Why Pet Loss Deserves More Compassion and Better Planning

A conversation with Koryn Greenspan, founder of The Parted Paw, a certified pet loss and grief specialist, end-of-life pet doula, and ACC-ICF coach.

By Niki Weiss, Digital Thanatologist and Founder of ENDevo

Most end-of-life planning asks what you want to happen. Pet loss asks something harder. It asks you to decide when.

That is the part nobody warns you about. You are not only losing your animal. You are the one who picks the room, signs the form, and chooses the morning. You hold an authority most people never hold over a human life, and you usually hold it with no preparation at all.

That combination is why so many pet parents end up carrying something heavier than grief. They carry regret.

On this episode of Death and Dying in the Digital Age, I spoke with Koryn Greenspan, founder of The Parted Paw in Toronto. She has spent fifteen years working with pets and the people who love them, and she supports grieving pet parents before, during, and after a loss. She also works with veterinary teams on compassion fatigue.

Two losses, thirteen months apart

Koryn's sister died of brain cancer in 2021. Around that loss, support arrived without anyone having to ask: meals, condolences, ritual, time away from work. She was grateful for all of it.

Thirteen months later, her dog Georgia died. Georgia was a rescue she loved so much she left a corporate career and built a company around her. That loss, in Koryn's words, was tormenting.

Almost none of the support came.

Same person. Same capacity to grieve. Two completely different responses from the world around her. She went back to school, earned her certifications, and started The Parted Paw so the second kind of loss would stop being met with silence.

Pet grief is several losses at once

When a pet dies, more than the animal goes.

Koryn walked through what a pet parent is actually grieving: identity, because being someone's person was part of who you were; the shape of your day, built around walks and feedings; the feel of your home; often a whole social life that grew up around the animal.

She drew one distinction that stayed with me. The people in our lives have lives of their own outside us. A pet's whole existence depends on choices we make for them.

That dependence is what makes the bond so strong, and what makes the ending so complicated.

The decision nobody names out loud

We decide what our pets eat, when they go out, where they sleep. Most of the time, we also decide when the last day is.

Koryn connected something I had not put together. Pet parents routinely make a decision about ending suffering that people are only beginning to have access to for themselves. We hand that authority to ordinary families and offer almost no guidance on how to carry it.

You are not only watching a decline. You are the person being asked to decide.

Why her sessions fill up with regret

Koryn does a lot of anticipatory grief work, and she explained why. When she sits with someone after a pet has died, much of the time goes to what they believe they got wrong.

Did they wait too long. Did they act too soon. Should it have happened at home instead of a clinic.

Most of those questions trace back to choices made in a hurry by people who were never told what the options were.

Many pet parents do not know that in-home euthanasia exists. They learn it afterward, from someone who mentions it kindly, and it becomes one more thing to replay at two in the morning.

Grief comes from the loss. Regret comes from meeting it unprepared.

The support gap at work

A colleague of mine had no children. Her dog was her family. When the dog died, she asked to use her bereavement days and had to argue for them. Her company said yes in the end, but she had to defend a loss that was obvious to her.

Koryn sees worse. Some of her clients do not feel safe saying why they are struggling, so they stay quiet or give another reason. Then they show up at work and cannot perform. Their manager notices. Their reviews suffer. Their finances follow.

Part of what allows this is old legal language. In Canada and across most of the United States, pets are still classified as property. New York now asks divorce courts to weigh what is best for a companion animal, though that change applies to divorce and not to the workplace.

Language shapes what an employer feels free to wave off.

What deciding early actually looked like

I can speak to this from my own house.

We lost a dog this past Memorial Day. Before that day came, we had the conversations. We chose in-home hospice instead of a final car ride to the clinic. At $630 it was not cheap, but we had budgeted for it. We chose a backyard burial, and we dug the hole early.

When the day arrived, it was quiet. She did not have to be moved. Nobody was making decisions in a parking lot.

The grief still came, and it came fully. What planning removed was everything else we would have spent months second-guessing.

Three things to do now

1. Decide the logistics while your pet is well. Where do you want it to happen, who should be in the room, and what happens afterward: cremation, burial, a pet cemetery, aquamation. Ask your veterinarian now whether in-home euthanasia is available where you live, because most people learn it exists too late to choose it.

2. Find out this week whether your employer covers pet loss. Read the bereavement policy. If it says nothing about pets, Koryn's advice is to raise it before you need it, and to book grief support in advance.

3. Say the plan out loud to one person. Tell your partner, a friend, or your vet. If you live alone, Koryn suggests saying it out loud to yourself and then finding someone to repeat it to. A plan nobody else knows about is one you carry alone at the worst moment.

What we are actually preparing for

I spend most of my time on readiness for human loss. This conversation reframed something.

For a lot of adults, a pet is where end-of-life authority first lands in your hands. You decide about care, comfort, timing, and what happens to a body. Whatever you learn doing that becomes practice for the decisions waiting for you later, about a parent, a partner, or yourself.

That makes pet planning a real part of family preparedness. Decide while you are calm, write it down, and tell the people who will be standing there.

Koryn's closing advice was the simplest thing she said all episode. Your pet is still here. If they are still here, celebrate them every single minute.

Preparing does not steal time from that. It protects it.

The day will come when someone has to decide. Make sure that someone is not deciding for the first time.

Listen and take the next step

Listen to the full conversation with Koryn Greenspan on the Death and Dying in the Digital Age podcast. You can learn more about her work, including her 21-day Elevate Your Grief workbook, at The Parted Paw.

To identify gaps in your own legacy readiness, take ENDevo's free Peace of Mind Assessment.

Live fully, die ready.

This article is educational and does not provide legal, medical, veterinary, or mental health advice. Consult qualified professionals about your situation.