No Loss of Support if Attached: Attachment Not Pet Type Predicts Grief, Loss Sharing, and Perceived Support

ABSTRACT

Although there is extensive literature on bereavement after the loss of pets, it has almost exclusively focused on traditional pets, such as cats and dogs, to the exclusion of many other species that are also popular pets. We targeted caregivers of less-traditional pets, such as reptiles, birds, fish, and exotics, to assess their experiences when grieving their loss. Specifically, we examined the manner in which they reported the loss and the degree of perceived support they received from close and more distant associates as well as their grief over the loss. We surveyed 464 pet owners, 337 of whom reported the loss of a pet other than a cat or dog. We examined whether their experiences of grief, sharing loss, and receiving support differed from those of cat and dog owners. We also assessed the role of the pet (i.e., as companion or other), whether they were housed in an enclosure, concerns about the pet, and problem behaviors as predictors, with the owner’s attachment to the pet as a mediator. Pet role, enclosure, and attachment significantly predicted grief. Overall, attachment was a better predictor than pet type for grief, reporting of the loss, and perceived support from others. These findings suggest that owners experience grief similarly for traditional and nontraditional pets as long as they feel bonded to their pets.

KEYWORDS:

• Attachment
• bereavement
• exotic pet
• human–animal interaction
• perceived support
• pet loss

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Participants also completed the Experiences in Close Relationships-Revised (ECR-R, Brennan et al., 1998) scale, which is a 36-item questionnaire that explores how the respondent generally feels in emotionally intimate [partnered] relationships with humans, but we did not include these data in our analyses for the purposes of parsimony and that we wanted to focus on attachment to the pet. We also asked respondents how affectionate and fearful their pets were and how well they performed on various indices of cognition, but we did not analyze those data here.