Your Office Can’t Be Truly Pet-Friendly If It Isn’t Pet-Loss Supportive
Meet Blue. Blue was my first dog.
I adopted him from a shelter when he was seven and a half, already labeled a senior, so I knew our time together would probably be short.
He died two years later—nine and a half years old, May 2024.
Even knowing the timeline, I never imagined he’d die the way he did.
Because here’s the part that surprises people: I’m also a death doula. I work with people (and pets) at the end of life, and with the people who love them. I spend a lot of time helping others recognize, understand, and carry grief.
And still—when it was my turn—I went numb.
Blue’s ending (and the kind of shock grief creates)
For the last year of his life, I spent a lot of time reading about pet loss and telling people, “You should come see him because you never know when it’s going to be the last time.”
Some of that was me being realistic. Some of it was me trying to anticipate it—like if I rehearsed the pain, it wouldn’t take me out.
Then it happened.
I was out of town. Out of the country. The other side of the world.
Blue hadn’t shown symptoms of a particular illness. He was older, so there were some energy concerns, but nothing that felt like a warning sign. No major changes in behavior that seemed alarming.
And then I got a call from my friend saying they had to take him to the vet because he wasn’t eating—which was bizarre for Blue if you knew him. He was a food vacuum.
Right as I was about to head to the airport, I got another call.
“Are you sitting down?”
They found a spleen tumor I had no idea about. It had ruptured. The vet said that even with chemo, the life expectancy would be about two months.
For me, it wasn’t a question of “do we try everything?” I care more about quality of life than quantity. The kind thing—the loving thing—was to let him go then and there, while he was already under medication and in relatively good spirits.
I couldn’t be there.
But I could FaceTime.
I recorded as much of that FaceTime as I could, because I wasn’t in the right space. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t feel—aside from being devastated—but mostly I was numb. I couldn’t be present.
All I remember is thinking he looked like he wasn’t suffering, and I was so glad.
And also: of course he would die 24 hours before I got home. That was his personality. He liked to stick it to me.
Even in grief and shock and devastation, there was still a bit of humor.
That experience drove something home for me: Grief is not tidy. It’s not linear. It doesn’t care what you “know.”
Pet grief is common. The isolation is cultural.
As of today, about 66% of US households own a pet.
So this kind of grief touches a huge number of people.
And even though many of us understand how devastating it is to lose a pet, it’s not reflected in our society or workplace culture—making the experience that much more isolating.
At the same time, more and more workplaces are making pets part of daily culture: office pets, dog-friendly offices, benefits that recognize pets as part of employees’ lives.
So when that loss happens, it’s felt in the workplace too.
Here’s the hot take (soft heart):
Your office can’t be truly pet-friendly if it isn’t also pet-loss supportive.
“But we can’t turn work into a therapy room.”
Agreed.
Workplaces need boundaries. They need to function. They need policies that feel fair, usable, and consistent across different people and different types of loss.
Not every meaningful loss can—or should—be formalized into policy in exactly the same way.
But dismissing pet loss entirely isn’t neutrality.
It’s a choice. And in many workplaces, it can come off as emotionally tone-deaf—especially when pets have already been welcomed into the culture as part of daily life.
Pet-friendly culture can bring real benefits. It can improve morale, lower stress, and strengthen connection.
But when a workplace makes room for the love of pets and has no room for the loss of them, that absence can be incapacitating.
Employees can end up feeling unsupported, anxious, or even resentful—not only because of their own grief, but because the culture suddenly stops making sense.
A workplace can’t celebrate pets as part of daily life and then treat their loss like it has no impact on the people around them.
Why pet loss hits so deeply
Pet loss is often treated like “lesser grief” or disenfranchised grief.
So people end up carrying shame on top of the loss itself—feeling like they need to justify it, minimize their pain, or move on faster than they actually can.
But pets are part of our routine, our sense of home, our daily comfort, and our emotional lives.
So when that loss happens, it only makes sense that it would affect your focus, energy, connection, and overall wellbeing in very real ways.
You’re not only grieving a pet.
You’re grieving:
A bond
A safe space that let you be alone without feeling lonely
A reason to care
A daily rhythm that quietly held you together
Pretending it doesn’t matter doesn’t make people more professional.
It makes people feel more alone.
What humane support can look like (without a giant HR manifesto)
Support can be simple.
It can look like acknowledgement, flexibility, a conversation, or making room for someone to be human without pretending like nothing happened.
If your workplace is pet-friendly, consider becoming pet-loss supportive too. That might mean:
Talking about it before the loss happens (so managers aren’t improvising in crisis)
Offering flexibility (lighter workload, softer deadlines, a day off)
Training managers on how to respond with basic humanity
Providing grief support through a third party
Responding with care doesn’t require perfect policy.
It requires being willing to acknowledge what’s real.
A question for you
If you’ve been through pet loss (or you’re anticipating it), I’d love to hear:
What did people understand well?
What did they miss completely?
If you work somewhere pet-friendly, what support would actually feel humane to you?
If you want to keep having conversations like this with me, you can subscribe or learn about working with me at https://heartontherise.com
