The Loss of a Pet: A Guide to Coping with the Grieving Process When a Pet Dies

by Wallace Sife

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781630260934
Publisher:	Turner Publishing Company
Publication date:	03/18/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	328
Sales rank:	89,686
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

WALLACE SIFE, PH.D., is an internationally respected professional pet bereavement counselor practicing in Brooklyn, New York. He is the founder and first president of the Association for Pet Loss and Bereavement (APLB). In its first edition, The Loss of a Pet received the coveted Maxwell Award, presented by the Dog Writer's Association of America.

Table of Contents

Introduction.

Chapter 1: The Human-Pet Bond.

Chapter 2: Responsibility.

Chapter 3: The Grieving Process.

Chapter 4: Shock and Disbelief.

Chapter 5: Anger, Alienation and Distancing.

Chapter 6: Denial.

Chapter 7: Guilt.

Chapter 8: Depression.

Chapter 9: Resolution (Closure).

Chapter 10: Other Kinds of Loss.

Chapter 11: Another Pet?

Chapter 12: Children and the Death of a Pet.

Chapter 13: Euthanasia.

Chapter 14: Final Arrangements.

Chapter 15: Supportive Counseling.

Chapter 16: Religion and the Death of Pets.

Chapter 17: Some Practical Suggestions in Review.

Resources.

Glossary of Terms.

Epitaph.

About the Author.

Index.

Editorial Reviews

If you snicker at the notion of a book devoted to pet bereavement, consider that that very lack of sympathy may have brought the book into being. Sife, a Brooklyn, N.Y.-based psychotherapist and the founder of the Association for Pet Bereavement, addresses the pet owner whose grief at a pet's death is largely misunderstood or even ridiculed by friends, associates and society in general. Although his topic easily lends itself to touchy-feely disquisitions, Sife is to be commended for offering information that is not only compassionate but concise, wide-ranging and, above all, practical. For example, he defines stages of grieving, interpolating case studies to demonstrate those instances where expressions of mourning mask deeper problems. He composes dignified rejoinders to those who launch a ``perceived assault'' on the reader's grief; explains why the rupture of a human-animal bond can be so devastating; offers specific techniques for dealing with anger; explores the special needs of children whose pets die; presents various factors involved in considering euthanasia, including such particulars as whether or not it is beneficial to remain with the pet until its final breath; and polls leaders of various religions. A superb contribution to a growing field. (May)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly