[Credits: Featured image is “Rainbow Bridge” by Stella Violano]
The emotional complexity of losing a service dog partner remains largely unspoken, yet it’s one of the most challenging aspects of working with these remarkable animals. Making decisions about your service dog can come with a lot of emotional weight and often isn’t linear. Handlers often spend considerable time deciding whether to retire their service dog, as well as whether to train a successor service dog. In some cases, retirement may come unexpectedly due to the dog’s health or other circumstances; this may leave you having to not only grieve the loss of your dog as a work partner but also come to terms with illness and death.
The Paradox of Grief and Readiness
There is no way to make oneself emotionally ready to accept a new work partner into one’s life. It may be necessary for some owner-handlers to find a successor dog sooner rather than wait until they have had more time to process their grief. The paradoxical nature of this is worth discussing, as is knowing that regardless of your situation, you will need a healthy way to process grief. Having access to resources and support to do so is critical.
Beyond a Working Partnership
Finding a successor service dog is not as simple as having access to the right dog: the relationship that you have with your service dog extends far beyond seeing them as a work partner. Each handler’s journey with their service dog is deeply personal, shaped by countless shared experiences, challenges overcome together, and moments of profound connection that outsiders rarely witness.
The stories shared by handlers themselves often best illustrate the depth of these bonds and the complexity of saying goodbye.
Samson’s Story: Grieving an Unexpected Loss
When Samson passed away about two years ago, the first thing I thought when leaving the vet office was: “What do I do now?” I stood in the parking lot of the vet ER for a long time, shell shocked, until I was guided to the car by my partner and driven home. Every step I took felt deeply empty and strange without him by my side. It felt like I’d never actually experienced grief before the way I felt absolute life changing despair in those first days and weeks.
 A part of it was that his death was so unexpected and quick. I didn’t feel like I had proper time to prepare or provide the type of goodbye that I had (distantly) envisioned when the time should come. Samson had been in soft retirement for about 6 months, so I was growing more accustomed to being “alone” when going out, but when he passed I was suddenly flung into this reality where there was no choice. I was going to have to live life without him as my partner in ways I never planned for.
Healing Through Connection and Reflection
 Looking back, I can see how I tried to fill in my grief with problem-solving my disability. Without my service dog, my symptoms absolutely became worse, compounded by grief and loss. But I am also proud of the way I allowed myself – and continue to allow myself – to grieve him deeply.
One thing that helped me in those early months was to talk about him. I joined a pet loss support forum as well as a service-dog form and wrote out my experience and my raw, painful feelings and received support. I also supported others. I researched the cancer that took him and allowed myself to feel the emotions of anger, guilt, and self-compassion. I spoke to my therapist about it as much as I needed to. I had a wonderful support system with friends and family who allowed me to be devastatingly sad, and were also sad, too. They affirmed my grief and the special circumstance of losing him.Â
Continuing Bonds
Another thing that helped me feel connected was to imagine him with me wherever I went, still doing the tasks he would lovingly do, and mentally thank him for the work he has done for me. I see him everywhere, still. Especially because I currently work at the university where he helped me get through my graduate clinical internship and start to become the type of future clinician I wanted to be.
My office is the same office we sat in. I ride the elevators we rode in. And I walk the sidewalks we walked every single day. The students we counseled together are long since graduated, but a picture of him hangs on the wall in my office behind my desk where he would be laying if he were still here and working today. It’s bittersweet and the surprise of a pang of grief takes my breath away sometimes when I am not expecting it, but I know grief isn’t something to get rid of. I know it’s lifelong and spikes in unexpected ways, but I also know it comes from a place of even deeper love.Â
–Michelle
Share Your Story
We’d love to hear from you. If you’ve experienced the loss or retirement of a service dog and would like to share your story, we invite you to contribute to a future blog post. Your voice can help others feel seen and supported. Send your story to blog@atlasdog.org with the subject line “Grief Blog.”
Understanding Disenfranchised Grief
The emotional bonds between working animals and their humans are commonly very strong. And having a working dog by your side, woven into the fabric of your day-to-day life, assisting you with your needs, is a unique relationship in and of itself. When this partnership ends, handlers often find themselves grieving alone, as the outside world struggles to comprehend what they’ve truly lost. The grief that follows the end of such an intimate partnership deserves recognition and support.
The loss of a dog is what we refer to as disenfranchised grief: grief that is not necessarily accepted by society to be normal to express or process, therefore making it more difficult and even isolating for those who are experiencing it.
Processing grief looks very different from one person to the next, and there is no “correct” way to move through the stages of grief. Grief often brings up feelings of shock, denial, depression, anxiety, anger, and guilt, among others, and each person will move through these feelings at different times, often over and over again, while processing loss.
Finding Support and Resources
Accessing resources specifically designed to address disenfranchised grief can be invaluable during this difficult time. While resources focused exclusively on service dog loss remain limited, growing support exists through animal loss organizations that increasingly recognize the unique challenges handlers face. These organizations understand that service dogs are working partners, not pets, yet the grief counseling principles and support structures they offer are highly applicable and beneficial for service dog handlers.
Specialized Support
Association for Pet Loss and Bereavement: Losing a Service Dog This article provides insight into the complexity of processing service dog loss.
Argus Institute of Colorado State University Comprehensive pet loss support and counseling resources, including end-of-life decision-making help.
Lap of Love  Offers support with decision-making, individual pet loss support sessions, as well as a variety of free and low-cost support group sessions. Many attendees of these groups are coping with the loss of a service animal.
Human Animal-Bond Support Hotlines
Cornell University Pet Loss Support Hotline: (607) 218-7457
Tufts University Pet Loss Support Hotline: (508) 839-7966
Crisis Support Hotline: *988 If you are experiencing a mental health crisis and need to access support right away, this is a general crisis support hotline available 24/7/365.Â
For Further Reading
The Loss of a Service Dog Through Death or Retirement: Experiences and Impact on Partners Research article from the International Journal of Forensic Mental
Sarah Pellizzari, the author, is a licensed clinical social worker and professional dog trainer based in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and the owner of Southern Colorado Animal Assisted Therapy & Training.
About Atlas Assistance Dogs
Atlas Assistance Dogs is a non-profit organization that fundamentally expands access to assistance dogs. We support people with disabilities to train and certify their own service dog using positive, ethical training methods. At Atlas, we believe anyone who would benefit from a qualified assistance dog should be able to have one.Â
We work with people with a wide range of disabilities who wish to train their own service dog as well as offer a comprehensive Academy for professional trainers wanting to become service dog trainers. For more information about Atlas’ Client Certification program or other training services, please visit www.atlasdog.org or contact info@atlasdog.org.
