If you have ever felt slightly embarrassed by how hard a pet’s death hit you, ambushed by grief months later, unsure whether you were even allowed to feel it that deeply, there is now research that says your reaction was not an overreaction. It was grief, the clinical kind, and the official rulebooks have simply been declining to recognize it.
A study published in the journal PLOS One in early 2026 makes the case plainly: losing a pet can be every bit as devastating as losing a member of your family, and pet owners can meet the criteria for prolonged grief disorder. The catch is that, under current rules, they can qualify on paper and still be turned away from the diagnosis, for one reason only. Their loved one had four legs.
What prolonged grief disorder actually is
Prolonged grief disorder, or PGD, describes intense grief that does not ease with time, persisting past a year and interfering with daily life. It is a recognized clinical condition, but as the diagnostic manuals are written, it can only be officially assigned after the death of a human. Grief over an animal falls outside the door before anyone even measures it.
A team led by Dr. Philip Hyland at Maynooth University set out to test whether that exclusion holds up. Their answer was no.
The numbers that undercut the exclusion
The researchers surveyed 975 adults in the United Kingdom, and the results are hard to wave away. Among people who had lost a pet, 7.5 percent met the diagnostic threshold for PGD. That is roughly the same share who meet it after losing a close human friend, and it sits just behind the rates seen after the death of a grandparent at 8.3 percent, a sibling at 8.9 percent, or a partner at 9.1 percent.
The only losses that produced markedly higher rates were the ones almost everyone would predict: a parent, at 11.2 percent, and a child, at a staggering 21.3 percent. In other words, grieving a pet lands in the same statistical neighborhood as grieving most of the humans you love.
And when the team looked closer, they found no meaningful difference in how the symptoms of prolonged grief actually showed up, whether the person was mourning an animal or a human. The grief did not merely resemble the human version. It was, symptom for symptom, the same thing.
When the pet’s death is the hardest one
Perhaps the most striking finding is about ranking. When people who had experienced both kinds of loss were asked which bereavement had caused them the most distress, more than one in five pointed to the pet.
That is not a fringe result, and it fits what psychologists already understand about the bonds people build with animals: uncomplicated, daily, physically present, and free of the friction that often tangles human relationships. Hyland has argued that for a meaningful number of people, the loss of a pet genuinely is the worse loss, and that this tracks with everything we know about how deeply those bonds run.
The researchers were careful about limits. Their sample was modest, and they noted that the way a death happens can shape grief, especially for pet owners, who are often forced into an agonizing role human mourners rarely face: deciding whether and when to end a life through euthanasia. That added weight may color the grieving that follows.
Why a diagnosis on paper still matters
The study’s sharpest conclusion is not about statistics but about fairness. People who lose pets can satisfy every requirement for a PGD diagnosis and still be denied it purely because the departed was an animal. Hyland described that exclusion as scientifically misguided and, in a word he chose deliberately, callous.
The practical stakes are real. A diagnosis is often the key that unlocks care: it validates the suffering, and it opens the door to treatment and support that people grieving “only a pet” are frequently told they have no right to seek.
“The hardest conversations I have aren’t always about medicine, they’re about permission,” says Dr. Lena Park, a Pet Times veterinary contributor. “People apologize to me for crying over a cat the way they’d never apologize for crying over a person. I wish they wouldn’t. What this research confirms is what those of us in the exam room have watched for years: the grief is the same size. It deserves the same care.”
If you have carried a pet’s death longer and heavier than the people around you seemed to expect, this study is, in a sense, official backup. The grief was real. It still is. And you were never wrong to feel it.
Pet loss and grief are genuinely difficult subjects. If you’re struggling after the death of an animal you loved, you don’t have to manage it alone, and support and resources are available if you’d like help finding them.
References
- Hyland, P., et al. “No pets allowed: Evidence that prolonged grief disorder can occur following the death of a pet.” PLOS One, January 2026. journals.plos.org
- Maynooth University. “MU study finds death of a pet can be as intense as loss of a person.” maynoothuniversity.ie
- Euronews Health. “Grief after a pet’s death can be as long-lasting as losing a human loved one, study finds.” euronews.com
