life.

When that disappears, we don’t just miss them, we lose a part of our emotional foundation. Studies have shown that for many individuals, losing a dog can mirror the emotional impact of losing a close human companion in nearly every respect. In fact, the sense of loss is often even greater.

“Many times, I’ve had friends guiltily confide to me that they grieved more over the loss of a dog than over the loss of friends or relatives.” Professor Frank McAndrew

💔 Grief Without Permission: Disenfranchised Mourning

Why, then, does grieving your dog sometimes feel so intense?

An insightful perspective is offered by Sociologist David Redmalm who notes that society often doesn’t allow for pet grief to be publicly or culturally acknowledged. This phenomenon is called disenfranchised bereavement - a type of mourning that isn't socially recognized. As a result, pet owners may feel shame for their sorrow, suppress it, or even question their own emotional stability.

This lack of validation can intensify the grief, isolating individuals at a time when they need support the most.

🐶 A Relationship Like No Other

Unlike most human relationships, the bond with a dog is nonverbal, physical, and ritualized. It’s your dog’s tail wag when you come home. It’s how they nuzzle your side during hard days, or wait patiently for you to wake up each morning.

In their study titled "We lost a member of the family", researchers Anna Behler, Jeffrey Green and Jennifer Joy-Gaba found that the intensity of pet grief is highly correlated with the strength of daily routines shared between pet and owner. The more integrated the dog is in one's daily life, the deeper the rupture when they’re gone.

🧬 The Neurology of Grief

The ache you feel after losing your dog isn’t “just emotional.” It’s neurological.

Neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp contends that the social separation distress system in mammals (including humans) is activated during loss. When your dog dies, the same neural pathways involved in human grief light up, creating genuine psychic pain, an echo of physical pain in the brain.

This neurobiological overlap means grieving your dog isn't "pretend pain"; it’s real, measured, and medically significant.

Final Bark

So, why does losing your dog hurt so much?

Because you didn’t just lose a pet. You lost a family member, a companion, a quiet witness to your life’s most mundane and monumental moments. And grief - that honest, hollowed-out ache - is proof that love existed.

I once heard a woman who’d lost her dog say that she felt as though a color were suddenly missing from her world: the dog had introduced to her field of vision some previously unavailable hue, and without the dog, that color was gone. That seemed to capture the experience of loving a dog with eminent simplicity. I’d amend it only slightly and say that if we are open to what they have to give us, dogs can introduce us to several colors, with names like wildness and nurturance and trust and joy. (Caroline Knapp, Pack of Two: The Intricate Bond Between People and Dogs.)

If you’re grieving the loss of a pet right now, please know this: your pain is real, it matters, and you are not alone.

Written in loving memory of Rex.

Cheers,

David Webb (Connect with me on LinkedIn)

Founder, All-About-Psychology.com

Author | Psychology Educator | Content Marketing Specialist

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