Losing a pet is a unique kind of heartbreak, one that can feel both profound and invisible. To help bring comfort, we spoke with Patricia Denys, MFA, a compassionate voice in the world of pet grief and healing.
Patricia is an artist, animal activist, creative director of Animal Culture magazine, educator, yogi, vegan, and an interfaith, interspecies animal chaplain ordained by the Compassion Consortium. She’s also a great friend of MUTTS.
In this conversation, Patricia shares her perspective as an animal chaplain on navigating loss, offering support, and finding gentle ways to honor the journey. Whether your pet recently crossed the Rainbow Bridge or you’re reflecting on a loss from long ago, we hope this conversation brings you some clarity, comfort, and connection.
Understanding the Role of an Animal Chaplain
Can you explain what an animal chaplain does?
An animal chaplain helps animals live their fullest lives and helps them transition when it is time. They offer help to animal parents, animal care workers, and animal people in general, navigate stress, grief, and compassion fatigue. Animal chaplains also encourage stronger human-animal (interspecies) bonds, individually and communally. Animal chaplains offer help with end-of-life care, decisions and rituals (interfaith), and bereavement support. An animal chaplain is also there for celebrations and victories for all animals and our planet!
How did you become an animal chaplain, and what drew you to this work?
Our magazine, Animal Culture, interviewed Reverend Sarah Bowen, co-founder of Compassion Consortium and Executive Director of their Animal Chaplaincy Training Program. The program is interfaith, interspiritual, and interspecies, which was important to me. Sarah was a wonderful interviewee, and I became quite interested in the program after connecting with her. It seemed intriguing and intelligent, and an organic next step on my path of a lifetime working with animals. It was quite a commitment of study and well worth it. My fellow students were amazing, compassionate people. It was a very positive experience.
What kinds of support do you offer to people who are grieving the loss of a pet?
The first thing is listening, while being a calming presence for different needs from different people. Using gentle questioning to see what arises for someone. Reminding people that laughter is good and healthy, and part of healing. And, working on realizing that one does not stop loving someone after the transition.
Hospice and Palliative Care for Companion Animals, edited by Amir Shanan, Jessica Pierce, and Tamara Shearer, is an excellent book. In one of the essays, the writer calls mourning, “…a transition from loving in presence to loving in absence.” We work on that as animal chaplains.
Why Saying ‘Goodbye’ to a Pet Is So Painful
Why do we often feel that losing a pet is just as painful — if not more so — than losing a human loved one?
Those of us who have experienced the pain of the loss of a companion animal, or any animal, know this pain all too well. Humans have intense bonds with an animal they love or one that is a part of their lives somehow. Animals’ lives are shorter than humans’. The shock of that short life being over can be very hard to process.
Companion animals also demonstrate stability and routine. A big void is created when these things come to an end. Animals are sentient. They are aware. We see that time and time again. We want to be with them and protect them; they are our family.
How can we respond to people who say, “It was just an animal” or who don’t understand pet grief?
It is very disappointing to hear, “It was just an animal,” from anyone, especially someone you respect or that is close to you. It is the last thing anyone wants to hear since it is so insensitive to one’s feelings and to the memory of the one who has passed. What someone grieving needs is validation that their feelings of loss for such a profound bond with an animal, are understandable and real. You may choose to say that or not.
What are some healthy ways to process and express grief after losing a pet?
Definitely seek support from friends, family, your veterinarian, and/or an animal chaplain. Animal grief is in our mainstream now. There is no shame in asking for help, ever. One needs to talk about the loss. It’s real.
Consider taking a workshop on animal loss or creating a shrine, memorial, art piece, or photo book. Volunteering is also a great, healthy way to heal.
Do you have any advice for someone who feels stuck in their grief or like they should have “moved on” by now?
“Moving on” is a very individual thing. There is no time limit on processing through one’s grief. Accepting the loss and adjusting one’s life accordingly takes time. You need to take your time. If you feel that you are experiencing symptoms of prolonged grief, a therapist can be of help.
Helpful Ways to Honor a Pet’s Memory
How can rituals or memorials help with healing? Do you have any suggestions for meaningful ways to honor a pet’s memory?
Oh, there are so many wonderful things you can do! Humans have always embraced rituals. It is a way to connect to something. A ritual may be something within your religious practices, your own spirituality that you find comforting, or the daily ritual of taking a walk with your dog. That is a ritual for both of you!
A memorial can be a powerful took for healing. It is a coping tool. It is a way to process. Creating an altar on a table for the one you have lost that includes photographs, something that was meaningful for that animal such as a toy, or adding flowers can be a positive expression of your feelings of loss. Re-wilding a small garden that encourages other animals to visit, or creating a small shrine you can carry with you are other ideas. Keeping a journal of your thoughts or sketches can also have a profound effect on healing. The simple act of writing to your loved one — what they meant to you, how much they are missed, what you enjoyed most about them, for example, is often a comfort.
As an artist and a teacher of art, I know creating art can be cathartic and healing, I conduct art workshops on loss and celebration of animals and the planet. They are for non-artists especially. It has been an incredible experience to see what people can create as a way to work out their feelings, and usually, how anxious they are to share with each other. It is a bonding experience about the power of love.
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I remember all this, plus it was Bill Moyers who, in the questioning concern over the passage of USA PATRIOT, reminded us that the US Flag is our (non-Bushies) flag, too. Though a good run, it’s a sad loss.
A Daily Reid: A good man has gone. (non-Bushies in peace, Bill Moyers by Joy-Ann Reid
A seminal broadcaster and a human rights champion, Bill Moyers was the best of the mainstream media Read on Substack
My mom used to watch Bill Moyers, so I did, too.
Philomena controlled The TV … meaning the television in the family room, which up until I was in high school was the only one we kids had access to. She had a small TV in her bedroom, which I can now admit I would sneak into her room and watch, sprawled out across her bed, which I carefully refluffed and reassembled when I was done. But when she was home, and not at one of her three jobs, The TV was made for the nightly news, the Sunday shows, her favorite primetime shows (Dallas, Knots Landing, Fantasy Island (I can still hear her giggling uncontrollably every time Ricardo Montalbán yelled “Tattoo! Tattoo!” as if she was hearing it for the first time) The Love Boat, The Jeffersons and All in the Family among them, plus any movie with Harry Belafonte or Sidney Poitier in it, and Nightline, which I got to watch with her, starting in the sixth grade.
And also PBS, where Bill Moyers was The Man and Bill Moyers’ Journal was must see TV. Here’s a part of his obituary from the Associated Press, as he has passed away at the ripe old age of 91.
Bill Moyers, the former White House press secretary who became one of television’s most honored journalists, masterfully using a visual medium to illuminate a world of ideas, died Thursday at age 91.
Moyers died in a New York City hospital, according to longtime friend Tom Johnson, the former CEO of CNN and an assistant to Moyers during Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration. He did not cite Moyers’ cause of death.
Moyer’s career ranged from youthful Baptist minister to deputy director of the Peace Corps, from Johnson’s press secretary to newspaper publisher, senior news analyst for “The CBS Evening News” and chief correspondent for “CBS Reports.”
But it was for public television that Moyers produced some of TV’s most cerebral and provocative series. In hundreds of hours of PBS programs, he proved at home with subjects ranging from government corruption to modern dance, from drug addiction to media consolidation, from religion to environmental abuse.
In 1988, Moyers produced “The Secret Government” about the Iran-Contra scandal during the Reagan administration and simultaneously published a book under the same name. Around that time, he galvanized viewers with “Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth,” a series of six one-hour interviews with the prominent religious scholar. The accompanying book became a best-seller.
His televised chats with poet Robert Bly almost single-handedly launched the 1990s Men’s Movement, and his 1993 series “Healing and the Mind” had a profound impact on the medical community and on medical education.
In a medium that supposedly abhors “talking heads” — shots of subject and interviewer talking — Moyers came to specialize in just that. He once explained why: “The question is, are the talking heads thinking minds and thinking people? Are they interesting to watch? I think the most fascinating production value is the human face.”
What was great about Mr. Moyers, apart from his very human face and soothing voice, plus his eclectic work bio, which I can absolutely relate to, was his humanity. He never shied away from asserting it, for fear of being viewed as not “objective.” Here’s an example from way back in 2015:
And here he is in an excellent interview with the Great Lawrence O’Donnell, talking about the then-president, Donald Trump 1.0 and the deep, open sore that exists in place of his soul.
Bill Moyers was one of one. His crystal clear voice and integrity are an example for all of us who are toiling out here in these media streets.
Deepest condolences to Bill Moyers’ family. May his memory be a blessing … and a lesson.
June 24, 1948 In Washington, D.C. President Harry Truman signed the Selective Service Act, creating a system for registering all men ages 18-25, and drafting them into the armed forces as the nation’s military needs required.
June 24, 1948 In Germany, the Soviet Union denied permission for Allied (U.S., France or Great Britain) forces to travel over Soviet-controlled territory to reach Allied-controlled West Berlin; the roads were allegedly closed for repairs and electricity was cut off to West Berlin. This was a blockade of food and all other supplies to the western enclave within East Germany and its population of more than two million.
June 24, 1970 The U.S. Senate voted overwhelmingly to repeal the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. The resolution, which had authorized the president “to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States,” was used by President Lyndon Johnson, absent a formal congressional, and constitutional, declaration of war, to justify open-ended pursuit of war in Vietnam. The resolution was passed in August, 1964 following a provocation by the U.S. destroyer Maddox in North Vietnamese territorial waters, which was portrayed as aggressive military action by North Vietnamese PT boats.
June 24, 1980 A general strike was held in El Salvador against death squads, primarily military or paramilitary units carrying out political assassinations and intimidation as part of the Salvadoran government’s counterinsurgency strategy. Salvadoran death squad destroying a village The U.S. government helped fund and train Salvadoran police forces. Questioned about the nature of the aid in a Senate hearing, Undersecretary of State for Latin American Affairs Elliott Abrams said, “I think that government has earned enough trust, as I think we have earned enough trust, not to be questioned, frankly, about exporting torture equipment. But I would certainly be in favor of giving it to them if they want it.” Noam Chomsky on El Salvador
June 23, 1683 “Tamanend,” sculpture by Raymon Sandoval, 1995, Front & Market Street in Philadelphia. Chief Tamanend (The Affable), leader of the Pennsylvania’s thirteen Lenni-Lenape tribes, and other chiefs went to Philadelphia to meet with William Penn. Penn wished to buy four parcels of land (most of current Montgomery County), and the chiefs agreed to the sale, each making their mark on the deeds which had been translated for them. Soon thereafter, Penn met with Tamanend at Shakamaxon under a large tree later known as the Treaty Elm. Penn said, “We have come here with a hearty desire to live with you in peace . . . We believe you will deal kindly and justly by us, and we will deal kindly and justly by you . . . .” Tamanend offered, “We will live in love with William Penn and his children, as long as the creeks and rivers run, and while the sun, moon, and stars endure.”
June 23, 1963 Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. led a massive march down Detroit’s Woodward Avenue followed by a speech to a rally in Cobo Hall. The speech was essentially the same as that he delivered from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. two months later, known as “I Have a Dream.” Photo of King speaking in Detroit from the Wayne State University’s Reuther Archive.
June 23, 1966 High school students in Grenada, Mississippi, tried to purchase tickets in the downstairs “white” section of the local movie theatre. Black moviegoers had always been required to sit in the balcony under Jim Crow segregationist laws. When they were refused tickets, they sat down on the sidewalk in front of the theatre. Fifteen were arrested, including Jim Bulloch, a Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC) organizer, who was charged with “inciting to riot.” Jim Bulloch, one of the SCLC organizers in Grenada, Mississippi Grenada Mississippi, 1966, Chronology of a Movement
June 23, 1972 Life magazine published a photo by Vietnamese photographer Nick Ut of children running from an attack with Napalm, an incendiary chemical weapon used widely by U.S. forces to burn out the jungle, thus eliminating cover (foliage) for North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops. Napalm, a sticky mixture of gasoline, polystyrene and benzene that burns at very high temperature, had been used in WWII and Korea. Read about the photograph
June 23, 1972 The Education Amendments of 1972, commonly known as Title IX, became U.S. law, prohibiting sex discrimination at educational institutions. More infoText of the law
June 23, 1973 The International Court of Justice granted an injunction, requested by the Australia and New Zealand governments, against French nuclear weapons testing in the South Pacific.
After reflecting further on Piers Akerman’s recent assertion that my analysis of the situation in the Middle East was “utter bullshit” and not tethered to reality, I realised how angry that made me feel. As a white, elderly, Anglo-Saxon male, I believe I have earned the right to be most distressed by Western privilege and the arrogance which so often distorts reality, much like a fairground mirror. It paints Palestinians as irrational terrorists and Iranians as fanatical mobs, erasing the colonial fingerprints smeared across their histories. That is the real bullshit.
Take Iran: a democracy overthrown in 1953 by Anglo-American operatives for the crime of nationalizing its oil. The CIA’s coup reinstated the Shah—a tyrant whose torture squads (trained by SAVAK and Mossad) disappeared thousands. When Iranians finally revolted in 1979, the West recoiled not at the Shah’s brutality but at the loss of a pliant client. Now, the same powers that strangled Iranian democracy lecture its theocrats on human rights—a grotesque pantomime.
I am sorry to say that Netanyahu embodies this hypocrisy. He rails against Iran’s “aggression” while annexing Palestinian land, arms settlers who burn olive groves, and starves Gaza into submission. His hysteria over Iran’s nuclear program (still unproven after decades of sanctions) mirrors the WMD lies he helped sell in 2003. Remember his cartoon bomb stunt at the UN? Pure theatre. What truly terrifies him isn’t ayatollahs with centrifuges but a regional order where Israel isn’t the unchecked hegemon.
The West has perfected a sinister alchemy of psychological inversion—an Orwellian recalibration of language that transforms resistance into terrorism, domination into peace, and sovereignty into existential threat. When Hamas fires rockets, it’s decried as barbarism, while Israel’s 56-year occupation of Palestinian land vanishes from view like morning mist. Apartheid walls that carve up stolen territory are rebranded as “security measures”, their concrete brutality softened by bureaucratic euphemisms. Iran’s civilian nuclear program sparks apocalyptic warnings, while Israel’s arsenal of 90 thermonuclear warheads—never inspected, never acknowledged—sits quietly in the Negev desert. This linguistic jujitsu doesn’t merely describe reality; it manufactures it, ensuring Western audiences see only mirrors and shadows where power and oppression stand plain as day.
I urge you to consider that none of this emerged in a vacuum. The US and UK engineered the Middle East’s instability—from Sykes-Picot’s arbitrary borders to arming Saddam against Iran, then crying havoc when blowback came. October 7th didn’t erupt from ancient hatreds; it was the predictable eruption of a people caged, humiliated, and drone-struck for generations. To focus solely on Hamas’ atrocities while ignoring Israel’s 56-year occupation is like condemning a burning man for screaming.
There can be no meaningful progress without first confronting uncomfortable truths. The West must reckon with its destructive legacy—the CIA’s 1953 coup in Iran that strangled democracy, the 1967 war that birthed an occupation now in its sixth decade, and the 2003 invasion of Iraq based on fabricated WMD claims. These aren’t ancient histories but open wounds that continue to shape regional dynamics. Pretending otherwise isn’t diplomacy; it’s willful blindness.
Netanyahu’s hysterical warnings about “existential threats” must be exposed for what they are—not genuine security concerns but a naked fear of justice. His real nightmare isn’t Iranian centrifuges but the collapse of the apartheid system that preserves Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean. Every settlement expansion, every Gaza blockade, and every racist nation-state law reveals the true project: not coexistence but permanent domination.
We must fearlessly reject the false symmetry of “both sides” narratives. While Israelis live with the psychological trauma of potential violence, Palestinians endure the daily reality of military checkpoints, land theft, and indiscriminate bombardment. Comparing Hamas rockets to Israel’s occupation is like comparing a slingshot to a tank battalion—technically both weapons, but existing in fundamentally different universes of destructive power. True peace begins when we stop equating the oppressed with their oppressors.
The future demands more than temporary ceasefires. It requires dismantling the myths that let the West play both arsonist and firefighter. Otherwise, we’re just counting the days until the next explosion.
Melissa Hortman has died. John Hoffman and his wife have survived surgery.
Here is a fast post before I take a breath, make my signs, and go outside to scream my head off.
Someone or someones dressed as law enforcement — or law enforcement! with ICE covering their faces, there’s really no way to know anymore who is who! — has gone and shot Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota. The Minnesota House is split 67-67, and the Minnesota Senate has a plus-one majority for Democratic-Farm-Labor. These are targeted assassinations.
Sen. John Hoffman (DFL-Champlin) and Minnesota House DFL Leader Melissa Hortman of Brooklyn Park are reportedly in grave condition. Reportedly, both of their spouses were shot too. Update 10:50 eastern:KSTP is reporting that Hortman and her husband Mark have died.
Update 11:00 eastern: Per an officer at the press conference above, officers responding to the shooting at Hoffman’s house asked Brooklyn Park officers to go check Hortman’s house — out of a vague foreboding. Those officers found the fake cop coming out of her house, when he immediately shot at them and went back inside.
Update 11:30 eastern: NOWHERE in this CNN story on the “politically motivated assassination” does it tell its readers that the victims were Democrats. Why do you suppose that is?
Everything is escalating. Nothing is all right.
The last time someone tried to kill Democrats, it was a lunatic who bashed Nancy Pelosi’s octogenarian husband in the head with a hammer. This was considered very hilarious by our president, Donald Trump.
June 12, 1963 In the driveway outside his home in Jackson, Mississippi, civil rights leader Medgar Evers was shot to death by white supremacist Byron De la Beckwith, who was not convicted until 1994 after an extensive investigation by Jackson, Mississippi’s Clarion-Ledger newspaper. He was tried and acquitted twice by with all-white juries, members of which had been influenced by the Ku Klux Klan. Following one of the trials, then-Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett stood by Beckwith’s side and shook his hand. The whole sad story The role of the Clarion-Ledger
June 12, 1964 Nelson Mandela, a 46-year-old lawyer and a leader of the opposition to South Africa’s racially separatist apartheid system, was convicted of sabotage in the Rivonia Trial and sentenced to life imprisonment. Nelson Mandela, 1963 From Mandela’s statement to the court prior to sentencing: “ I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.” The trial of Mandela and seven other African National Congress compatriots
June 12, 1967 The U.S. Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia struck down state miscegenation laws, those that prohibited interracial marriage, as violations of a person’s right to equal protection under the law, as guaranteed under the 14th amendment. Mildred and Richard Loving In June of 1958, Richard Loving and Mildred Jeter, a white man and an African-American woman, had married in Washington, D.C. Upon return to their home state of Virginia, the couple was arrested, convicted of a felony, and sentenced to a year in prison. The appeal of their conviction led to the decision. Contemporary thoughts on the case “The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.” From Chief Justice Earl Warren’s majority opinion in Loving v. Virginia Watch trailer for the movie “Loving” (recommended)
June 12, 1982 In the world’s largest-ever peace demonstration (until the U.S. invasion of Iraq), one million rallied in New York City’s Central Park to support the newly formed Nuclear Freeze Campaign which called for a halt to all nuclear weapons testing worldwide. The biggest demonstration on earth (until the global anti-Iraq war march of Feb 15 2003) took place in New York on June 12, 1982, when one million people gathered in support of the second UN Special Session on Disarmament and to protest nuclear weapons. The origins of the Nuclear Freeze Campaign The demonstration
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