Funeral QuestionsMy daughter is grieving our dog harder than she grieved her dad — is that normal?
Asked by crooked_biscuit ·
We had to put Bruno down last Thursday. Thirteen years old, back legs had basically given out, a few mornings he just couldn't get up on his own anymore, and the vet was honest that we were managing decline at that point, not treating anything. So we made the call. I think it was the right one. I still keep going over it at 2am.
Here's the part I wasn't ready for: my daughter Mia (7) has taken this harder than she took losing her dad fourteen months ago. Genuinely harder. She's barely eaten in four days, she's been sleeping on the floor next to his empty dog bed in the laundry, and she keeps asking if Bruno "found Daddy" yet, like she needs it confirmed before she can settle. When Dave died she cried at the funeral and then mostly just got quieter for a while. This is a completely different level of falling apart, over the dog.
My sister-in-law's reaction wasn't great, something like "well, he's had two funerals now, you two are old hands at this," which I know wasn't meant as cruelly as it landed, but it made me want to throw the good teapot at her. It doesn't feel like being an "old hand." It feels like watching my kid come apart over the thing I expected her to handle the easiest.
Is it actually normal for a kid to hit harder on the pet than the parent? And did I get the timing right with Bruno, or did I wait too long because I couldn't face it? I don't know which question is keeping me up more.
4 Replies
Both questions are keeping you up because they're tangled together, so let me take them one at a time.
Yes, it's genuinely normal for a child to grieve a pet harder than a parent, and it isn't a measure of how much she loved her dad. Grief in children doesn't move in a straight line, and a seven-year-old often can't yet process a loss as enormous as a parent all at once. Many children take it in pieces, over years, re-grieving at each new developmental stage as they understand a bit more of what they lost. Bruno's death is smaller, more concrete, and entirely within her ability to understand: he was here, now he's gone, and it's safe to fall apart about it in a way the loss of her dad may still be too big to fully feel yet. It's also very likely doing double duty, some of what's pouring out over Bruno is delayed grief for Dave finding a smaller, safer container to come out through. That's not a diagnosis, it's just something worth naming gently to her, not fixing.
On your sister-in-law: what she said is a common but unhelpful version of disenfranchised grief thinking: the idea that repeated loss should build some kind of tolerance. It doesn't work that way for adults and even less so for children. You're allowed to be short with people who frame it as practice.
A few concrete things that tend to help a child in Mia's position: let her talk about Bruno as much as she wants, even if it's the fortieth time today. Answer "did he find Daddy" honestly according to whatever you believe, rather than deflecting. Kids in this situation are usually asking for reassurance that the two losses are connected somewhere, not for a literal answer. And a small, concrete ritual can help her more than words will. A lot of families in this exact spot are asking what to do with a pet's ashes or remains, and doing something with Mia's input, however small, tends to land better than anything decided for her. If the not-eating or the sleeping in the laundry is still going after another week or two, it's worth a conversation with her GP or a child psychologist, mostly so you have support rather than because anything here sounds abnormal yet.
On the timing question specifically, from the vet side: mornings where a dog can't get up unassisted is one of the clearer welfare lines we look at, not a vague one. Combined with thirteen years and hind-limb decline, that's a dog whose quality-of-life window had genuinely closed, not one where you jumped ahead of the clock. Owners almost always feel like they waited too long or not long enough. I have never once had someone tell me they got the timing exactly right and felt calm about it. That's the nature of the decision, not a sign you got it wrong.
Worth saying plainly since it's 2am thoughts: "managing decline, not treating anything" is language we only use once we mean it. If your vet said that to you, they were telling you the kind thing to do had arrived. You didn't cause this by acting on it.
Adding a practical thought for Mia specifically, since mossy_teacup mentioned giving her a small ritual to be part of: individual cremation with ashes returned is worth considering here even if you wouldn't normally have gone that way, purely because it gives her something to do rather than just feel. Families in your situation often let the child choose a small urn or box, or keep a bit of fur or a paw print alongside it. It doesn't need to be elaborate. A week from now, having a small, physical thing that's "Bruno's" to hold onto during a hard moment tends to help kids more than adults expect. No pressure to decide today; most services can hold remains for a week or two while a family works out what they want.
Just a lived-experience note, from further down the road: when my husband died, our old cat going a year later flattened me in a way that genuinely embarrassed me at the time. I remember thinking, I didn't cry like this for my own husband, what does that say about me. In hindsight it said nothing except that grief needs somewhere to land, and the cat's death was smaller and safer to fall apart over than the enormous thing underneath it. Mia is seven and doing exactly what I did at fifty-something. You haven't done anything wrong, and neither has she.
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