Dogs May Grieve the Deaths of Canine Companions

Source: Celsim Junior/Wikimedia Commons. Distributed under a CC BY 2.0 license.

Any dog owner will tell you that their pet can form strong social bonds and exhibit complex emotional reactions. In fact, it might seem obvious to some that dogs might display grief in response to a loss. Although grief responses have been widely reported in other social species, including great apes, whales and dolphins, elephants, and corvids, there are few objective scientific studies of grief in domestic dogs.

A group of researchers addressed this gap in a new paper published today in the journal Scientific Reports. Federica Pirrone of the University of Milan and colleagues surveyed 426 Italian dog owners who had owned at least two dogs, one of whom died while the other was still alive. The researchers used a previously validated online questionnaire that enabled them to gather data on grief responses in both owners and surviving dogs after the loss of a cohabiting dog. In addition to reporting changes in the surviving dog’s behavior, owners provided information on the prior relationship between their dogs and their own distress levels after the loss of their pet.

Relationship Between the Two Dogs

Overall, the majority of people reported behavioral changes in a dog following the death of a cohabiting dog, including increased attention-seeking behavior and decreased eating, playing, and general activity. These behavioral changes were not related to the duration of time that the dogs lived together, which one might expect if the changes were merely a reflection of a disruption of the dog’s daily routine. Instead, Pirrone and her colleagues found that it was the relationship between the two dogs that mattered.

Source: Tim Dawson, via Wikimedia Commons. Distributed under a CC BY-SA 2.0 license.

“Eighty-six percent of participants observed negative changes in the surviving dog’s behavior after the other dog’s death, but only when the two dogs were bonded by a particularly friendly, or even parental, relationship,” says Pirrone. “The quality of their bond was the main factor influencing these changes.”

Influence of Owner's Grief

Another factor that influenced grief responses in dogs was the degree of the owner’s grief. Surviving dogs were reported to be more fearful when their owners showed more evident signs of suffering, anger, and psychological trauma following the death of their pet. Pirrone and her colleagues say this might demonstrate emotional contagion or a primitive form of cross-species empathy.

Surprisingly, the owner’s way of relating to animals and of representing their life/death did not correlate with behavioral changes in the surviving dog.

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“This is important because it indicates that the owner, in describing these changes, was not simply projecting his or her suffering onto the surviving dog, and it is therefore more likely that the reported behavioral changes are real,” says Pirrone.

But Pirrone and her team caution that, although these behavioral changes may be real, they cannot say for sure that they represent grief.

Separation Stress

“Our results open the way to a real possibility that domestic dogs may feel grief at the death of a companion,” says Pirrone. “However, the behavioral changes observed might be indicative of separation stress. Therefore, we cannot currently know for sure if the dogs are responding to the ‘loss’ of an affiliate or to their ‘death,’ per se.”

Whatever you label it, dogs’ reactions to losing a companion are an important welfare issue. Pirrone hopes that a better understanding of what dogs go through following a loss will help us be better caretakers of our pets’ emotional needs.

“Today, millions of families around the world live with more than one dog,” she says. “Knowing the behavioral reactions and emotions aroused by the death of a dog is therefore fundamental because it will allow us to recognize the emotional needs of many animals—and people—who are actually at risk of suffering from the loss of a canine companion.”