This book is a compassionate, comprehensive guide to help you deal with the heartbreaking pain of losing a beloved animal companion. It shows you that you’re not alone, or crazy, or “over-reacting” to your loss, by calling upon the experiences and advice of dozens of pet owners like yourself. You’ll find words of comfort, understanding, and strategies to help you heal in this time-honored book.

Moira Allen knows first-hand how much the loss of a pet hurts, and what a hole it leaves in your life. This book doesn’t bring you psychobabble – it brings understanding and real help.

Coping with Sorrow helps you deal with every aspect of pet loss and bereavement. It will help you:

• Understand what your pet meant to you, and why its loss is so painful
• Deal with the overwhelming feelings you may be having of anger, guilt or depression
• Recognize the importance of acknowledging your feelings and finding ways to express your pain
• Adjust to your loss by adjusting your surroundings and schedule
• Pay tribute to your pet and bring closure to your loss by creating an appropriate memorial

It will also help you help others in your family cope. Coping with Sorrow offers tips to help you help your children through what may be the first real loss in their lives. It will guide you through the most painful decision a pet owner can make: The decision to mercifully end a pet’s suffering. It provides insights into “what to do next” – choosing the best “final resting place” for your beloved companion. And finally, it will help you make one of the most important decisions yet to come: When (or whether) to bring a new animal companion into your life.

This book also touches on a host of topics that no other book on pet loss bereavement covers, such as:

• How to cope with “pre-loss bereavement” – the special grief that begins BEFORE a pet dies, when we learn that a pet is terminally ill and its loss is inevitable. Other books talk about the pain that follows loss—but the pain that can precede it is every bit as real, with no closure in sight.
• How to deal with the pain and uncertainty surrounding the “missing” pet – and steps you can take to help recover a lost pet.
• How to protect pets during a disaster or emergency
• How to cope if circumstances force you to give up a beloved pet, and how to make that transition as painless as possible for you and your pet
• How to provide for your pets in your will

A final appendix – which has garnered some of the most ardent praise for this book – addresses the question, “Do pets go to heaven?”

When you have lost a pet, you want answers fast, and this caring book has been providing healing to pet owners for nearly 30 years. It is also the perfect gift when someone YOU care about is grieving.