Dr. Liz lost her rescue dog, Zoey, in January of 2025 and then her 3 year old cat, Susu, in April of 2025 unexpectedly. The Lap of Love, an organization that provides in home euthanasia for pets in the United States, veterinary hospice, consultation, and pet loss support has been a huge help to her in navigating the pet loss experience.

In this episode, Cristiana Saia of Lap of Love joins us to discuss pet loss and different ways to navigate it.

We talk about:

  • The grief process
  • Our social contracts with our beloved animals
  • The Golden Window when a pet is not going to get better but is not suffering a lot yet.
  • The process of guilt when it’s planned euthanasia or an accidental death
  • Behavioral euthanasia (pets struggling with severe mental health or behavioral issues)
  • Anticipatory grief when you know when a pet is going to pass away but hasn’t yet
  • The different support groups and individual support that Lap of Love offers both free and low cost

To see a drawing of Zoey as a mermaid (if your podcast player does not show Episode Art), go to Dr. Liz’s website and episode 325.

About Lap of Love

Lap of Love offers in home euthanasia for pets all over the United States, veterinary hospice, consultation, and pet loss support. They have a wealth of information on their website about assessing your pet’s quality of life, options, and about support.  You can find them at https://www.lapoflove.com or by calling 855-352-5683 (US phone number).

The wonderful support groups, one-on-one coaching, and resource page is at https://petloss.lapoflove.com

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About Dr. Liz

Interested in hypnosis with Dr. Liz? Schedule your free consultation at https://www.drlizhypnosis.com

Winner of numerous awards including Top 100 Moms in Business, Dr. Liz provides psychotherapy, hypnotherapy, and hypnosis to people wanting a fast, easy way to transform all around the world. She has a PhD in Clinical Psychology, is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC) and has special certification in Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy. Specialty areas include Anxiety, Insomnia, and Deeper Emotional Healing.

A problem shared is a problem halved. In person and online hypnosis and CBT for healing and transformation.

Listened to in over 140 countries, Hypnotize Me is the podcast about hypnosis, transformation, and healing. Certified hypnotherapist and Licensed Mental Health Counselor, Dr. Liz Bonet, discusses hypnosis and interviews professionals doing transformational work.

Thank you for tuning in!

Transcript

0:00:00 – Dr. Liz
Hi everyone. Today we have Christiana Sia. Is it Sia? Yep, okay, great, I said it right. I made a guess To talk about pet loss and grief, and I found her through the Lap of Love. It’s lapoflove.com, and they offer all kinds of services and I originally I found them because I wanted an at-home euthanasia of my, my dog that I had had for 10 years, little Zoey dog, which, if you’ve listened to the podcast before, you’ve heard me talk about her. But then I discovered they offered all kinds of support groups, some of them free, some of them extremely low cost, and I found that they were really supportive of me through my grief process. So Christiana is here to help us talk about pet loss in particular. Let’s start with how you got into this work.

0:00:56 – Cristiana Saia
Hi, I’m really honored to be here and although, for the reason that brought you to find Lap of Love, I’m really grateful that you did reach out, you know, because I think that sometimes there’s just not a lot of airtime for pet loss. Going through my own grief experience in my early 20s really made me learn firsthand that people are kind of uncomfortable with grief and a lot of people will say things that aren’t so helpful and really what we often need is somebody who is not afraid to be it like in the sad not in the sadness with us, but be with us while we’re sad and not try to quote, unquote, fix it or add silver linings. Yeah, just yeah. Through that and having the right support you know being very privileged to have the right support through that and then, through the years, recognizing that I am comfortable sitting in that space, and so you know, I found lap of love.

The pandemic happened and I think everybody went through this existential crisis of reevaluating where they’re at, and so I reached out to lap of love to apply just to, you know, be a one of the people who answer the phone and make appointments, and from there I added on to my continuing education. After you know, I got my degree, my undergrad degree, at University of Florida and then some continuing education in grief support and, more specifically, pet loss support, and we founded the pet loss support team at Lap of Love. Because Lap of Love, as you said, really people think of it oftentimes first as in-home euthanasia and hospice. But we do have now our own department, really just for honoring that grief, and you don’t have to have used our services to you know, just reach out and get some of that support. To you know, just reach out and get some of that support. So I’ve been doing this with lap of love for about five years and it’s been just yeah, an incredible honor, fantastic, great, great.

0:03:14 – Dr. Liz
Do you find that people are seem to be more comfortable with pet loss than like human loss, like talking about it?

I’ll give you a background. I heard you mention like people really uncomfortable with grief and in general I think that’s so true. My volunteer at the Jacksonville Humane Society every Sunday in the cat area and I cannot tell you how many times within a two-hour period I will hear we just lost our cat and they’ll tell me all about the cat, or they lost a dog, and so it’s. I’ve been surprised about how comfortable people are sharing that actually. So do you think it differs?

0:03:59 – Cristiana Saia
Well, you know, I think that the main difference I’m hearing in that example is people want to talk about their grief. Yes, they really do, and and sometimes people hesitate to engage with people who are grieving or ask about it because they’re afraid they might say the wrong thing. Or I don’t want to. You know, I don’t want to make them sad or, you know, whatever that might be. But you know, surveys time and time again have shown people want to talk about their grief and their loved ones, but they just want a place that they can do that without judgment or without you know, making somebody else squeamish.

I think we know that depends on if it’s a pet person or not. There are people who I think get it right. I think we know that, but there’s, we already don’t have the best grief etiquette in general in our society. Yeah, I think that sometimes when somebody doesn’t quote unquote, get it what happens is maybe they are less like squeamish about it but almost more nonchalant about it, which can be true. Yeah, of not just not really treating it um as massive of a loss and impact in our lives as as it truly is.

0:05:17 – Dr. Liz
That is true. I have found that, like you would never hear someone say why don’t you just go find another child? Can you go adopt another child? Like never Can you imagine that would be so awful for someone to say. But yet when you lose a dog or a cat or I mean there’s lots of animals other than dogs and cats that people lose. My older daughter had little mice and oh my gosh mice live about two years If you’re lucky.  She would cry and cry during the first ones and then she’s like I sort of got used to it having to put them down. But there’s all kinds of pets that people grieve over. But yeah, often you would hear are you going to get another dog? And it’s like, yeah, you hear that often versus you would never hear that with human loss.

0:06:06 – Cristiana Saia
Yeah. Or even just the confusion of somebody, not even like you know, telling somebody I’m having a hard day, you know, I just put my dog down or, you know, insert loved one, and sometimes just the confusion and the non-validation of that, just the confusion and the non-validation of that, cause sometimes there are people who maybe they don’t have to have gone through it themselves, but the recognition is important and we don’t always get that in pet loss.

0:06:38 – Dr. Liz
True, very true. Yeah, I cried for months like every day after I put my dog down, and that was January of 2025. And then, um, then my cat unexpectedly died in April of 2025, like just a couple months later and we’re recording this in August, it’ll probably air in September 2025, but it was months where I was like, oh my gosh, I miss her so much and I couldn’t look at pictures of her at first, where some people have the opposite reaction they want to look at pictures a lot and that’s a comfort for them, but for me I couldn’t. But then I gradually got to the place where it wasn’t a daily kind of thing for me and I could look at pictures. I actually ordered one and framed it, and that was really helpful for me. And I could look at pictures actually ordered when unframed it, and that that was really helpful for me. So, yeah, people have different reactions, but often it is, uh, minimize the pets.

0:07:37 – Cristiana Saia
Yeah, and people, I think, also want to push us along. Um, you know cause? It’s like you said, eventually you were able to, you know, find that photo and frame it. But it’s one of those. Eventually you were able to, you know, find that photo and frame it. But it’s one of those things where we really need a lot of grace and honestly trust that we will get there right Support and trust that we will get there without people being like, oh wow, it’s been a week and you know she’s still crying, or whatever that might be. It’s just a matter of every person. What we need in grief. Sometimes there’s equal and opposite, like you said with the pictures, but yeah, that’s what it is. It’s just like offering patience, grace and trust that somebody will get there if they, especially if they’re supported through it.

0:08:19 – Dr. Liz
Can you talk some about the guilt or questions that come up when someone does have to euthanize a dog, even if it’s planned? I found myself in and I had a friend that went through it pretty closely after me who had to put her dog down too. We actually got our dogs around the same time and so we both had guilt, even knowing this is the right decision. It’s actually lap of love that helped me after Zoe’s death because it was the only website I found that actually had a questionnaire that said oh whoa, with these symptoms you should be thinking. . . . You should be having some serious talks with your vet.

I don’t think they say directly you should put the dog down but it’s really like you should talk to your vet, whereas I had downloaded questionnaires and you’re supposed to rate their quality of life and I never felt like I got any kind of real solid answer. And I was filling out this questionnaire because I had some guilt afterwards. And it said you know, it had different levels, that it gives and that helped me feel validated, like I did make the right decision at the right time. Yeah, so often there’s a timing issue there that I think people feel guilty for, but can you talk about that from an expert opinion?

0:09:42 – Cristiana Saia
Yeah, yeah, you know I want to start first by like this idea of the right time. You know, I’ll kind of take this idea from my colleague Kelly, who I believe you’ve met in a group before. You know she’s brought up this idea of when we think of the right time we think of, let’s say, another scenario. You know, I finally found the right guy, I got the right job, I finally find the right apartment. There’s usually like a good feeling attached to it, right? But we don’t really get that when it comes to death.

And grief you know, like sometimes there’s that expectation that it’s gonna, it’s gonna feel like the right time, and I think that that’s kind of just an important to differentiate when just that word in our head has that connection to it, where we want that feeling.

And so there’s also this idea that our vets use a lot of called the golden window, in which they’re at a place where their quality of life is not going to get better of life is is not going to get better, um, but they’re not actively suffering yet, right where it’s not like an emergency, um, a trip to the emergency room, and that’s a really difficult one to see, one because our pets can’t talk to us. Yeah, you know, wouldn’t it be nice if we could just say, hey, buddy, like are you, are you really tired, or um, but of course it’s like for me. I’ve asked that. And then what do they do? You’re talking to them, so they perk up, you know. And so I think a few things is recognizing that, even if they are really, really unwell, we are their people, we’re their favorite person you know, so if you’re really sick and your favorite person walks into the room, even if you’re not feeling well, you’re going to lift your head up.

You’re going to be like, hey, you know, I missed you, even if it’s just been an hour in the other room.

0:11:40 – Dr. Liz
And that can be confusing.

0:11:41 – Cristiana Saia
That can be really confusing. So I think that the the communication aspect, and we’re so intuitive with our pets, you know, I pride myself on knowing when my dog has to go to the bathroom without even, you know, I’m like, oh, I know, I know what that look is, um, and we start to kind of question that intuition as we get closer to the end, you know, it feels less like obvious and that confidence gets rocked a little bit. Okay, that really makes a difference. And then, as far as the guilt of euthanasia, like you said, on paper totally makes sense, absolutely. Yet we still have that questioning. And you know, I’ll speak to myself. I think I shared with you.

We just put our, our eldest. I always call my dogs my firstborn sons. We put our eldest, um to rest last week and me being the, you know, my focus is anticipatory grief, you know, in my work. And so, um, even knowing all the things, I had a split second moment, I’m like, oh, you know, knowing all the things, I had a split second moment, I’m like, oh, you know, I don’t know. I don’t think there’s a way to not feel that. But yeah, for me I think that it’s this idea that when we make a list of our most cherished loved ones. The majority of us are going to have a lot of humans on there.

Even if it’s just like our foundation, right, our parents are the, our grownups, whoever was there, just you know, recognizing the people that we call for. Those were, those were grownups. Those were humans, yeah, and so when we have our pet, they’re going to be at the top of that list, yeah, and differentiating that they’re not human can be triggering for some people, because there’s this association that, well, if I mentioned that they’re not human, that makes them like on a lower tier, and I think it’s important to recognize that. No, it does not put them on a lower tier, that there’s a different social contract.

0:13:49 – Dr. Liz
Oh yeah, yeah, they’re sort of on a higher tier to me because they’re not human, exactly.

0:13:54 – Cristiana Saia
Absolutely, absolutely Like I’m closer with my dog than, honestly, most pretty much everybody you know sometimes my, my husband and now my child is.

0:14:06 – Dr. Liz
You know they’re, they’re right there with them but yeah Right, I was taking this graduate school class. At one point I had to go back after I graduated, about 10 years after I graduated take some classes just to get my license. And I was in this class where we were. I don’t know why the exercise was this, but it was like okay, who would you rescue first from the fire? Common question and I remember the woman beside me who was like in her, let’s say, late thirties. She had three kids, a husband, and she was debating between the dog and the husband. This is before I had my dog. I was like that is so crazy. But looking back now I can still look back and that’s probably been I don’t know 15 years or something and I’m like, oh, I totally get it.

0:14:57 – Cristiana Saia
Once I had my dog. Yeah, exactly, you know.

0:15:00 – Dr. Liz
I’m pretty sure.

0:15:01 – Cristiana Saia
I picked the dog Exactly, and one thing that we don’t do for our humans is choose euthanasia for them. Yeah Right, we don’t make that decision for our humans.

0:15:13 – Dr. Liz
Right.

0:15:14 – Cristiana Saia
And so, because we associate this bond, this trust, this responsibility with our closest loved ones, which are often human, that you know, with our pets it feels unnatural, even if we know it’s our responsibility, right. And so I think it’s just important to recognize that feeling is so normal, even if, logically, like we can’t think our way out of that feeling, oftentimes we can give ourselves grace.

0:15:43 – Dr. Liz
Yes, yeah, I definitely tried to think my way out of it.

0:15:46 – Cristiana Saia
Yeah, right, cause. Then what happens is we have a lot of shoulds. You know, I’ve a client once said like you know, oh, we need to stop “should-ing” on ourselves, right, yeah, right, you know. And so it’s like, oh, I feel this guilt and I, but I know that this is the right thing. So I’m just going to kind of say, okay, you feel this, and can I be okay with recognizing I feel this and at the same time, I know that I’m doing the most loving, compassionate thing, even if it doesn’t feel that way.

0:16:17 – Dr. Liz
Yeah, so it’s. Holding the both Like these are going to be really hard and uncomfortable feelings and at the same time, I can. I can have the inner knowing that I’m doing my best here. This is the time that is chosen. This is it Right? Yeah.

0:16:34 – Cristiana Saia
One of our last responsibilities. If you know, if that’s the way that it works out for us, not everybody gets that opportunity to say goodbye. On the flip side, I’ve also had lots of people have immense guilt for not being able to make that decision and for them waiting too long or it being an accident, right. So I think that the guilt comes up no matter what we find us humans. We’d love to find a way for it because, you know, that gives us some control, says we could have, we could have done this different. We could. However, I’m feeling right now it could be different. If only I had waited or not waited, or done this treatment, you know, but with our humans, we also don’t decide what they eat every day.

We don’t decide when they go potty, we don’t decide, you know, who they’re going to play, maybe when our children are young. But even then they grow up and eventually start deciding those things for themselves. Right yeah, children are young, but even then they grow up and eventually start deciding those things for themselves, right yeah. And we don’t second guess ourselves too often, you know, when we do that, recognizing that like, yeah, that’s our, it’s their job to love us and their job to just like live in this moment, remind us what that’s like, and it’s our job to make the hard decisions, and they trust us for that.

0:17:44 – Dr. Liz
Yes, true, yeah, there is a famous author and I’m blanking on her name. I’m not great with author names, I’m better with like book titles. But she writes the book “Three Dog Night” and she talks about how difficult it was that she waited too long with one of her dogs and so then the dog was in immense pain and she was there when it passed. But, yeah, she had the guilt on the other side. I didn’t put him down and then he had to go through that.

0:18:13 – Cristiana Saia
I one thing that we talk about a lot in our anticipatory grief support group that we offer is being kind to your future self.

0:18:21 – Dr. Liz
Oh yeah. And for those that don’t know. Anticipatory grief is when you know you’re going to have grief. You know the animal is going to die or the person is going to die, and so you’re anticipating that, like some of that is called pre-grieving, like we’re going to move into that process and start to process it before the pet or the person passes away.

0:18:47 – Cristiana Saia
Even yes and thank you. I forget sometimes that that’s just something that we really don’t even think about so much of the time. And then I’ll talk to somebody and they’ll like, I’ll talk about anticipatory grief and like, oh, that’s what I was, that’s what I was going through, and you don’t have the language. That’s what makes it hard is not having the language sometimes for some really complex experiences.

Yeah, um, but we talk about being kind to your future self and really being willing to ask yourself okay, you know, um, a year from now, looking back, what will I feel more okay about? Not that I’m, we don’t have to like any of the options but will I be more okay with knowing that, knowing that I gave him this kind of death? Um, I say him because I’m, you know, I think him with my boys, um, or, and that maybe he could have had some good days. And you know, um, there’s the knowing and the not knowing.

We sacrifice one and on the flip, know, um, there’s the knowing and the not knowing, we sacrifice one and on the flip side, um, there’s the okay, well, I’m going to make sure they have every single last good day and good moment. That’s what matters most to me. But also, when we decide that we are not 100% on, we don’t have the control of, well, I know how they’re going to pass and what that’s going to look like. Yes, yeah, and the answer could look different for everybody, right?

So, I’m not here to answer what you know, what the end of life decisions should be, but it’s just a question being kind to your future self. What can they look back on and live with and feel more okay with? Can kind of be a decision, a thought when making the decision for euthanasia. And are we getting there?

0:20:33 – Dr. Liz
Yeah, I see that definitely like for for my little dog. She was really suffering at the end, which is when I finally made the call, but but then it got delayed. I scheduled it and my daughter woke up and said, oh my God, no, like all my friends want to say goodbye to her, I want to say goodbye to her. And so then we rescheduled it for about two days later. We had planned for her to have everything that she wanted to eat, like all her special treats, cause she’d been on a special diet for so long or else she’d get diarrhea. And so she, that dog, never got treats like the last two years of her life, the poor thing. But it’s like the day before then she got everything she wanted. She got her favorite walks, you know, she got all this stuff. So it’s like, yes, those days are really hard, though, thinking about it, and I know for me it was probably a year and a half me making that decision and thinking about it, and so for some people it’s a very long period if their, their dog, is getting this diagnosis, and you know, okay, it’s downhill from here.

I did have a it was like a client’s boyfriend or something who the minute the vet said your dog has cancer. He put him down that day, whereas other people choose to treat it, other people choose to not treat it but wait it out some. And so it is different for for everyone, but his goal was like I don’t want her to suffer, period. This is like most compassionate act he could do.

And so you hear these different stories. I’m sure you’ve heard so many because there’s hundreds of people who attend your groups. There’s also the individual counseling that love of love offers. Then there’s there’s a couple of tiers right. There’s the free groups and then there’s a paid group. I was very impressed with some of the specific ones.

0:22:30 – Cristiana Saia
Yeah, yeah, like that was really important to us to get some of those. And I do want to just mention we’re very, we want to be very transparent and so we never try to refer to ourselves as like offering counseling. Okay, so we, you know, we call ourselves grief coaches because just we want to be just really transparent. There are some moments where somebody deserves that additional support with a mental health counselor. You know it’s a very specific title that you have to. You know, kind of be careful with throwing around. But it was really important to us to get some of those you know kind of specialty groups in there, because pet loss is already a bit of a disenfranchised grief, which is, you know, any, any grief that is not really validated, as we talked about earlier, by society. But then there are some people who would tell us you know, I came to group today and it was really lovely, but I just felt like I was the only one there. Everybody was telling their story of this beautiful loss.

And you know, I had this really traumatic sudden loss. You know, or I was in a group and everybody was talking about how much they love their dogs and going on walks and stuff, and you know, and somebody mentioned how dogs are just different but my cat was equally as important to me, yeah, so kind of wanted to offer that space of other people who, you know, really understand the more specifics to that particular, the layers that go with that particular loss.

0:24:00 – Dr. Liz
Yes, well, I think it. It is impressive, like the offering is impressive and I felt like it really spoke to me, because there was one for newer loss, like under two months I think it is, versus one that was like extended two years. And I don’t know if I ended up in a cat group, but there’s definitely one that I attended that that I think was mostly cats, so it is a different flavor to it. I’ve had both, I love both, but yeah, then I mean I did have two cats that would walk the dog with me actually, but that’s unusual, you know, cats don’t usually go for walks, but but yeah, it felt different to me for sure to have those different offerings and to know also that they’re available. And then there’s the general, you know grief.

0:24:52 – Cristiana Saia
And then we also have our behavioral euthanasia group, which is yeah that one is we don’t have it as often you know, but it is important for us to keep that group going because that is that has such complex layers. And I say different layers because we’re not here to compare but just recognizing that sometimes with the different experiences we we want somebody who has similar. You know, layers that we have to work through in grief.

0:25:23 – Dr. Liz
Yes, can you tell people what that is? Some people won’t know.

0:25:26 – Cristiana Saia
Yeah, so behavioral euthanasia is when we have to make such difficult decision to say goodbye to one of our pets who is struggling with, you know, severe, like mental health or behavioral issues. Um, and there can be, even in, like the pet community, there can sometimes be people who, um, will you know, pass judgment or not know the whole story, right, because I think all of us have heard it oh, it’s, it’s a, it’s the owner, it’s not the dog, right?

And so I think that it’s important that we have that kind of really safe space, because one of the really complex issues with behavioral euthanasia is the sense of everybody talks about how perfect their pet was, you know, and how there was just this trust and they’re always there for them.

And when we have to, like, have a behavioral issue, sometimes it is derived from like a something neurological, you know, but it can feel, and I always say it feels, but it is not the same as, let’s say, a toxic relationship, right where I can fix them.

I just have to do this one more thing. I just have to make sure that they don’t get triggered. I just have to, you know, do this, and sometimes our lives can get incredibly small trying to do that and it can feel almost like this sense of, you know, when we have an insecure attachment, um, and so there’s a lot of kind of grappling with that and then also recognizing that, you know, their brains don’t work the same way that ours do, right, they can’t go to therapy, they can’t figure out, like you know, why is my fight or flight being triggered by this right now, and so it’s just an important to have that space for them to kind of you know, be honest about their experiences and also say and I love them and they were the best and they were so sweet 98% of the time. And this is really hard yeah.

0:27:31 – Dr. Liz
I had a dog that I had to to put down before Zoey that I had adopted. I knew the dog had problems but I had trained dogs in my 20s for about two years and I thought, no, this will be okay. Like, this is a good dog, you know we’ll do it. It’s exactly like can I tell you how many books I read again? And then he ended up biting someone in the dog park and, um, and it was in my neighborhood, it was like a neighborhood dog park and there’s a neighbor sitting next to me who is a lawyer and he said he’s like well, there goes your kid’s college education. Luckily she did not sue.

But it was such an awful decision and I knew if I took him back to the Humane Society, I had him a couple of months and I worked with him. He couldn’t walk around the block even at first and finally he could walk around the block and, you know, made all this progress. But I knew if, if he goes back and he had bit somebody, they would put him down and it was so, so hard to make that decision. It really was. And, um, I, I wrote a letter. Actually I could not talk, I was just bawling when I took him in and I just handed him in the letter over and um said goodbye to him. But yeah, it’s so hard. I hadn’t thought about it in years, like a long time. Oh, some feelings are coming up. It’s really hard, yeah.

0:28:59 – Cristiana Saia
And what a thoughtful way to just allow yourself that space to write the letter, say what you need to say, so that you can just make sure that you’re in a place where you can do what you know, and clearly a lot of thought went into it. You know it’s. It’s different than what people consider a convenience euthanasia.

0:29:20 – Dr. Liz
It’s much different.

0:29:21 – Cristiana Saia
And it also is a way that we take back some kind of control, because if we don’t make this decision, there’s a possibility of them, you know, getting taken, you know getting taken by animal control and it happening that way Right, or them something more severe happening, yes. You know, so, although there’s that guilt and it’s so hard, it’s also recognizing like, okay, maybe it still is. You know the kind of thing, because there are worse things than a good death. Yes, that’s true.

0:29:56 – Dr. Liz
Yeah, yeah, it is. I think that the purpose of the group, the intent, that’s so wonderful, that’s there because there are so many nuances to it and there they are different layers than a dog who got sick or even one who died traumatically that you didn’t expect, like the cat that we had that died, and it comes up in all kinds of different ways, yeah, depending on their death and the decisions you have to make around it. What’s your kitty’s name? Susu. Soot Sprite but Susu for short.

Yeah I always encourage us like let’s you know, we always want to say their name as much as we can yeah, she’s susu and we have her ashes and um, her little favorite toy actually on her mantle right now and her paw print. And then Zoey was actually buried in a friend’s backyard and I didn’t get her paw print. I wish I had, but I didn’t get her paw print. I don’t know why I turned it down, no idea. But I have some of her fur and so that that gives me some comfort actually to take it out. Sometimes she had this really soft. She was like a poodle shih tzu mix, so she had this really soft. We used to call it her mermaid tail, you know. So we have that um, and then the the dog I had to to put down because of the biting was  Nugget. He was like a lab and sort of that orangey color, so like a chicken nugget. They call the girls named him Nugget,

Cristiana Saia
that’s so cute, that’s appropriate.

Dr. Liz
It was cute. Yeah, he was, he was sweet, but he had problems. Yeah, yeah, what was your dog’s name, the one who passed last week.

0:31:43 – Cristiana Saia

His name was Troy. Troy boy, you know, 14 and a half years and uh, so yeah, he. It’s one of those things where you know I was thinking is is sometimes, as coaches, when we speak about these things in groups, it can sound like you know we’re speaking so nonchalantly, like it’s like, yeah, just you know, tell yourself this or have this dialogue and even, like us coaches, go through all of these things that we talk about and talk people through every day. Yeah, and just because you have the tools, sometimes there’s this expectation, especially if anybody’s in the helping profession there’s this expectation of like well, I have the tools, I know these things, I should be able to be.

okay, we think ourselves out of it and I think it’s just a matter of recognizing like, okay, yeah, um, I can know all the, but I’m not immune to being like a human being with loving attachments. And, yes, and it’s a process, you know, sometimes it just helps to know that. All right, the tools are there and I’ll I’ll use them when I get to it, you know.

0:32:49 – Dr. Liz
Yeah, yeah, and the your other dog is alive.

0:32:58 – Cristiana Saia
So, yeah, that’s Leo, little Leo. He’s, uh, his little brother. Um, they were like the great, you know, like the kind of grumpy older brother. Uh, Troy was, and and Leo kind of, just like you know, hammered his friendship. I always say like he puts his friendship on him, um, and so, yeah, it was sweet looking. I was looking back at some photos this weekend and really, you know, we always joked about how he did that but then like saying like wow, over the years they really were much closer than maybe, um, I gave them credit for. So, you know, little leo needs a lot of love and support right now oh, that’s sweet.

0:33:30 – Dr. Liz
Can you talk some about the actual process of grief, like what, what can people expect? Is there something like I know the five stages have been debunked a long time ago.

0:33:43 – Cristiana Saia
Thank you for saying that.

0:33:44 – Dr. Liz
Yes, right, there’s no five stages. People, you have all of those feelings, and at different times, but you’re just certainly not moving through those stages, like Elizabeth Kubler-Ross even said that herself, but somehow it still is being played in TV shows. So can you talk about, though, some of the process?

0:34:10 – Cristiana Saia
That has been researched in and brought to light around grief. Yeah, no, absolutely. And those five stages. A lot of people don’t know this, so I kind of like to be like oh, like fun fact of the day. It was really more so research done on people dying and their own anticipatory grief.

So before the fact, about their own death, that grief, that they’re having for their own lives, and so when we put it in that context, things like bargaining make a lot more sense. Yes, but you know, as far as, like, I think, you know it is different. You, you, I don’t know, I can’t say like, hey, expect this, but there’s a lot of commonalities, you know, there’s a lot of intersection. What we kind of refer to more, and there’s a few different models of this is more of like tasks in grief, that kind of that, one kind of needs to allow themselves to go through and do, to get to a place where they can, you know, find a place of reconciliation.

You know, I don’t love the word like acceptance, mostly because it’s so loaded, but reconciliation where we can kind of have a sense of, you know, of just finding meaning of like, okay, what was not meaning of their death, but meaning of their life, the impact, what this. You know, it’s like, okay, I don’t. We don’t have to say everything happens for a reason, but it happened. So now, what? What am I going to do with this experience? And that’s not something that’s going to happen right away.

You know, usually, but some of those tasks and again there’s a few different models in it’s, in no particular order, and sometimes we put one on the back burner or we have to come back to it is, you know, going to be one like acknowledging the reality of the death right, which denial, as you know, it’s not the same thing as like delusion. We know, obviously, our loved one passed, but there’s this kind of way of where somebody says I don’t want to get their ashes back, it’ll make it real, you know. Or I don’t want to look at pictures, that’ll make it real things like that.

So acknowledging the reality and ways that we can do that is by talking about it, telling their story, doing that active mourning there’s also, you know, leaning on our support and finding support. Sometimes we don’t have a great support system around us and that’s why we reach out to places like, you know, the pet loss support team or our doctor, or our community of faith, you know, making sure that we’re finding that balance of solitude and social support.

So, we’re not moving too far into isolation or distraction although some healthy distraction is, is okay. We can’t be present with things that when we’re consumed by something yeah, got it, yeah yeah. And so there is acknowledging the reality of the death, there is keeping them with you through memories, right. So sometimes people just want to shut that down and not like allow themselves, like just kind of move forward, and just recognizing that, you know, through memories, is a way that we can keep them with us because you know they impact our lives.

For  me, I truly believe our pets help shape who we are, um, you know, and shape who we want to be. Yes, and so, you know, just by keeping that memory of that, that connection it is, is really important, we find our, we can find our own ways to do that um a big one, especially in pet loss, is readjusting our self-identity oh, yeah, you and I talked about this, um, before the recording.

0:38:01 – Dr. Liz
Yeah, yeah, it’s like I have a hard time. I’m a dog owner, but I don’t have a dog right now, but I keep ordering stuff from from the website that has dog merch. It’s like, what am I doing? But it’s like, no, I love dogs, you know, and I know this helps the medical cost for that, you know, organization, whatever. But it’s like, yeah, it’s an identity shift absolutely, you know and so and it’s identity shift both like internally and externally.

0:38:30 – Cristiana Saia
So yeah, I know we talked a bit about like how our identity is, so it can be so tied up into like our bond with them and you know, just our connection with them, with the anchor in our lives that they’ve been through us.

You know, with all of these changes and things like that, that moment where, like, let’s say, we’re, you know, we’re at our worst, right, we’ve all had moments where it’s like, huh, looking back, could have handled that better, right. But the thing is we, we look at our pets and they look at us like, yeah, I love you today, just like I loved you yesterday, and I’m going to give you as much side eye and attitude today, you know, depending, yeah, right, but it’s also like, externally to to some people, you are, you are you know that person with a cute little dog that walks around the block, or you know, the person with the cat who always like jumps on the table during zoom meetings and everybody.

Um, you might be a social group that you meet with at the dog park, and so that also is a complete adjustment where people might sit and ask you like, hey, you know where, where are they? And so I think, just kind of acknowledging that there’s a part of that that will always be at our core, you know, they often are a mirror to us and they don’t, I always say, like our. I hear so often, oh, they gave me courage, and it’s like courage is not a currency. They made you realize that you can be courageous, and what a gift, I mean, what a gift for somebody to see us so authentically, and so it’s not taking away from what they’ve given to us. So recognizing all of those things are still true. And now trying to figure out, okay, like, who am I? What does being a dog mom mean to me? Now, maybe it means volunteering for a little bit, you know.

0:40:21 – Dr. Liz
Yeah, okay. So, um, working through like different. It sounds like areas like tasks, areas that type of thing where they come. You’re saying on someone’s own timeline. There’s no timeline on that?

0:40:36 – Cristiana Saia
Yeah, I refer to Dr. Alan Wolfelt’s model, a lot, and, like I said, there’s a few, but they all kind of touch on the same idea of it being more of like tasks, you know, things that we kind of have to give ourselves permission to do, and all of the feelings can happen at once, you know. So it’s not like, hey, this is what to expect to feel. There’s normal things like the guilt we talked about.

But, as far as like things to help us actually process our grief and and like, allow it to be a companion at some point in our life, which I know anybody who might be in really early grief right now that might make them want to, you know, throw their phone or whatever they’re listening to, yeah, um, but you know, just allow us to realize, like, your grief is yours to keep. We don’t try to take it from you here at lap of love or at the support team, um, because it’s it’s paved in in love, um, but it is a matter of okay, learning how to live with it.

0:41:39 – Dr. Liz
Yes, for sure. Yeah, and knowing is going to change over time, absolutely. I think that at the beginning that felt almost impossible to me, but I knew, like, feeling wise, that felt impossible. I knew intellectually, like this will change over time. I lost pets before, two cats, uh, but you know, um the dog that I mentioned, so it’s like, and that doesn’t count. Childhood it’s like and that doesn’t count. Childhood it’s like all in adulthood. So you know, oh my gosh. So I start to think about my kids’ childhood. We had several sets of mice and all kinds of stuff. The snails were the easiest. I will say Snails were the easiest pets.

0:42:18 – Cristiana Saia
Yeah, I was a hamster girl myself, and they also do not last very long. They really don’t.

0:42:26 – Dr. Liz
Yeah, and our kids’ grief. I mean I remember like, oh my gosh, sometimes my kids grief was so hard for me as a parent. I remember the most like awful wail you could hear from Eva when she was five and she discovered that her little hamster had died and, um, yeah, the cat got it. It was, it was very sad and it’s like, oh my gosh, my heart is breaking for my child and actually, um, she had to put a chicken down, one of the school chickens, right before she graduated. That was about a year, year and a half ago, and I took her and that was really hard, yeah, and I said I actually told her it’s one of the saddest things I’ve ever been through. And then she’s like, is it worse than this mom? Like, was it worse than this? I was like, yeah, it was close, like it is really close in this moment.

0:43:22 – Cristiana Saia
This is my truth and yes, absolutely yeah. So, and you bring up a great point is that it’s it’s forever evolving. You know our needs and grief is does kind of change over time and it doesn’t make it less than or you know, but it is. They change and that’s one task that you’ll see in every model is a sense of finding meaning, and early on, that again is really just can be triggering to hear. But because it is something that usually happens as we allow ourselves to do that, like mourning work, think, mourning work allows us to kind of take a little, take charge of our grief a little bit and say well, you know, I’m crying every day anyways, so at least when I light this candle, yeah, it might make me cry, but at least I know I’m going to. True, yeah, it’s just a little because we feel so out of control, so it’s taking charge just a little bit you know and help us get to that place of you know finding meaning.

0:44:27 – Dr. Liz
Yes, yeah, it’s interesting.

I couldn’t draw my dog until after she passed away, like I have no idea why, spiritually, like my, we’re a big art household, so my daughter would draw her, my older one, in all kinds kinds of different like funny things that would all make us laugh, like Zoey is a chef and Zoey is like a mermaid, and you know, but I never could draw her myself, like I just couldn’t capture her.

And then, after she died, I started drawing her where it’s like I’d send them to my daughter she’s on her own now, and she was like, oh, oh, my god, you totally got her now. But it was the reason that came up for me as you’re talking about the different tasks, right, the different ways we move through grief, and that was a shift for me to be able to draw her and laugh instead of draw her and cry. Yeah, because she’s she was always a very funny dog, that that made us laugh and she, she looked funny, she had two eyes that went different ways, and so it’s like just drawing her and and like sharing that laughter with my daughter instead of feeling like, oh, that’s a shift for me, so crying about her. So, yeah, all these different ways that we move through it and that doesn’t mean you’ll never cry again.

Right oh yeah, no, I cry. When I talked to you about it before. Right, I haven’t cried about
Nugget in like 12 years or something Right.

0:45:55 – Cristiana Saia
So it’s not this like okay, done with that part of grief, and it’s really getting comfortable with letting different feelings coexist.

0:46:04 – Dr. Liz
Yes, yeah, I love that, yeah, so some reassurance there of whatever comes up is okay and there’s not, there’s not abnormal, it’s all normal.

0:46:15 – Cristiana Saia
No, yeah, no definitely. Yeah, I love the idea of the different versions of Zoey. I feel like that could be like a kid’s coloring book one day.

0:46:24 – Dr. Liz
So cute. There’s one where she drew us like holding hands. You know, I mean super funny, sort of like I’m trying to think of the little video game, um, uh, animal, animal crossing. She draws in like that style, you know, yeah, so funny. Yeah, yeah, both of them always mess up. So yeah, well, we are coming to the end of our time here and I hope we have helped some people around grief and pet loss, and so can you please tell them how to find lap of love or, if they’d like to, to work with you, yeah, no absolutely so.

0:47:08 – Cristiana Saia
Um, you can go to lapoflovecom. Um, we also have our own resource page, which it’s like a different url that, in the days of technology, you never memorize anything, do you so?

Let me just pull it off because it is, uh, pull it up, so it’s pretty easy. Um, you can actually schedule online um any services that you like. We also offer again I don’t think I touched on it, but that one-on-one support, uh, so if you just kind of want to have the support of one of the coaches, maybe tell your story in depth, especially if there’s maybe some like traumatic things you need to work through, um might be better to do it in a one-on-one than in a group kind of thing.

Um, and then we also have our six week course that we offer you know, for people who are maybe a little ready to get curious about, about their grief. Um, so you would just go to petlosslapoflovecom and all of our services are listed there. You can sign up online and that. And that’s just helpful, because sometimes we’re, we can’t sleep and it’s the middle of the night and it’s like, okay, is there a group tomorrow? You know, is there somebody I can talk to tomorrow? And you can just kind of get that taken care of there, and so, if need be, you know they can always give us a call as well. We are usually in sessions, but you know to like, leave us a voicemail and we can always call them back and help get them set up, and so that phone number is 855-352-5683. And so that’s always an option.

0:48:49 – Dr. Liz
Can you repeat that?

0:48:50 – Cristiana Saia
Absolutely so it’s eight, five, five, three, five, two, five six eight three, 855-352-5683 and that will be in the show notes as well as the website. Both of the URLs will be in the show notes and even if your podcast player doesn’t show you the show notes like mine doesn’t for some reason so on, but it will be on my website. So all the podcasts published to my website and you can always find the episode and find the links there.

0:49:19 – Cristiana Saia
Perfect, yeah, cause not everybody is computer savvy and we get that. So if somebody needs to call and we can walk them through, get them signed up and yeah, it’s just an incredible honor. We have coaches here almost every day of the week. We’re a small team so sometimes we, you know somebody needs to go on vacation or have an appointment or something, but we really try to get back to you as soon as possible and just show up for you. Sometimes that’s all we need is somebody to show up.

0:49:50 – Dr. Liz
Yes, thank you, and I loved all the different offerings, like there was some weekends or some evenings or some date times. I think that does make it accessible to a lot more people. So thank you so much for sharing your story and your wisdom with us people.

0:50:06 – Cristiana Saia
So thank you so much for sharing your story and your wisdom with us. Yeah, thank you so much for having me, dr Liz, and um, we’re always here, you know. If you ever want to reach out or just if anybody has any questions, reach out. And uh, it’s been. It’s been a privilege, it’s been awesome speaking with you.

Transcribed by https://podium.page