Every day for eight months, Nash the retriever has pined for his life long companion Oskar.
Whining, clawing at photos, crying beside a little statue that sits near Oskar’s ashes, his distress is obvious.
And his dad Colin Gallagher says he doesn't need fancy research projects to explain that his Chesapeake Bay Retriever is struggling to cope with grief.
Read more: The long goodbye
Driver Colin, from Dundonald, explained: “Nash is still very distressed. I can't think about Oskar without getting choked up and I try to keep it to myself - but Nash is just a mess.
“Today marks eight months and nine days since we had to say goodbye to Oskar. I had him from the age of three months and he was literally the best boy.
“But as with many German Shepherds, he started to go downhill physically when he hit 10 years old. Initially I thought he was struggling with joint pain but the vets found a number of masses when they scanned him, including one on his spleen.
“The options were grim, to operate and see if it would help in the short term but put him through serious surgery, anaesthetic and the very real chance it would kill him, or say goodbye as gently and peacefully as possible. For me it really wasn’t an option. We had to say goodbye and it was awful.”
Colin knew his other dog Nash would grieve but he thought the grieving period would last a few weeks but today more than eight months on, Nash is still showing distress over Oskar.
Colin explained: “I shared the videos with DogsLive to find out if other dog people have experienced anything similar. We have neighbours whose dogs are in our house a lot and Nash is great with them but his big pal is gone and I just know he’s feeling it hard.
“I tried to keep my emotions to myself after Oskar was put to sleep because I knew Nash would pick up on them. But all these months on, we’re both still very cut up about Oskar.
“Nash barks at photos of Oskar hanging on the walls, he whines and cries and scrapes at the wall and he lies crying beside Oskar’s ashes. I was given a German Shepherd ornament that I had painted in Oskar’s colours and Nash sits and stares at it and cries.
“I don’t know if he will ever get over this. I suppose my grief probably affects him even though I try not to let it.
“When he gets very distressed I put a thundershirt on him and he calms down a little but he basically cries himself to sleep.
“To anyone who thinks dogs don’t grieve, I can say they certainly do - there is no other explanation for Nash’s behaviour. My heart is broken over Oskar and it breaks again for Nash because he just can’t make any sense of it.
“I got Nash when he was seven months old and Oskar when he was three months old and he grew into the pack leader, a big, strong confident dog. Nash relied on him for a lot of confidence and looked to Oskar for reassurance and Oskar’s confidence was infectious.
“So now the friendship is gone, the brotherhood is gone, Nash is sad, his confidence has taken a hit and he’s still pining. I think it’s so sad and I do as much as I can to comfort him but there’s also something really lovely to know they were such good friends. They say that heartache is the price we pay for love and I guess that’s exactly what we're both going through.
“I’d love to know if other people have experienced this sort of grief in their dogs and how they coped with it. I know life won’t be the same again but I want big Nash to be happy again and I really don’t know how else to help him."
TV vet Rory Cowlam agrees that grief in dogs is real and painful - and it takes time for each individual to learn how to cope.
He said: “Grief is every bit as common as grief in humans, and just as difficult to handle. When the company our dogs have known for years is suddenly gone, it’s natural that they will suffer emotional distress.
"They can become quiet, withdrawn and even stop eating, they can lose interest in going for walks, they can show their emotions in all sorts of ways and, like humans, they need time to process what is happening and what has changed.
"Like humans they need time to learn how to accommodate how they’re feeling, they need comfort, some need cuddles, others need space. But most dog families will know when their pet needs a hug or company and you just have to go with it every day until things feel a bit easier. ”
Dr Federica Pirrone of the University of Milan, a co-author of a recent study into dogs’ grief for other dogs, said: “Dogs do form emotional bonds which may include companion animals in their household. Removing that companion can be expected to cause behavioural changes which certainly overlap those behaviours that we normally interpret as being grief and mourning.”
A total of 436 people participated in the study with 52% of the respondents saying their pet’s death was unexpected and 57% had their dog put to sleep due to ill health.
More than 9 in 10 said their surviving dog had lived with the dog who had died for at least a year, and many said that activity sharing was common.
It included sleeping together, grooming each other, playing with one another and more than half had never fought. Just over a third also shared their food, nearly 60% shared their toys, and 86% shared resting areas.
After one dog died, behaviour changes were common among the surviving dogs, the team found, with only about 13% of owners seeing no changes in habits.
The study found that the dogs displayed many key signs of grief, including:
- More attention seeking : 67%
- Playing less : 57%
- Less active : 46%
- More fearful : 35%
- More sleep : 35%
- Eating less : 32%
- More barking and whining : 30%
Click here for full details of the research paper, 'Domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) grieve over the loss of a conspecific'.
